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The fortune: In 1931 Fred Zollner moved his father's small Duluth piston plant to Fort Wayne — accounts differ on the starting crew, eight men in one and twelve employees in another — and the Zollner Corporation (its business entry is in the Business section) grew on pistons for trucks and aircraft. The turning point was an exclusive agreement to supply Greyhound's bus fleet, which one published profile says flatly was "making Zollner a millionaire." Peak employment is given as 1,800 workers in the Hoosier Hundred profile and as 1,200 by Indiana Tech; both figures are carried here as published.
The team: Zollner's second fortune-making asset was a basketball team — the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons, factory team turned professional champions, who moved to Detroit in 1957. Zollner sold the Detroit Pistons to William Davidson; published accounts conflict on the exit, giving $7 million in 1974 (Wikipedia's Zollner biography) and $8.1 million in July 1975 (the company-histories record), and both are carried here.
What it left: The Fred Zollner Foundation supports charities in the Fort Wayne area (and in Golden Beach, Florida); its published gifts include $1 million to Indiana Tech in 2002 for the Zollner Engineering Center. The Zollner name also remains on the city's sports memory entire — the Pistons began here, and the foundation's giving continues here.
Sources:
- Hoosier Hundred / Free Library profile of Fred Zollner — the Greyhound agreement, the 1,800-worker peak.
- Indiana Tech — the 1,200-worker peak figure; the 2002 $1 million foundation gift and the Zollner Engineering Center.
- Wikipedia, Fred Zollner — the $7 million Pistons sale, 1974; company-histories.com, Zollner Corporation — the $8.1 million sale, July 1975.
- GrantForward foundation profile — the Fred Zollner Foundation's Fort Wayne and Golden Beach grant areas.