Our Own Hall of Fame

 

FRANK M. TAIT

 

Edison Inspired Utility Dean Frank Tait

 

THE DAYTON DAILY NEWS,  FEBRUARY 23, 1961

BY MARY ELLEN LYNCH

Daily News Staff Writer

 

Nineteenth of a Series

 

     Frank M. Tait was eight years old when Thomas Edison invented the electric light.  Ten years later Tait and Edison were working together in a little lab in Catasauqua, Pa.

     The association was brief, but the inventor made his mark on the youth who was to become the dean of the utilities industry in America.

     A few years ago, the Dayton Power & Light Co. hung an oil painting of Tait directly across from one of Edison in the boardroom.

     TAIT LOOKED at it and smiled.  “My old boss is still keeping an eye on me, “ he said.

     Frank M. Tait and public utilities grew up together.

     Tait pumped an organ in the Catasauqua Presbyterian church before the days of electric power, graduated from high school with top honors and rapidly became a self-taught telegrapher, train dispatcher and stenographer.

     He was bright and at 18 he was assigned to work with Edison on a project to process iron ore for use with anthracite coal.  (It worked and is still used.)

     Inspired by Edison, Tait went to work at the town power plant, sold electricity, helped install facilities, swept the floor—and became manager.

     FROM THERE he ranged throughout Pennsylvania, to New Jersey and Connecticut developing gas and electric properties.  Tait attracted the attention of the Anthony M. Brady financial interests in New York and he was hired to study the national utility picture.

     Tait was 30 when he arrived in Dayton on New Year’s day in 1905 to look over the young Dayton Electric Light Co.

     He liked what he saw, the power company was purchased and Tait was put in charge.  He remained president of what was to become the Dayton Power & Light Co., until 1945 when he was named chairman of the board.

     Since 1958 Tait has been honorary chairman of the company whose growth he guided from an initial 700 customers to more than 400,000 in upwards of 300 communities.

     FOR THE enormously energetic Tait one challenge was not enough.

     In 1908 he founded the Dayton Pump and Manufacturing Co. (now the Tait Manufacturing Co.), a firm that produced the world’s first completely automatic water system and more than three million systems in all.

     Tait also had a hand in developing and managing public utilities in New York, Tennessee, Indiana and Japan and at one time was active in the direction of 35 major corporations.

     In 1955 he crowned his achievements with the creation of the Frank M. Tait foundation for charitable, scientific, educational and religious purposes.

     His first donation to it was the assets of the pump company.  Value: $1.7 million.

     Tait has an intense personal philosophy.  It is: “To know what to do is wisdom.  To know how to do it is skill.  To do a thing as it should be done is service.”

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