The Dishwasher King

Is a dishwasher one of the appliances in your kitchen? My guess is the answer to that is yes. These days they're almost a universal part of every household; but your parents or grandparents may not have been so fortunate. The first commercial dishwashers made for home use were unreliable, leaky, temperamental gadgets that most times created more work than they saved.

In a nutshell, they didn't work… until, that is, the Dishwasher King came along.

Sam Regenstrief had quite a track record. Born in eastern Europe in about 1906, he moved to the US with his family two years later. He studied at Indiana University, then transferred to the Baum School of Engineering in Milwaukee, staying there until the school folded. A series of jobs led him to Rex Manufacturing in Connersville, Indiana, where he began to make his mark. Rex, a supplier of steel refrigerator cabinets, was in serious financial trouble. Sam turned the company around and by the age of 29, was running the show. Instead of just manufacturing refrigerator cabinets, he soon had Rex making complete refrigerators and selling them to, among others, Philco. He did such a good job Philco bought Rex and made it a subsidiary with Sam as president.

A few years later most thought Sam, by then a Philco corporate Vice President, was on track to become its President. Instead, in 1958, he left the corporate giant and started his own company, Design and Manufacturing (D&M), in Connersville. There, he earned his Dishwasher King title, transforming the household dishwasher from a piece of near-junk into the modern appliance most of us use today. That alone would be enough, but there is more to his story.

Sam Regenstrief was a Freemason. A member of Warren Lodge #15 in Connersville, he was raised October 28, 1948. Fueled in part by the same strong humanitarian principles inculcated in the Craft, Sammy first provided for his family and then became a generous philanthropist. Among his other endeavors, in 1969, he founded the Regenstrief Institute, an internationally recognized healthcare research facility. In turn, the institute developed the Regenstrief Medical Record System, a progressive, comprehensive patient care data collection system. For this, he has had numerous medical facilities named in his honor. Even when Sam was still at Philco, Brother William Denslow listed him in his iconic work, 10,000 Famous Freemasons.

Brother Sam Regenstrief passed away January 17, 1988. Looking at his accomplishments would not reveal how humble his beginnings really were. Shortly after his birth, a fire destroyed his family records. He never knew what his birthday was and remarkably, he was never sure where he was born (his family has said Romania; Sam himself once wrote he was born in Austria). Throughout his life he proved those things really don't matter that much: the cliché is true – it's not where you start out, but where you end up.

Sam valued his employees highly and maintained a good working relationship with them, including my father. You see, in 1969 he bought the company where my dad worked and served as a corporate officer. He was always warm and congenial with my dad, who called him Sammy. Me? I called him Mr. Regenstrief. Now, years later, I have learned I can also call him Brother.