Thanks Lawrence, I can see how that could be the case.
I agree that the fridge is in exceptional shape, but since it's not working, that's a can of worms that only someone like David would be willing to crack open.
They moved it to their new home in 1964 and it only lasted a year or two until the compressor went bad.
GE had a lot of compressor problems in the 50s all the way through the 1963 models.
The first thing to check with this refrigerator is if the compressor had been changed sometime after 1963 after that time they almost never went bad GE improved the compressor.