Clarence Curtis was born in November 1891 to Benjamin Curtis and Jessie Churchill Curtis. His great-great grandfather was Deacon Winslow Churchill, a DuPage County pioneer. Clarence married Dorothy Smith of Glen Ellyn, Illinois in 1915 and they eventually made their home in Lombard. He purchased Lombard Garage on east St Charles Road and opened a Pontiac dealership.
Clarence was mentioned often in the newspaper for his mechanical abilities. He would tinker with unlikely objects and create fascinating things. He was able to create a calliope that played Christmas music and then he attached to a Pontiac automobile. One of his grandest creation was a clock that when completed, was mounted atop the dealership. The clock was large enough that people on the passing Chicago & North Western trains could see. The interesting thing about the clock is that it was built of parts that were never intended to be clockworks. A newspaper articles lists some of the components: a generator/motor that came from a wrecked automobile, a wheel from an air compressor, chains from a corn-husking machine, a pump jack from a well, an old radio battery for power, and a pendulum weighted by old battery lead swinging from an old stovepipe wire. The roof of the clock towered 35 feet above the street, the dial was 8 feet in diameter, and the minute hand was almost four feet long. Clarence never stopped tinkering-in 1957, he made the newspapers for creating an adapter plug intended to end short circuits which in turn could reduce the number of electrically caused fires.
The Curtis Garage fell victim to the Great Depression. Clarence could not meet his mortgage payments and the property was sold to the Village of Lombard. The property is now Station One for the Lombard Fire Department. Clarence and his wife lived in Lombard until 1963, when he retired. He died in Florida in 1976.
