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Herbert Russell Beers viewed icemaking as a science, devising longer-lasting ice and labor-saving machines.
By SCOTT TAYLOR HARTZELL
© St. Petersburg Times, published July 19, 2000
ST. PETERSBURG -- The next time a glass sparkles with ice, a toast to Herbert Russell Beers should follow.
For more than 50 years, Beers transformed the state and local ice industry "and perfected certain mechanical (icemaking) innovations," the St. Petersburg Times wrote.
Beers first advanced the city's fishing business in the early 1900s by cooling anglers' catches. By his retirement, in 1957, he had built several icemaking plants.
His work wasn't a chore, said Dorothy Stiles, 80, Beers' daughter. "The ice industry was his hobby."
Beers was born in Apopka in 1887 and moved here in 1903. At age 16, he met classmate Mary Griner, who later would become his wife.
They shared school lunch hours watching laborers lay the first bricks on Central Avenue. "Those were the days," Mrs. Beers once said. They had three children together.
After the eighth grade, Beers joined the N.C. Williams Co., a First Avenue S ice concern of Horace Williams Sr., grandson to city founder J.C. Williams.
Beers later was chief engineer at Crystal Ice Works, which historian Ray Arsenault called "a highly successful venture that boosted the local fishing industry."
In 1920, Beers, Horace Williams Sr. and Horace Williams Jr. formed the Williams-Beers Ice Co. at Ninth Street and First Avenue S near Doc Webb's pharmacy. "Webb's was just a little store then," said Beers' daughter-in-law, Kathryn Beers.
Her husband, Russell Beers, joined the company in the late 1920s. "My husband worked seven days a week, 348 days a year," said Kathryn Beers, 83. "That plant was open 24 hours a day."
Locals originally received ice from an eight-mule wagon that was filled by a hand-cranked, 11/2-ton Ford truck. An outside service later took on deliveries.
"Trucks would line up at the curb," Kathryn Beers recalled. "They had regular routes, like postmen."
Dorothy Stiles resurrected the company's slogan: "Williams-Beers ice lasts longer." This wastrue, she said, because the plant used copper tubing to remove air from ice, leaving it more enduring and crystal clear.
"(Beers) views the manufacture of ice as a science," the Times reported. "(He) has devised several labor-saving machines which ease and simplify work at the plant."
In the late 1940s, Beers and the Williamses opened a plant at 18th Avenue and 16th Street S. "He kept that plant spotless," Kathryn Beers said. "Everything had to be done on time and done right."
Under the plant's sectioned floor, ammonia and distilled water underwent a freezing process inside brine-filled tanks. The result, after 48 hours, was a 300-pound ice block that was 40 inches long, 22 inches wide and 11 inches thick.
Residents consumed 50 of the 60 tons of ice that Beers produced daily.
"I used to like to go on the tanks and see the ice being made," Stiles said. "Oh, those huge machines cooling down the brine."
"I didn't know it took so much machinery to make the ice," said Kathryn Beers, who received a "fancy" porcelain ice box from the Williams-Beers Co. as her 1933 wedding present. "Most (boxes) then were wooden."
Beers built five icemaking plants. He presided over the National Association of Refrigerating Engineers and the Florida Ice Association.
The Jackson Ice Co. asked Beers to serve as a consultant in about 1958, rescuing him from 15 months of relative inactivity. I "couldn't take retirement," Beers said then.
"I don't recall him ever being retired," said Chris Stiles, 55, whose parents had an ice box until the mid-1950s because of family ties to Beers. "He was my big old bear of a grandfather with hard-working hands."
Kathryn Beers remembered the 200-pound ice man as sporting sandy-colored hair, blue eyes and a ruddy complexion. "He always had a joke to tell," she said.
On Nov. 11, 1962, Beers died at age 75 of heart disease. He is recognized at Central Avenue's Pioneer Park for his contribution to the city.
"I still see him smiling or laughing," daughter Dorothy Stiles said. "A twinkle in his eye."