JULY 29, 2003
Town Gains Notoriety as Home of Sliced Bread
By Catherine Stortz Ripley / C-T News Editor
A small story that got front page billing in the Constitution-Tribune 75 years ago about a Chillicothe baker being the first to introduce sliced bread is now making headlines once again. Only this time, readers now know what kind of a profound impact his product has had on the world. And, hopefully, this time around the story will be remembered.
Catherine Stortz Ripley, news editor of the Constitution-Tribune, rediscovered the article while doing research for a history book which the newspaper published in 2001. The original article was published on the front page on July 6, 1928. The headline: "Sliced Bread is Made Here. Chillicothe Baking Co., the First Bakers in the World to Sell This Product to the Public." The article was one that needed to be included in the history book, "Dateline - Livingston County," Ripley said.
"I couldn't believe that something with such great importance had been forgotten," Ripley said. "You would think that the town would have capitalized on the fact that sliced bread was invented here." Finally, word is spreading about how the first machine-sliced bread was produced at Frank Bench's bakery located at First and Elm streets.
A front page article appeared in today's Kansas City Star as a result of a reporter looking at the history book and is being picked up by other news media. Paul Wenske, a reporter from the Kansas City Star interviewed Ripley a couple of weeks ago about how she rediscovered the news article touting the invention of sliced bread. Bob Priddy, with Missouri Net News, contacted Ripley this morning (Tuesday) for an story to be broadcast this afternoon. Also, KFRU radio in Columbia, planned todo a live interview during its drive time show today. That interview, according to station manager Steve Thomas, can be heard on www.kfru.com.
Ripley said that family members of Frank Bench have contacted her extending words of appreciation for making sure his story has not been forgotten. "Thank you for remembering my great-grandfather's younger brother Marion Francis "Frank" Bench Sr.," writes Nathan Haley, of Kansas City, in an e-mail sent to Ripley. Likewise, Debbie Colton, of Chillicothe, extended words of appreciation for remembering Bench, who was her great uncle.
Haley provided a couple of articles published around the 1970s in the Constitution-Tribune relating to sliced bread and its introduction in Chillicothe. The articles were columns written by the late Bill Plummer, who was a long-time news editor of the C-T. In the articles, Plummer wrote that Hattie Bench, widow of Frank Bench, said that Mr. Bench and a man from Iowa developed the machine and produced sliced bread, which until then had to be sliced by hand in home kitchens.
Bench and his partner had patented the machine, but while they "kind of waited" figuring out a wrapping solution, a man from St. Louis picked up their idea, changed the machine a little and started manufacturing slicing machines and turning out sliced bread.
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