Mike Moolick, Dies Suddenly at Home Here

For Number of Years was Norfolk’s Most Consistent Globe Trotter

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Funeral to be Monday

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Started Traveling After He had Been Retired on Pension from Chicago and Northwestern Railway Company.

Mike Moolick, 85, for a number of years Norfolk’s most consistent globe trotter, died suddenly of a heart attack while alone in his home 1401 South Fourth street, about 5:30 o’clock Friday afternoon.  He was found a short time later.

Funeral services will be conducted Monday afternoon at 2 o’clock a the Berge-Thenhaus-Howser-Swoboda Home for Funerals by the Rev. Walter L. Jewett, minister of the First Methodist church.  Burial is to be made in Prospect Hill cemetery.  The body will lie in state at the home for funerals Sunday from 2 to 9 o’clock.

In an eleven-year period ending in 1936, Mr. Moolick traveled 197,997 miles.  In the last four years he made a number of trips, including several to California.

Retired at 70

At the age of 70, he retired on a pension from the Northwestern Railway company, for which he worked thirty years and four months as a blacksmith.  Before his retirement he had traveled little, because as he said: “I had a family of five to raise.”

After his retirement he decided to realize his life-long ambition of going places and seeing things.  “Why, if I had just settled down in my little home in Norfolk and done nothing, I would have been dead in six months,” he once said.

After he started his traveling he visited Hawaii, Alaska, Cuba, Mexico, every prvince in Canada and every state in the union, except two in New England.  He saw everything from the Mardi Gras celebration in New Orleans to the Dionne quintuplets.

Mr. Moolick retired in June, 1924, and before the end of that year he had traveled 3,794 miles.  In 1928, he traveled 14,000 miles.

His Travels Cost Little

He mastered the art of traveling with little cost.  “People wonder how I can travel on so little money, and I wonder how people can spend as much money as they do when they travel,” he once said.  Upon arriving at his destination, he found a rooming house in which to stay, because “hotels are higher and have too much noise,” he stated.

He is survived by four daughters, Mrs. Genevieve Wescott, Hampton, Ia.; Mrs. Lenora Griffith, Van Nuys, Calif.; Mrs. Louella Swails, Norfolk,  and Mrs. Esther Miller, whos address is not known by relatives; one son, Harry, Norfolk, and six grandchildren.    Source:  The Norfolk Daily News, Saturday May 25, 1940, page 5.

Funeral Record

Mike Moolick

Funeral services were conducted Monday afternoon at 2o’clock at the Berge-Thenhaus-Howser-Swoboda Home for Funerals for Mike Moolick, 85; who died following a heart attack late Friday afternoon at his home, 1401 South Fourth street.  The Rev. Walter L. Jewett, minister of the First Methodist church, officiated.

Mr. Moolick was born June 21, 1854, at Interlaken, in the Finger Lake district of New York state.  He came to Nebraska with his parents, when 12 years of age and lived for a time in Saunders county.  He freighted in the Black Hills in the early days and later took a homestead in Knox county.

In 1884, he was married to Miss Luella Etter, who died ten years later leaving three small daughters.  Mr. Moolick was later married to Nellie Jones and to them two children were born.

Since his retirement from the service of the Northwestern Railway company for which he worked thirty years and four months as a blacksmith, he had traveled extensively, not only in the United States, but also in Hawaii, Alaska, Cuba, Mexico and Canada.

He is survived by four daughters, Mrs. Genevieve Wescott, Hamnpton, Ia.; Mrs. Lenora Griffth, Van Nuys, Calif., Mrs. Louella Swails, Norfolk and Mrs. Esther Miller, whose address is not known by relatives; a son, Harry Moolick, Norfolk, and six grandchildren.

Burial was in Prospect Hill cemetery.

Source:  The Norfolk Daily News, Tuesday May 28, 1940, page 2.