RICE, Charles Franklin - Putnam

When Charles Franklin Rice sets off up the main street of Roachdale for his daily session of rook he casts an appraising eye at the sidewalks he traverses and at the brick building he passes and is pardonably proud of them. He built them all. Frank, as everyone over there calls him, will be 84 Sept 16. He retired 20 years ago but only after many years of hard work and concentrated industry that would make a beaver look comparatively shiftless. When nearby Russellville was destroyed by fire Frank went over and rebuilt it, and in similar fashion he replaced business blocks destroyed by fire in Roachdale. So he is entitled to rest now in the comfortable home where he has lived for 49 years and where I had a nice visit with him the other day. Before I called on him I had taken a swing around the downtown area and was little surprised to note that the names of the few streets were stenciled in the cement walks and that at least one owner had used this method to advertise his business. The inscription was: "Riley King: Furs, Hides and Wood." Likewise the walk in front of the Odd Fellows Building has the letters, I.O.O.F. "When I built the sidewalks, "Frank Rice recalled, "I offered to put in such inscriptions, and I thought it would be helpful to put in the names of streets. But most of my work was in making the bricks and putting up all the brick buildings you see today. In 1913, I built the Carnegie Library and put every brick and stone in it." Frank moved to Roachdale from nearby Bainbridge with his father, the late James A. Rice on April 29, 1882, which was only a few years after Roachdale came into being. His father was a brickmaker and bricklayer and he laid the foundation for the first house in Roachdale. The bricks were baked there in kilns when wood was plentiful. The area which is now Roachdale was rich farm land, like the surrounding region today, until the coming of the Indianapolis, Decatur & Springfield Railroad which became successively the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton and the Baltimore & Ohio. That was in 1878. The Roach in Roachdale honors the president or superintendent of of the old ID&S. The original trackage crosses the Monon line, providing shipping facilities which have made Roachdale a thriving town. It is exactly midway between Chicago & Louisville, Ky, and has two direct routes to high market centers of the central states: Indianapolis and Cincinnati the east, Louisville and Nashville to the south, St. Louis and Kansas City to the west and Chicago to the north. Mr. Rice told me of another resident of his own age who did a lot of building as a carpenter. He is J.W. Hennon, who also founded the first Roachdale newspaper. Between the two of them, they put up a lot of structures in Roachdale, including perhaps some of the Chic Sale cubicles I saw on my ramble. When there wasn't any building to be done in the town Mr. Rice worked in other places that needed buildings, such as Russellville. And, incidentally, he laid the first cement walks in Beech Grove. He didn't own the sidewalks after he build them,b ut he owned practically all of Russellville after he had rebuilt it. This was also true of the building replaced in Roachdale after the disastrous fire of the late 80s. Mr. Rice had been married 58 years when his wife died suddenly two years ago. They were married in a nearby house now occupied by his brother, James C. Rice. He has a sister, Mrs. Nettie Russie, in Indianapolis and a son, Ward J. Rice of this city. And, oh, yes, three grandchildren. So when he tires of playing rook he visits here and in summer goes camping in Michigan. But he says he's always glad to get back to Roachdale.