By TIM ALEXANDER
Illinois Correspondent

DANA, Ill. — When Bill Bane shows off his restored 1943 Oliver tractor at farm equipment and nostalgia shows, as he recently did during the 29th Greater Peoria Farm Show, the retired central Illinois farmer makes no effort to suppress his pride.

That is because to Bane, the tractor represents both a direct link to memories of his late father and an affirmation of the love of his own children and grandchildren.

First manufactured in 1943, the Oliver Row Crop 70 was hailed as revolutionary in the agricultural implement industry because of its six-speed transmission capable of achieving 13 mph on the open road – “That’s the power you’ll find in an Oliver Row Crop 70,” an early advertisement for the model states.
Machinists who assembled the tractors at Oliver Farm Equipment Co. in Charles City, Iowa, however, could never have dreamed of the power one of the 1,000 or so Row Crop 70s they built that year would possess in strengthening the family bonds for the Bane family, 67 years later.

From 1927-47, brothers John and Joe Bane owned a Case, and later, Oliver, equipment dealership in downtown Dana, a tiny farm village in Woodford County, Ill. With production of new equipment limited in the war-torn year of 1943, the brothers considered themselves fortunate to be able to offer the shiny new, state-of-the-art Oliver Row Crop model for sale on their lot.
John Bane sold a new Oliver that year to an area farmer who used it for many years. When the farmer passed away, the tractor went into the hands of a nephew, Jim Kenney, who had possession of the vehicle for approximately 35 years before a chance encounter led to its eventual purchase by Ricky Bane – the grandson of John Bane.

Ricky, 45, and his son, Sammy, 10, presented the dilapidated, rusted tractor to Ricky’s father, Bill, 68, in honor of his grandfather’s memory on Father’s Day 2008. Together the three generations of Banes restored the tractor to its original 1943 specifications. Bill proudly shows off the tractor at collectors’ events and enters it into area parades as a tribute to his father, John, who passed away in 2001.

“In today’s world, this tractor is very rare,” Bill said.

The story of how the Oliver 70 wound up back in the Bane family began around 10 years ago when Bill and Rick were driving by Kenney’s rural home. “Dad saw a glimpse of something through an open barn door and asked me to turn around and go back,” Ricky recalled. “He said he wanted to show me something.
“It turned out to be the tractor Grandpa Bane sold to Jim’s uncle in 1943. We made an offer on the tractor then, but Jim wasn’t ready to sell it yet.”

Years went by with Ricky making repeated, friendly requests to buy the tractor from Kenny. In 2008, while Ricky was recovering from a work accident incurred while installing a cattle fence on his farm, he ran into Kenney and his wife at a restaurant, where he made a personal plea to Kenney to sell him the tractor. He told Kenney of his desire to restore the tractor and present it to his father as a tribute to John Bane.

“It’s time to get that tractor back to your family,” Kenney told Ricky that night. “Why don’t you come by Saturday with a trailer?”

On Father’s Day 2008, Ricky summoned his father and mother to his farm under the guise of needing help removing something from his trailer that could have aggravated his injury. He promised his parents he’d treat them to dinner if they helped out.

“Dad got out of the truck and must have circled the tractor three times before he asked, ‘Is that the tractor?’” Ricky recalled. “I just said ‘Happy Father’s Day, Dad. It’s yours to do whatever you want with.’”

That winter, Bill, Ricky and Sammy went to work restoring the tractor. “Dad put in a lot of hours on that tractor. I don’t think there were too many bolts he didn’t turn,” said Ricky.

When the Banes decided to restore the tractor, they wanted the end result to be as close as possible to Oliver’s 1943 specifications. “We wanted it to be something we could be proud of and would stay in the family for generations to come,” Ricky explained.

Bill said after the tractor was stripped down, it took five tables and seven buckets to hold all of the parts.

“Every individual piece was taken down, cleaned and redone,” he said. “We redid the wiring in cloth as per the style in 1943. The paint we used is oil-based and thinned with naphtha. It is like the original paint, not a high-gloss auto paint.”
The tractor’s gears and transmission were the only parts not removed. They were in good enough condition that only a cleaning and regreasing was required. “We stripped the motor and everything else completely out. We refinished it all by hand, except for some sandblasting on the rear wheels. Everything else was worked down by hand,” Bill said.
New exhaust valves and guides were installed and the starter, generator, carburetor and radiator were entirely rebuilt by the Banes.

“It’s as if it just came out of the factory,” beamed Bill. “We could definitely take it into the field today.”

The Banes finished restoring the tractor in about five months, in time for Bill to show it at two collectors’ events and bag two Best of Show trophies in 2009. He restored a matching two-wheeled pull cart that attaches to the tractor and allows kids to ride in the back while tossing out candy during parades. When not being shown, the tractor resides in a specially-built shed at the family farm.
Bill took the tractor to four shows in 2010, including the Peoria show Nov. 30-Dec. 2 at the Peoria Civic Center, a distance of 40 or 50 miles from his home. While at the show, the usually reserved Bill Bane enthusiastically greeted hundreds of farmers of a certain age who marveled at his restored Oliver, taking time to answer all their questions and pose for photos with the tractor.

“This is our baby. It will be in the family forever,” he said of the machine.
Eventually, the tractor will become the property of Sammy Bane, his father said, ensuring that this central Illinois’ farm family’s legacy will continue to live on – partly through a World War II-era Oliver 70 Row Crop tractor that found its way home.