ALFRED CHESTER DALE – Having come from South Dakota to Massachusetts a little more than twenty-five years ago, when he was thirteen years of age, Alfred Chester Dale, of Pittsfield, is today secretary of the Dale Brothers’ Laundry, Inc., whose branch in that city is only one of five which the corporation operates in this State. The remarkable expansion of the Dale Brothers’ business covers a wide range of territory in two States and in four counties, not to mention the overlapping of much of the contiguous area.
Mr. Dale was born in Wilmot, South Dakota, April 17, 1882, and removed to Springfield in 1897. In that city Mr. Dale’s father and his brother began to engage in the laundry business and it was but a comparatively short time until they had become favorably known and firmly established. Starting on an humble scale, they kept pace with the increase in business with more commodious and better quarters and improved machinery. Later they enlarged the field of their operations by establishing an additional laundry in Springfield. Soon they found that there was a demand for their class of work in other cities and towns, and opened a laundry in Ware, where they catered to the people of that industrial community and its vicinity in Hampshire County, their first laundry, in Springfield, being in Hampden County. With these three laundries in good running condition, a fertile field, just a little below the State line in Connecticut seemed to offer another promising opportunity for further expansion, and Dale Brothers opened a branch in Thompsonville, Hartford County, Connecticut. From the Springfield base there were at this time four laundries in full swing on a profit-making basis under the ownership and management of the Dale Brothers or men who had been trained in the parent laundry to become efficient superintendents of the branches. It was in 1920 the incorporators of the Dale Brothers’ Laundry, Inc., surveyed the field in the vicinity of the county seat of Berkshire, and upon a favorable report having been brought in, they determined, in 1920, to open a branch of their establishment in the city of Pittsfield. In that year Alfred Chester Dale came to that city as secretary of the corporation and manager of the Pittsfield branch. The company leased a modern building with a ground area of fifty-five by seventy feet, the building being three stories high, with a basement The Pittsfield branch gives employment to twenty-five persons, and the company’s patrons are not only numerous in the city of Pittsfield proper but also in the district dominated by that city. The concern is one of the recognized “fixtures” of the shire city of the Berkshires.
Mr. Dale is also prominently connected with fraternal organizations. He is a member of the Springfield Masonic bodies; Hampden Lodge, Bela Grotto of-the Enchanted Realm, and the Order of Eastern Star. Mrs. Dale also is a member of the Eastern Star and she is a Past Matron of the Order of the Amaranth.
Mr. Dale married Grace N. Shipman, of Hadley, a member of an old and distinguished New England family, tracing her ancestry direct to John Alden, of early Bay State Puritan fame. Mrs. Dale’s father and Grandfather Shipman have filled, in their respective terms of office, the position of postmaster of Hadley almost without interruption since the year 1864.