Representatives from Sponsor Barnes & Thornburg join President and CEO Sal Cilella at the Annual Corporate and Foundation Recognition Dinner where eight businesses received the Society’s Centennial Business Award.

Baird Dairy Company

Founded by James Patterson and Amy S. Baird as the J. P. Baird Dairy in Clarksville in 1903, Baird Dairy Company is still family owned and is one of the oldest continuing family businesses in southern Indiana. It is also located at its original address on Randolph Avenue in Clarksville.

James Patterson Baird died in 1980 at the age of 101. The company is currently owned and operated by his grandson, Randall C. Baird, Sr.

Frederic H. Burnham Glove Company

The Frederic H. Burnham Glove Company of Michigan City originally manufactured leather gloves and mittens, baseball and handball gloves, leather helmets, and earmuffs. Serving its country in wartime, the company also supplied helmets to our fighting men during World War II. It is the oldest company in Michigan City.

Frederic died in 1933, and his son John ran the company from then until his death in 1975, when it was taken over by his son Robert. In 1975, the company began distributing imported products.

The company opened an outlet store in 1977, offering more than a thousand styles of gloves, mittens, scarves, hats, and safety equipment.

Indiana Business College

Indiana Business College began with the establishment of Marion Business College in Marion in 1902. The school was founded by Charles Cring, an Ohio teacher who had become convinced that the state needed trained workers for an economy whose base was rapidly changing from primarily agricultural to increasingly industrialized and diversified. Shortly after opening the business college in Marion, Cring founded similar institutions in Logansport, Kokomo, and Elkhart. In 1903, he incorporated all of them with the state under the name Indiana Business College.

This year, IBC moved to a new campus at 550 East Washington Street.

The Indiana Rail Road Company

The Indiana Rail Road Company began life in 1899 as the Indianapolis Southern Railway. It owned eighty-nine miles of track, from Indianapolis to Switz City, over which it ran both freight and passenger service.

In July 1908 the Indianapolis Southern defaulted on payment and was sold at foreclosure in 1911 to the Illinois Central Railroad Company, which had been the railroad’s controlling company since 1904. On March 3, 1986, the railroad began its new life as The Indiana Rail Road Company, with tracks from Indianapolis to Newton, Illinois, on which it runs a freight-only business.

Today, The Indiana Rail Road Company operates freight service between Indianapolis and Newton, Illinois, carrying such varied commodities as coal, liquid sweeteners and sugar, scrap iron, refrigerators, petroleum products, lumber, and grain.

The company was founded on—and takes pride in—the principle that a smaller, regionally based operation can provide better service to its customers than can a large carrier.

.

The Indianapolis Star

The Indianapolis Star began as a daily newspaper—including Sundays—on June 6, 1903. The brainchild of Muncie industrialist George F. McCulloch, The Star challenged the two existing morning newspapers in Indianapolis, the Journal and the Sentinel. In June 1904 The Star absorbed the Journal, and in 1906 it purchased the Indianapolis Sunday Sentinel. The paper moved to its current address on Pennsylvania Street in 1907.

Investigative reporting has been The Star’s strength, and it has twice received the Pulitzer Prize to reward those efforts, in 1975 and 1991.

Red Spot Paint & Varnish Company, Inc.

The Red Spot Paint & Varnish Company began life in 1903 as Evansville Paint & Varnish, which sold its products both wholesale and retail. The company opened its first store in 1904.

In 1955, Milton Thorson stated that his goal for the company was “to have one tablespoon of Red Spot paint on every automobile built in the free world.” Today, Red Spot sells fourteen tablespoons of paint for every car manufactured in the U.S. The company has also expanded into a full line of coatings.

In the future, the company’s planned growth will come in the areas of in-mold coatings, automotive body panels, forward lighting, and sports products.

St. Elmo Steak House

St. Elmo Steak House has been a fixture in downtown Indianapolis since 1902. It is the oldest Indiana restaurant to be in its original location, and it has earned a national reputation for the quality of its food and its high level of service.

Throughout much of its history, St. Elmo’s has been a place where salespeople and tycoons came to seal the deal, attorneys and politicians strategized and plotted, coaches and players celebrated wins and lamented losses, and celebrities came to unwind after a show.

Starcraft RV, Incorporated

Founded in 1903 in Middlebury, Indiana, as Star Tank, Starcraft RV has always kept up-to-date with its product offerings. It was known as the Star Tanks and Boat Company from 1920 to 1958 and as Starcraft Company from 1958 to 1990, before assuming its current name in 1990. The company is located in Topeka, Indiana.

In the 1920s the company added a selection of boats to its offerings. In 1964, Starcraft entered the recreational vehicle market with a line of folding camp trailers. From the 1960s on, the company grew to be dominant in the RV field. Today, throughout the United States and Canada, Starcraft RV offers softside truck campers, folding camping trailers, and lightweight and full-sized travel trailers and fifth wheels, providing a comfortable “home away from home” for traveling families.