Tales from the bomber plant. . .
Food Service
When the Willow Run Bomber Plant rose in 1942 , its scale demanded more than steel, rivets, and schedules. It required food—steady, predictable, and massive in volume. Thousands of bodies could not be run on slogans alone.
Although some Willow Run workers surely brought meals from home, most depended on the plant itself for food during their shifts. The scale of production demanded it. At the southwest corner of the plant, on the second-floor balcony, Ford built three dining rooms and a cafeteria—an internal city feeding a workforce that rarely stopped moving.
The cafeteria occupied the extreme south end of the balcony. Between it and the Engineering group were the dining rooms. According to La Croix, cafeteria traffic required two serving lines running continuously through the lunch period—from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.—with proportionate flow at breakfast and supper. Roughly 13,760 square feet were allotted to kitchen, storage, serving lines, and seating. Staffing reflected wartime reality: about 75 women and 35 men handled the work of feeding thousands.
North of the cafeteria sat dining rooms A, B, and C, supported by a kitchen and pantry. Dining room A—executive dining—seated 23 and was physically separated from the others. Dining rooms B and C, used by plant management, seated 146. The dining room kitchen typically served about 250 people daily. As a rule, the same three main courses offered in the cafeteria were served upstairs as well. Total floor space for the dining rooms amounted to about 5,700 square feet—compact, efficient, hierarchical. But most workers never saw those rooms.
This system did not run itself. Roland L. Christman arrived at Willow Run first as an assistant and soon as supervisor, overseeing cafeteria operations that fed between two and three thousand employees daily. In a plant ruled by clocks and quotas, the cafeteria became a stabilizing force—quietly essential, rarely noticed unless it failed. Christman remained at Willow Run until 1946, staying through the transition period after the plant was sold, ensuring continuity until the new owners took possession.
On the south side of the plant, adjacent to the transportation building, stood a 14,000-square-foot commissary that serviced lunch wagons feeding the bulk of the workforce. Along the north wall near Final Assembly was an upgraded lunch wagon offering the same fare—sandwiches, cakes, coffee, milk, soft drinks, and hot dishes—but with a steam table to keep food warm. A similar installation appeared on the south balcony. This was the everyday diet of Willow Run.
Ford did not run this operation directly. Instead, effective August 15, 1942, Ford Motor Company leased the commissary building to the Bomber Lunch Company to provide food service to plant workers—primarily those in manufacturing and assembly. No competitive bids were taken. That omission drew Army attention, and Ford was required to explain its choice.
Ford’s reply was careful and formal. The company stated that it did not permit anyone to serve food to its employees unless it was fully satisfied the concessionaire was financially able to perform and possessed sufficient experience to justify confidence in satisfactory service. Ford added that the members of the Bomber Lunch Company co-partnership were “well known to us” and “well suited” to the task. The lease, Ford emphasized, allowed cancellation on thirty days’ notice.
The lease went into effect August 15, 1942. The names behind it matter. The first co-partner was Frank Witmire, an official in Harry Bennett’s Service Department. Local press coverage from June 29, 1937 reports that Witmire—then 55—was chauffeuring Bennett when their car collided with another vehicle that ran a stop sign, knocking Bennett unconscious and sending him to the hospital. Other stories describe Witmire as a prominent Ford official. One recounts an elaborate, two-and-a-half-foot decorated cake topped with a miniature bride and groom, presented by Ford Motor Company at the 60th wedding anniversary of Witmire’s parents. By the start of the Bomber Lunch project, Witmire was about 60 years old. No testimony has yet surfaced establishing that he was an experienced caterer or independently wealthy enough to finance such an operation.
The second co-partner was 34-year-old Stewart W. Nunneley, an intercollegiate and local outboard powerboat racing champion. His father was a Detroit maritime sportsman. Nunneley’s racing background placed him squarely within Ford’s river culture. Bennett himself was a well-known maritime enthusiast, owning a yacht and residences on Grosse Ile and along the Huron River. It is difficult to imagine Nunneley not being known within that circle. Still, no evidence has been found showing that Nunneley—though a college graduate—had experience in large-scale catering or personally financed the venture. These were the “well-known” men Ford presented to the Army: Bennett’s man and a mariner. Neither a caterer.
By March 1943—seven months into the project—journalist Agnes Meyer recorded what workers thought of the lunch wagons while she was at Willow Run interviewing Edsel Ford. Meyer reported that workers refused to eat the lunch wagon hot food because it was not fit to eat. She noted this as the only complaint she heard within the plant.
Public criticism soon followed. In May and June 1943, letters appeared in the Detroit Free Press praising the cafeteria while condemning the lunch wagons almost without exception. The cafeteria, readers wrote, served excellent and varied food, competitive with good restaurants. The food was excellent, one noted, and cost no more than buying and preparing comparable food at home. Others complained that the portions were too small for the price, asking only for good, plain food at a reasonable cost.
The lunch wagons drew no such balance. They were called a menace to health. Workers wrote that they were afraid to eat at them. Management was urged to assume responsibility for sanitation. The wagons were described as dilapidated, night after night sending workers away in disgust. The pattern is clear even from limited evidence: the cafeteria was respected, if expensive; the lunch wagons were widely despised.
As Willow Run wound down in mid-1945, Nunneley wrote to Ford warning that the Bomber Lunch operation could not remain profitable with fewer than 10,000 workers. Ford responded by subsidizing the lunch wagons through the termination of the commissary lease on September 21, 1945. Afterward, Nunneley remained in industrial catering in Dearborn. He died in 1961 at age 53. To date, no obituary for Frank Witmire has been located.
The record closes the way it began: with a system built for speed and scale, staffed by the connected, tolerated, and quietly absorbed when the war moved on.
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