618 MICHAELS ART BRONZE COMPANY MICHAELS ART BRONZE COMPANY. From 1914 until the early 1990s, the Michaels Art Bronze Company and its successor corporations operated in Covington, Erlanger, and Florence. The business specialized in ornamental bronze, aluminum, and stainless steel casting products. Founded in 1879 in Cincinnati by Lewis Michaels at 182 W. Pearl St., the company moved to 230 Scott St. (formerly a Standard Oil Company building) in Covington in 1914 under Frank L. Michaels with 50 employees, and by 1927 it had a payroll of 150 workers. Both E. C. Kelley and Maurice Galvin, Covington businessmen, were officers in the corporation in its early days in Kentucky. During its heyday, Michaels produced parking meters, signs, post office equipment, pinball machine parts, exhibit cases, and even a 560-pound bronze crucifi x for Holy Family Church in Dayton, Ohio. In 1937 Michaels supplied the aluminum work for the 40-story First National Bank tower in Oklahoma City, Okla. At the time, it was the largest aluminum work contract ever awarded in the United States. The company prospered during World War II with its specialty production, amassing back orders in the amount of $3 million. In 1955 the Michaels plant and offices moved to Kenton Lands Rd. in Erlanger. During the 1950s, the company had become the nation’s largest producer of parking meters (the Mi-Co Meter). In 1958 Chicago’s Inland Steel building was encased in a 250-ton sheath of gleaming Michaels stainless steel. For that project, the company won numerous national awards. Locally, Michaels did work on the St. Elizabeth Hospital (see St. Elizabeth Medical Center) and St. Benedict Catholic Church in Covington, and the Kroger building in downtown Cincinnati, and at the University of Cincinnati. In 1965 Frank L. Michaels died of a stroke, having served the company for many years as well as being a Northern Kentucky civic and business leader. In 1991 Michaels Architectural Inc. was located in Florence, doing business in a much reduced state, when it was acquired by Crescent Designed Metals of Philadelphia, Pa., where the operation moved. “Another New Plant for Covington,” KP, November 24, 1913, 7. Carr, Joe. “Death Ends Busy, 94 Year Career of Frank L. Michaels,” KP, June 21, 1965, 1. ———. “ ‘Made by Michaels’—for 100 Years,” KP, August 27, 1970, 44K. “Michaels Art Bronze Plant Gaining Status with Steel,” KP, April 17, 1958, 1.
MIKE FINK FLOATING RESTAURANT. The Mike Fink Floating Restaurant was built in 1936 by the Dravo Corp., Neville Island, Pittsburgh, Pa., with a length of 171.5 feet, a beam of 34.6 feet, and a hold 7.2 feet deep. This sternwheeler steam towboat was originally christened the John W. Hubbard, for a Pittsburgh financier who held an interest in the Campbell Transportation Company of Pittsburgh. Sold to the Ohio River Company in 1947, the vessel was renamed the Charles Dorrance in September 1950. The following year it was sold again, this time to Point Towing Company, Kanauga, Ohio, and entered ser vice as a harbor
boat until the Todd Marine Ser vice of Cincinnati bought it in June 1959. Captain John Beatty purchased the vessel in about 1967 and converted it to a floating restaurant, which he named after the legendary river man Mike Fink. Beatty moved the Mike Fink to the Covington riverfront in May 1968 after successfully battling the Kentucky Heritage League (which opposed allowing a commercial entity to encroach upon the city’s historic Riverside Dr.) and after winning the approval of Covington’s Board of Adjustment by 1 vote (see Licking-Riverside and Ohio Riverside National Historic Districts). During the Beatty family’s ownership, hundreds of student tours were conducted aboard the vessel. Besides attracting a regional clientele, the restaurant was frequented by international celebrities including Bob Hope, Perry Como, Raymond Burr, Peter Graves, David Frost, and Mickey Rooney, who became a regular because he swore that the Mike Fink Floating Restaurant served the best bean soup in the world. Under its first two names, the Mike Fink had carried the whistle and the roof bell from the Queen City steamboat, considered by many to be the classiest packet ever built, and these two items were still aboard when Beatty Inc. purchased the boat. Under the corporate name of International Food Ser vice Corporation, restaurateur Benjamin Bernstein (see also Betty Blake) purchased the boat on October 1, 1977, and it continues in business today under the ownership of his widow, Shirley Bernstein, and their son, Captain Alan Bernstein (see BB Riverboats). In 2008, after suspending restaurant operations for four months, the boat completed a $500,000 restoration and reopened for business. Huffman, Barbara. Beatty’s Navy: The Life and Times of Capt. John L. and Clare E. Beatty. Vevay, Ind.: Spancil Hill, 2004. Way, Frederick, Jr., comp. Way’s Packet Directory, 1848–1994. Athens: Ohio Univ. Press, 1994.
Barbara Huff man
MILBURN, FRANK S. (b. 1910, Louisville, Ky.; d. February 11, 1984, Burlington, Ky.). Frank Sinton Milburn, called the “Cornfield Edison,” was considered to be the inventor’s inventor. He dedicated his life to helping others develop their ideas into reality. He was the son of John William and Grace Barrington Sinton Milburn. Frank’s family relocated to Fort Mitchell by 1920. His first workshop was in the basement of the family home, where he repaired record players and made models of inventions. Milburn graduated from the Ohio Mechanics Institute in Cincinnati in 1931 and soon began developing inventions under the name Frank S. Milburn Experimental Station. From these early efforts, he received patents for an “apparatus for fertilizing” (U.S. Patent 2,057,785) in 1936 and for a “bottle holder” (U.S. Patent 2,075,217) in 1937. In 1938 Milburn bought 50 acres in Burlington and built a concrete-block machine shop, an extension of his Milburn Products Company in Osgood, Ind., which manufactured lathes, dies, and other metal items. During World War II, the
Frank Milburn.
Burlington machine shop subcontracted with the Gruen Watch Company of Cincinnati to make a component of the Norden bombsight. Milburn employed local women as workers in the shop during the war. Throughout his career, he served as a technical consultant to the U.S. military, and it was this work that paid the bills. With the help of his associate Henry Jenisch, who later served as industrial director for the City of Covington, Milburn helped amateur inventors develop working models of their inventions. In 1947 he began ghostwriting a weekly column, Genius at Work, in the Cincinnati Enquirer. A feature article by him, published in the June 1950 issue of Popular Mechanics, generated more than 30,000 letters and 500 visitors to his Burlington machine shop. That year, Milburn began writing a twice-weekly Cincinnati Post column called The Invenoscope, using his own name. The column showcased real-life success stories and gave practical advice to budding inventors. During the 1950s, more than 600 of the Invenoscope columns, together with a short-lived Inventions for Sale television show in 1952 and several nationally syndicated feature articles, brought more than 100,000 letters and thousands of would-be inventors to Milburn’s shop in the quiet hamlet of Burlington. Frank Milburn was always a champion of the “little guy,” and his long-term goal, never realized, was to develop an institute in Burlington where inventors could vacation with their families and concentrate on inventing. In 1948 Milburn ventured into activism when he organized citizens in Boone Co. to protest against the Consolidated Phone Company’s services; as a result, this company was forced by the Kentucky Public Ser vices Commission to upgrade significantly the ser vices it was offering in Boone Co. The talented Milburn was also a particularly adept ham radio operator and photographer. Some of the finest photographs featured in a localphotography book, Images of America: Burlington, were taken by Milburn and developed in his