In the mid-1820’s five brothers with the Heywood surname started a company of the same name and began producing simple chairs in their barn in Gardner, Massachusetts.  Their simple chairs became very popular and demand grew.  A few years later with business flourishing, the brothers branched out into other furniture.  As their business continued to grow, they acquired other smaller furniture companies, but no acquisition was as important as their 1897 acquisition of the Wakefield Rattan Company.  Thus, the Heywood-Wakefield Furniture Company was born.

However, the rancher did not have a phone and cell phones are useless in that area.  So the rancher told her to go into town and send a telegram.  She says, “great idea” and goes to town.  Upon arriving at the Western Union, she asks the guy behind the counter, “how much to send a telegram?”  To which he replies, its 75 cents per word.  Her being as cheap as Mikey, thinks about it for a minute and then says to the man, “okay, send Mikey one word only” and the man asks, “and what word would that be?” She says, “comfortable.”  The man looks at her and says, “are you sure your boyfriend Mikey will understand that message.” “Sure,” she says, “Mikey reads so slow that when he gets this out, he will see, COM-FOR-DA-BULL.”

Other works by this artist include the bust of Frederick Chopin that adorns the front of Kleinhan’s Music Hall as well as the life sized portrait of Polish General Kazimierz Pulaski, the “Father of the American Cavalry,” which hangs in the Pulaski Club in Olean, New York.  Josef Mazur passed in 1970.