Julien LaViolette, my father, was born December 13, 1882 in Spa, Belgium to Edouard and Marie LaViolette in a little stone house about a kilometer from the old laBoureur homestead.  The next year the family, including his 7 year old brother Camille Jay, left for America.  They probably settled initially in Chicago where Edouard's brothers were in business as stone masons.  However, by 1887 they had relocated to Hagar, Michigan a short distance north of Benton Harbor where Julien's brother Hubert was born.  There, Edouard probably had a farm where his daughter Mary Mathilde was born on March 28, 1891.     Then, sometime around 1900, Edouard met and fell in love with a pretty blonde divorcee and mother of five from Ohio named Lucy Downey Wallace.  He divorced Marie and married Lucy around 1902 leaving Marie to care for her four children on the farm.  At that time the children were 27, 20, 15, and 11.  Lucy bore Edouard two children; Emil in 1908 and Pearl in 1912.  Only a month after Pearl's birth, Edouard died under mysterious circumstances.     At about this same time Julien's brother, Camille, married Lucy;s daughter, Mary, who divorced him a year later with no children.  He next married her sister Marie in 1914 who bore him five children; Mildred, Crystal Carmen, Vance (who lived only one day), Camille Astro, and Kingsley Wallace.  Meanwhile, Julien had met the lovely daughter of a Benton Harbor grocer named Haas who had recently moved his family from Chicago.  Julien and Margaret (Maggie) Florence Haas fell in love and were married about 1902.  Maggie's first child was a girl born on March 14, 1905 and who lived only three days.  Her sister-in-law Osa Haas, helped her care for the baby and years later remembered having made a pink knit gown for the child.  Maggie's next child, Kathryn Mathilde was born the next year on February 28,1906.     Little is known about the family's activities at this time except that Maggie had a close relationship with her sister-in-law, Osa Haas, who had also started her family in Benton Harbor. Her husband Louis must have worked in his father's grocery and possibly Julien was also employed there for a time. About this time Julien opened his own store in the small village of Riverside, a farming community a few miles north of Benton Harbor.  The only available store building was immediately adjacent to an existing grocery so he was starting up in the face of established competition.  The business grew slowly at first but then as the local fruit came into season he began to buy the best quality produce from the surrounding farmers to sell in his store.  As a result he became better known among the farmers and his business began to grow.  But he knew that he must keep the business growing for the next winter many of the farmers who had crop losses would be asking for credit.    To turn them away would ruin the good will he had built up during the summer but to supply groceries on credit would eat away his small capital.  The telephone was just coming into limited use and the farmers who could afford a telephone were the ones who had been most successful.  So, when he had a chance to buy a used motorcycle with a sidecar, he snapped it up and started the first home delivery service.  Maggie was an experienced grocery clerk from helping in her father's store so she minded the store while Julien was out on deliveries.  Housewives could call in their order by telephone and within an hour their groceries were at their door.  His business thrived in spite of the winter's credit burden.  It was run, run, run for the money and within a few years he had a very successful business with a great resource of good will throughout the community.        By this time he had invested $1800 in a new Ford truck and the business was demanding more and more of his time.  He knew he must find someone who could handle the delivery service so when a young man showed up at the store looking for work, Julien decided to try him out.  The boy would need training in contacting customers as well as in driving the truck.  But first he must be certain the boy was honest.  The next morning they started out together on the delivery.  As they drove, Julien explained how to address the customers and the importance of good customer relationship.  At each stop he had the boy carry in the groceries and introduced him to the customer.  Each time they returned to the truck Julien would pick up his roll of bills from the seat, add the payment to the roll, and toss it back on the seat.  Finally they completed the delivery run and, on the way back to the store, Julien stopped by the office of one of his friends and asked the boy to wait in the truck while he went inside for fifteen minutes to take care of some business.  But instead of staying so long, he only passed a few words with his friend and after a few minutes returned to the truck. The boy was not there.  Also the roll of bills was not there!  The temptation to take the money and run had been too great to resist. There was only one road leading directly to the city so it took little time to catch up with the boy.  He was sitting beside the road waiting for a lift.  He returned the money without any attempt to resist and tried to apologize. Julien simply took a $20 bill out of the roll and, handing it to the boy, said "I'm sorry that you decided not to stay to work for us.  But Just remember.  Don't ever think of returning to Riverside."       Who could know that this "decision" by a stupid dishonest boy could so change the lives of the LaViolette family?  In the mad race to keep up with the business, Julien forgot to pay his fire insurance premium on the store.  During the night, a week later, a fire burned the neighboring grocery and the LaViolette grocery completely to the ground.  Julien's grocery business was completely destroyed.      A few days later, several of Julien's friends, led by Mr. A., stopped by to see him.  Mr. A. presented him with a small bank bag and said "Julius, all of us have pitched in to collect $10,000 so you can rebuild your store and get back in business.  We need you in this town." But Julien replied "I can't begin to tell you how grateful I am for doing a thing like this.  I am very much obliged, but no, I can't accept your offer.  I can see that I should never have started my business here next to Mr. X.  I thought there would be business enough for both of us.  It just didn't work out and I have decided to become a farmer."   The Farm      So Julien packed Maggie and little Katie in the truck and started out to look for a farm.  He knew that the local grocers were the best places to look for information so everywhere they went in the Benton Harbor and St. Joseph areas, they inquired.  Finally, they traveled as far east as Kalamazoo County and there, in the township of Alamo, they found the ideal spot for a fruit farm.  It was an 80 acre area situated at the intersection of two town roads with a substantial house and barn on the eastern, high end of the property near the corner. The soil ranged from a sandy loam on the east, to a clay loam further down, to black muckland soil and swampy woodland at the low western end.  At the southeastern corner of the farm stood 10 acres of mature apple trees.      Julien secured his purchase with a down payment and returned to Riverside to arrange for a mortgage loan from his uncle Hubert who was a farmer there.  At Uncle Hubert's suggestion, he had the deed changed from joint ownership in the names of Julius and Maggie LaViolette to the sole ownership of Maggie LaViolette.  So, in 1910, Julien became a farmer.      Soon after he located farms nearby for his mother and brother Camille.  During that first year he planted an additional 15 acres of apple and peach trees as well as 10 acres of dewberry and grape plants.  In the succeeding years he repaired and improved the barn, acquired a team of horses and a small herd of cows, planted 15 acres of corn and wheat on the clay loam soil, and started the construction of a store building at the extreme northeast corner adjacent to the timbers of an old cider press. He put up a big sign at the roadside proclaiming it as the "Lone Star Fruit Farm."  By 1914 he had completed the 1500 square foot store with a second floor as living quarters, a 1600 square foot highbay storeroom area in the rear and a full basement under the entire structure.  That summer he opened the "Lone Star Grocery."      The basement below the storeroom was equipped with a workshop for repair of farm machinery.  Whenever he heard of an auction sale, Julien would go to look for farm equipment.  Broken tools came cheapest.  He would haul them back to his shop and put them in working order.  The equipment yard was full of hay racks, reapers, cultivators, plows, spray rigs, and harrows.  He was soon known throughout the area as the man who could fix anything and was frequently called upon.  "Julius, could you come over and give me a hand with my spray rig?  That old engine will never start up for me."  Or, "Julius, could you stop by sometime to look at my reaper?  The dang thing is locked up somehow."