When it came to being home for some transportation giants of the 20th century, our region had some pretty good company. Whether it was ships, buses or cars, the names Henry J. Kaiser, Frederick J. Haynes and Walter M. Aldrich were either born or lived in the Heartland of New York at one time.

Henry J. Kaiser was born in 1882 in Sprout Brook, just inside the Montgomery County border, north of Cherry Valley. Kaiser was known as the father of modern American shipbuilding. But he had his hands in a lot of other ventures until his death in 1967. He was buried near Oakland, Calif.

Kaiser’s first job was as a cashier in a dry-goods shop in Utica. This was the first of many moves for Kaiser, as he moved west pursuing photographic and hardware businesses. He settled in Vancouver, British Columbia.

In 1912, Kaiser started a road-paving business in British Columbia and Washington state. By 1921 he won a major paving contract in California and established his headquarters in Oakland.

Kaiser also won other infrastructure projects such as the Hoover Dam and the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, to name a few.

He became most famous for the Kaiser Shipyards in California during World War II. It was here he pioneered the idea for today’s well-known Kaiser Permanente HMO.

Kaiser entered the automotive industry in 1945 with automobile executive Joseph Frazer. Kaiser Motors produced cars under the Kaiser and Frazer name from 1945-55.

Kaiser Aluminum was established in 1946.

In 1948, Kaiser established the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, which focused on major health-care issues facing the nation.

An April 1922 edition of The Otsego Farmer had an article about how the president and general manager of what was then known as Dodge Brothers, makers of the Dodge motorcar, was a Cooperstown native. That was Frederick J. Haynes. Today, the company is DaimlerChrysler.[an error occurred while processing this directive]