Francis Rowan Kelble

1890s–1900s

Born 3 December 1892 on Center Street in Xenia, Ohio, and baptized on Christmas Day at St. Brigid's. Filled in as a newspaper carrier at nine, graduated from St. Brigid's Parish High School in 1908, and took his first job in heating and ventilating.

1910s

Traveled from contract to contract as a plumber and steamfitter, much of the time for Huffman-Conklin of Columbus: Indianapolis, Tuskegee, Cleveland, Logansport, Philadelphia. Married Margaret AmRhein in Greensburg, Indiana, on 7 September 1915; sons John, Francis Jr., and Paul were born between 1916 and 1919.

1920s

Worked in Philadelphia and on a Baltimore contract, then lived in Columbus from 1922 to 1927, making frequent family trips to his parents in Xenia. Moved the family to the Philadelphia area for good in July 1927 to work for Huffman-Wolfe.

1930s–1940s

Vice-president and manager of the Huffman-Wolfe Factory Heating & Plumbing Company from 1930 to 1948, raising eight children in Abington and on Pleasant Avenue in Glenside.

1950s–1960s

Honored with a lifetime membership by his engineering society in 1958. Spent winter stretches in St. Petersburg, Florida, celebrated fifty years of marriage in 1965, and died at his home in St. Petersburg Beach on 7 April 1969.

A Xenia Boyhood

Francis Rowan Kelble was born on December 3, 1892, on Center Street in Xenia, Ohio, an eight-pound baby whose arrival the Xenia Gazette announced two days later. His parents were Amon E. Kelble and Sarah Rowan, and he was baptized at St. Brigid's Church on Christmas Day, with Andrew Kelble and Katie Rowan as godparents. A sister, Mary Louise, followed in 1896 and a brother, John, in 1898.

He was a bright, busy boy. In February 1902 he had the highest semi-annual examination average in his grade at St. Brigid's school; that August, at nine, he was working as a substitute carrier for the Gazette and took a vacation to visit his cousin John Berry in Dayton. He performed in a school entertainment at the Xenia Opera House in 1905. On June 23, 1908, he graduated from St. Brigid's Parish High School in a class of four, himself and three girls, under the class colors of old rose and white and the motto "Not What We Have Done, But What We Shall Do." His commencement speech, "Looking Backward from the Spanish-American War," was about Cuba's progress under American government and the struggles of oppressed peoples for freedom.

Following the Work

That same year Frank took his first job in heating and ventilating, and for the next decade and more he went wherever the contracts were, as a plumber and steamfitter; from at least 1912 until about 1919 his employer was the Huffman-Conklin Construction Company of Columbus. In July 1911 he was working in Indianapolis. In August 1912 he was on the water-works system at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, with plans to go on to New Orleans, and by October he was off to a large contract in Cleveland. In July 1914, working out of Logansport, Indiana, he came home to Xenia for the Fourth and took his sister Mary and a cousin back with him.

On September 7, 1915, at eight in the morning, he married Margaret Mary AmRhein at St. Mary's Catholic Church in her hometown of Greensburg, Indiana; the Xenia paper headlined it "Xenian Marries Indiana Girl." Their first son, John, was born in Lima, Ohio, in June 1916. By the spring of 1917 Frank was on a big contract in Philadelphia, and Margaret came east to join him; Francis Jr., called Bud, was born there that August. His World War I draft card that year describes him as tall, of medium build, with brown eyes and dark brown hair, and missing one joint of the middle finger of his right hand. A third son, Paul, was born in Xenia in 1919.

In 1920 the family was living on Red Lion Road in Huntingdon Valley, outside Philadelphia, while Frank worked a steamfitting contract in Baltimore, where his cousin Vincent Heaton joined him on the job. From 1922 to 1927 they lived in Columbus, on Crestview Road and then Haines Avenue in Grandview, where Dick, Margaret, and Barbara were born. Xenia was close enough for frequent visits: the Gazette recorded the family at his parents' house at Easter, on Labor Day, and at Christmas, and in the summer of 1923 the two oldest boys stayed on with their grandparents for their vacation.

Huffman-Wolfe and Glenside

In March 1927 Frank was back in Philadelphia, working for the Huffman-Wolfe Company, plumbing and heating contractors, and in July he moved the family east for good, stopping in Xenia for a week along the way. His mother died in Xenia that November after a long illness. The family settled in Abington Township and then Glenside, where Mary and Donald completed a household of eight children. They lived on Pleasant Avenue in Glenside for more than thirty years, with the same telephone number, Ogontz-195, from the 1930s into the 1950s.

From 1930 to 1948 Frank was vice-president and manager of the Huffman-Wolfe Factory Heating & Plumbing Company. In 1932, when the building trades council demanded an all-union workforce on the new Berks County Courthouse, where Huffman-Wolfe's crews were already three-quarters union, Frank signed the company's lawsuit against the demand. When his son Dick finished high school in 1942, he went to work for his father as a plumber's apprentice. Frank also ran his own mechanical contracting firm, Frank R. Kelble Co., on Church Lane in Philadelphia, handling plumbing, heating, ventilating, air-conditioning, and power piping, and he served as president of the Mechanical Contractors Association.

He belonged to the heating and ventilating engineers' professional society from 1928 for the rest of his life, helped organize the banquet and entertainment for its annual meetings in Philadelphia in 1955 and 1959, and was granted a lifetime membership in 1958. Outside work he was a Knight of Columbus in the James A. Flaherty Council and its Fourth Degree assembly, serving in 1949 as a director of the council's home association in Glenside, and he belonged to the Franklin Institute and the Navy League.

Later Years

Frank's letters to Dick and Dolores in the 1950s and 1960s show a man who liked to advise and to keep in touch. In 1953, when they were planning their house, he warned them off drywall, urged ceramic tile for the bathroom, and offered the heating and plumbing at cost. That March he and Margaret went fishing, and she caught three fish to his one. In later years they spent part of the winters in St. Petersburg, Florida, writing home from St. Petersburg Beach in early 1962, with Frank's cousin Frank Hustmeyer living nearby.

On September 11, 1965, Frank and Margaret celebrated their fiftieth anniversary with a Mass at St. Luke's in Glenside and a reception at Casa Conti. He had a history of heart trouble, and he died at his home at 529 80th Avenue in St. Petersburg Beach on April 7, 1969, at seventy-six. His requiem Mass was said at St. Luke the Evangelist on April 14, and he was buried at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery. His brother John had died in Dayton in 1955, and his sister Mary died in Xenia three weeks after him.