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Aluminium foundry · The casting shop beside Ward Pattern
On the record
Founded: 1969, Fort Wayne. The Ward Corporation company history timeline dates the start directly: in 1969 Marion Ward’s brother Gail Cole started an aluminum foundry, Cole Precision Castings. The Journal Gazette’s 2018 founders profile (Janet Patterson, 9 September 2018, as summarised by ACGSI) carries the same 1969 start in the Ward sequence. No incorporation record or contemporaneous directory listing under Cole’s own name was retrieved, so the year rests on the company history as corroborated by the newspaper profile and is not proven.
Founder: Gail Cole (company timeline; the Journal Gazette profile identifies him as Marion Ward’s brother). No partner or other officer is named in any source in hand.
What it did: an aluminum foundry producing prototype and short-run production sand castings for aerospace and automotive markets (company timeline). It was the casting operation that grew up beside Ward Pattern & Engineering (entry 35), the pattern shop Cole’s sister and brother-in-law had opened in the former Wayne Knitting Mills building on Growth Avenue in 1964.
Course: short and single-arc in the record in hand: founded 1969 and grown by 1978 to 40 employees and 15,000 sq ft (company timeline; the Journal Gazette gives the same figures at the 1978 formation of Ward Aluminum Casting). A street address of its own is not documented — the Ward accounts tie the casting operation to the Growth Avenue mill building where Ward Pattern began, but no directory listing for Cole Precision Castings itself was retrieved, so a distinct site separate from Ward’s is not established.
Fate: absorbed 1978. In 1978 Ward Aluminum Casting, Inc. was formed by assuming the assets and liabilities of Cole Precision Castings (company timeline), ending Cole as an independent company after nine years; its work, workforce and space continued inside Ward (entry 35), whose current brochure dates its aluminum-casting business from that 1978 formation. The record is a single chain (company history plus one newspaper profile): targeted searching found no independent directory, trade-press or incorporation record for Cole Precision Castings under its own name.
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- § 05 — business
Sources: Ward Corporation company history timeline, as published in the company’s Glassdoor company description — https://www.glassdoor.com/Overview/Working-at-Ward-EI_IE1314491.11,this history ; Journal Gazette, Janet Patterson, “Owners put stamp on decades-old firm,” 9 Sept 2018, as summarised on ACGSI — https://www.acgsi.org/genweb/fort-wayne/wayne-knitting-mills-fort-wayne-indiana.html . Sources as cited in the profile.