Ralph J. Stolle, was a prolific inventor and businessman who made his mark on many areas of society. He was born in Kentucky and attended the University of Cincinnati and went into business for himself.
Mr. Stolle founded Stolle Corporation in 1923 with his father and brothers. He moved it to Sidney in 1934 to take advantage of business opportunities concerning Prima Washing Machine Company, a local business located on Highland Avenue. Mr. Stolle rapidly expanded the company’s business and eventually built nine plans around town.
Mr. Stolle held more than 50 patents in conjunction with others. He developed machinery that made mass production of pop-top beverage cans economical and practical. Although the concept for the can top was developed in Dayton by Ermal Fraze, it was not until the Stolle Corporation developed devices for rapidly and cheaply scoring the top that the cans went into widespread use.
He also founded the Ralph J. Stolle Company. It eventually acquired twenty other lines of business including metal stamping, forming, tooling and milk biologics.
Besides manufacturing, Mr. Stolle had a strong interest in farming and related research fields. For over forty years, he sponsored research into the immunization of cows’ milk to fight human disease. His Stolle Immune Milk has been sold throughout the world, mainly in cooperation with the New Zealand Dairy Board. He was awarded twenty patents on this subject alone.
Ralph Stolle was beloved by his many employees. His trips to Sidney to cook breakfast for his third shift workers preparing to go home at 6:30 a.m. are legendary. He was a pilot and would fly to Sidney from his farm near Lebanon, Ohio, each day. He landed on an airstrip where the Sidney Holiday Inn was later located.
Generally, his company enjoyed good labor relations. However, when violent attempts were made to unionize the Sidney plants in the 1950s, Mr. Stolle never backed down from his principles of integrity and fairness.
The Stolle Corporation was sold to the Alcoa Corporation in 1975 and became part of the Alcoa Packaging Machinery subsidiary, producing hundreds of millions of cans a year.
Mr. Stolle was a benefactor of many charitable enterprises, including the Greater Cincinnati Foundation, Childrens Hospital, The Ohio State University, Wilmington College and many others. He championed the Lebanon, Ohio, YMCA, which is considered a national model.
Like other great people of his era, Ralph Stolle was admired for his humility. His daughter, Mary Jo Cropper, commented about her father, “If you were in a crowd with him, he wouldn’t tell you he had the pop-top patent,” she said. Family was really the center of everything with my father.”
He passed away at the age of 91 in 1996.