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Description
Shown here on April 4, 1946, is the Thys Iron and Steel Foundry at 6900 Folsom Boulevard. The business was established in 1940 by the eccentric Edouard Thys, an Eton-educated Belgian aristocrat and electrical engineer, and his equally eccentric wife Pinky, a native of San Francisco. Edouard came to Sacramento in the late 1930s to manage his father-in-law's extensive hops holdings. However, with the advent of the Second World War, he started the foundry, where Pinky would work as a steel meter, running arc furnaces. The company was instrumental in producing parts for the war effort. In the post war period, Thys converted to mine car couplers, portable hop picking machines, ship hardware, trailer hitches and various other industrial parts and items. In the winter of 1959, the building was hit with a devastating fire, but was soon after rebuilt near the intersection of Florin-Perkins and Fruitridge Roads. Edouard and Pinky went on to become avid supporters of the Republican Party and strong fund-raisers for Ronald Reagan and, in their retirement, acquired pilot's licenses and flew throughout North America. Edouard died in 1976, Pinky in 1997.
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