Merced County Biographies

WALTER KING NIELSEN

Transcribed by Kathy Sedler

This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm

 
        A notable instance of the sterling worth which overcomes all obstacles 
and creates its own opportunities is presented in the career of Walter K. 
Nielsen, proprietor of the Arena Garage, two and one-half miles east of 
Livingston. A popular young man, and an engineer and machinist of ability, his 
personal appearance and agreeable ways win for him many stanch friends. The 
garage, 125x54 feet, which he built in 1919, is equipped with machinery and 
up-to-date appliances for all modern work, overhauling, vulcanizing, etc., and 
in the work of repairing, tractors, trucks and automobiles he employs three men 
besides himself.
        Mr. Nielsen was born in San Francisco on November 4, 1896, the son of J. 
J. Nielsen, a native of Denmark, who is a prominent concrete contractor in the 
Santa Clara Valley. He built the Morgan Hill High School building and nearly all 
the concrete bridges in the Santa Clara Valley. The mother, Catherine (Kling) 
Nielsen, was also born in Denmark and died in 1918, aged sixty-one years. While 
yet a youth of fifteen Walter started to work for the Union Iron Works of San 
Francisco and since that time he has made his own way. After four years and four 
months in the Union Iron Works he enlisted in 1917, in the U. S. Navy, where he 
made a very excellent record as assistant engineer on a dozen torpedo boats and 
naval craft, among which may be mentioned, the U. S. S. Chew, U. S. S. 
Kermanshaw, a freighter; U. S. S. George Washington, a transport. He served in 
the Mediterranean and on the Atlantic during the war and went to Constantinople, 
Turkey, and was in the Black Sea. He drove the first torpedo boat of the U. S. 
Navy which passed through the Dardanelles after the Turkish surrender. He was 
honorably discharged at Mare Island on September 27, 1919, having served 
altogether two and a half years.
        Walter King Nielsen was married in San Jose, October 28, 1919, to Miss 
Gertrude Hatch, a native of New York City, and they came to Arena the night 
after their marriage. He is a member of the American Automobile Association of 
Garage Owners. He is a Mason, belonging to Turlock Lodge No. 395, F. & A. M. 
Both Mr. and Mrs. Nielsen are Protestants. They reside in their home Mr. Nielsen 
built near his garage and dispense a kindly hospitality.
 
History of Merced County, California � Los Angeles, Historic Record Co., 1925
page 884-885