Marion F. "Frank" Bench
Frank Bench was a winner of the Chillicothe Hall of Fame in 2018.
Marion Franklin (Frank) Bench was born near Utica, Missouri on November 7, 1883, son of James J. and Sarah E. (Reynolds) Bench. He was a graduate of Utica High School class of 1901. After graduating he attended the Emerson Business College in Dubuque, Iowa. Frank worked part-time in a bakery where he learned about the commercial production of bread. It is here that it is believed he first met Otto Rohwedder.
In 1906 he married Miss Lillian Bornhauser of Dubuque, Iowa. They were the parents of one son who died in infancy and one daughter, Geraldine. Lillian passed away and Geraldine was raised by her maternal grandparents in Dubuque. Frank remarried in 1915 to Miss Hattie Ellen Ferguson, a teacher from Utica and they moved to Browning, Missouri. Here Frank opened a bakery/grocery store/restaurant business. One son was born to them, the late Marion F. Bench, Jr., who was killed in action over Holland in World War II.
In 1916 Frank moved to 252 Clay Street in Chillicothe and established Bench’s Modern Steam Bakery next door at 433 Martin Street, opening officially on December 26, 1916. Business was good and in 1921 he built a brick bakery at the corner of Elm and First Streets. His new Chillicothe Baking Company held its grand opening on September 27, 1921 and featured state of the art baking equipment using steam in the baking process and had an oven capable of producing 700 loaves of bread per hour, or 1800 loaves of bread per hour when running at full capacity. The bakery employed eight people and catered wholesale to north central Missouri as well as home consumption in Chillicothe.
Bench was not only a baker, but an inventor in his own right. In 1923 Frank and his brother Charles created a metal folding box in which to ship bread. Bench contracted with a factory in Iowa manufacture the boxes; he had a lot of ties in Iowa as he had attended college there. At one point in late 1923, Bench’s folding box was one of three being considered for use with the U.S. Postal Service. Bench and Rohwedder, who also had an interest in the invention, went to Washington D.C. to present the box to a federal committee. It is assumed the box was not selected by the post office as no further information could be found.
Bench also produced mayonnaise and thousand island salad dressing. This venture was apparently so successful that in early 1923 he had to re-open his original bakery next to his home to enlarge the operation and produce more for local customers as well as clients in St. Joseph and Topeka, KS.
Bench and Rohwedder collaborated on a design for a bread display rack and applied for a patent in March of 1925, which was granted in July of 1926.
In 1927 there was a “Constitution Cooking School,” free classes given by Mrs. Frances Northcross at the Christian Church sponsored by the Constitution newspaper. This school used “special bread” from the Chillicothe Baking Company exclusively. They also used only “Diamond A Salad Dressing” from the same source. Mrs. Frank (Hattie) Bench managed the dressing side of the business at this time.
In 1928 he was approached by Otto Rohwedder to try out his new Breadslicing Machine. Up until this point, Otto had been turned down by every baker he approached. Their concern was that once bread was sliced, it would become stale very quickly. Frank became the guinea pig and on July 7, 1928, the first loaves of sliced bread were produced. Kleen Maid sliced bread was an instant success and bread sales increased 2,000 percent in the first two weeks alone. Bakers from as far afield as St. Joseph and Kansas City wanting to get in on the latest innovation in baking, brought truckloads of bread to the Chillicothe Baking Company to be sliced while they waited for their own bread slicing machines to be manufactured.
Bench never got rich from any of his inventions, ingenuity or hard work. The success from sliced bread was overwhelming and short-lived as the country became caught up in the Great Depression and he ended up losing his bakery.
It seemed Bench was never idle. He was quite active in politics for the Republican party of his day. He ran for Republican Councilman-as-large in 1923, but did not win. In 1926 he organized a county-wide “Proctor” for Senator club, that is David M. Proctor for U.S. Senator. In 1926 he took the examination and was under consideration for the post of postmaster; he was 1 of over 1800 on the list. From 1929 to 1931 he served on the Chillicothe City Council for the Third Ward. Mrs. Hattie Bench was elected City Treasurer in 1931 and it appears Frank did not run for any office in this election. For a time he even helped out at the front desk at the Strand Hotel. In 1948 he was elected to the position of Street Commissioner, a position he held for eight years. He died in 1963 and is buried in Utica Cemetery.
Sources: Chillicothe Constitution, Constitution-Tribune newspapers, various articles from Otto Rohwedder's notebook on file at the Livingston County Library