Alvin Pooter, 98, Dies on the Job, Copy of Playboy in Hand
Alvin Pooter, 1933, head of Pants division and inventor of the Pooter Crease.
by Amy Flanders, Public Relations Office
For immediate release…
He was with MooseBusiness for more than eight decades and we will all miss him. Of course, we are speaking of Alvin Pooter, age 98, who died some time last week, or perhaps before, while sitting at his desk on the third floor in our Pants Division, Chicago. In his hands was the most recent edition of Playboy magazine, which officemate Reginald Springwhite claimed “he bought religiously every month just for the pictures.”
Pooter began his career as a stock boy in the Hat Division before getting a break when a manager called in sick just before the Chicago Fashion Tour of 1929 was about to begin.
“The whole thing would have been a disaster,” recalls company historian Edward Phelps, Jr.. “But Alvin volunteered for the job. Some say he posed as a manager from the Milan office. In either case, he saved the day and yielded a record number of orders for the company. Unfortunately, the very next day the stock market crashed and all the orders were canceled. Regardless, the owners of the company back then liked Alvin’s moxie and called him in to tell him he would be put in charge of Pants and to pack his bags because he was moving on up.”
“I remember Alvin,” says retired pants presser Doug Van Meer. “He was a jovial fellow, always pulling pranks. One time he put a live mouse in the lady’s dressing room. You should’ve seen the panic! What a guy!”
Pooter is best known for “The Pooter Crease,” a technique he invented that enabled skinny people to wear pants by merely taking a regular pair and putting creases in them.
“If you was real skinny,” recalls Anthony Lombardi, co worker, 1948, “you might have twenty or thirty creases in your pants. You’d look like you was wearin’ an accordian, but at least your pants would stay up. That’s the kinda guy Pooter was, always thinkin, always creatin’.”
Alvin Pooter died on the same day he had been given his first and only promotion. He leaves behind a parrot named Henry James, a son, Ellison Pooter, age 77, a 2300-square-foot luxury condo overlooking Michigan Avenue and a collection of pennies from 1929. Ellison Pooter, resident of Virginia Beach and retired floutist, said, “I’m happy to take care of Henry James. My father used to read him novels, which is how he got his name. Also, I’m going to pour the entire penny collection into a fountain in the name of charity. Maybe for Jerry Lewis disease, or whatever you call that. Anyhow, this comes as a shock. Just two days before Pop died he was telling me that he had signed up for karate lessons.”