Celebrating 75

Seventy-five years is a long time in business.

Just ask Neil Medler. He’s been part of the family business all of them.

“I worked here since I was 13 and only retired as of July this year,” said Neil.

During those years, he’s seen three-quarters of a century of transition.

“My father started out in Hartford City, and he was an ice man, delivering ice with his horse and wagon,” Medler recalled.

Fred Medler worked his way up to a leadership role, and when the owner purchased a similar business in Portland, Fred and his wife Deloris moved their family to Jay County where Fred became manager of Portland Ice and Coal Company.

It was the mid-1930s and a different era.

“That generation was entirely different,” said Medler. “People heated their homes with coal or wood and used ice to keep the refrigerator cool.”

Located along the Nickel Plate Railroad tracks in the area where Matt’s Garage is now based, Portland Ice and Coal was a booming business.

“He had four ice trucks and I don’t know how many coal trucks,” Neil said.

But Fred sensed a change was in the wind.

Coal-fired furnaces were dirty and required hard work on the part of the homeowner.

A better solution — fuel oil — was on the horizon.

And about the same time, electric refrigerators began replacing the “ice box” of an earlier era.

Fred was poised to make the transition.

With the help from a loan from Peoples Bank, he and Deloris purchased most of a city block on Meridian Street between North and Race streets. The purchase didn’t include the Abromson scrapyard or a service station at the corner of Race and Meridian streets.

“On this back lot was already Frenchy’s Radiator Works and there was a small church on another corner,” said Neil.

The property had been a coal business under the name of Totten.

And while the business continued to include a coal yard, the emphasis was on fuel oil and oil-fired heating.

In short order, Medler’s was installing 20-gallon and 12-gallon fuel oil tanks, with legs fabricated by Frenchy’s, and putting in heating stoves.

“People got out of coal and went to fuel oil,” said Neil.

At one point, the business sold two boxcar loads of fuel oil stoves made by Norge and Perfection.

But the transition wasn’t easy. There was a war on.

“Everything was rationed,” recalled Neil.

Still the change was inevitable.

“We had an oil route and delivered oil because the coal business just died,” he said.

Oil heating stoves led the company to expand into other appliances, a move that helped with the next transition ahead.

“Shortly after that, the oil business died,” he said.

With the same sort of speed that had marked the shift from coal to oil, homeowners began making the change from oil to natural gas and electric heat.

In 1965, the Medlers built an addition to the original building and opened Medler’s Furniture showroom. By then, Neil was a full-time part of the business with his parents.

And with their passing, Neil and his wife Ann continued to expand the scope of the furniture offerings. In December 1975, they added the La-Z-Boy line that was highly prized by furniture retailers nationwide.

In the meantime, the couple raised three sons who built careers of their own: Mike with the Indiana State Police, George as a dentist and Pat as a teacher.

“I didn’t think I’d come back,” said Mike, who now operates the business with his wife Sue (Souder) Medler. “But after Mom passed (in 2003), things sort of changed. I didn’t want to see it go away.”

Neil put it this way: “My oldest son and his wife came to Portland. If they hadn’t, I would have quit.”

Today, Mike and Sue’s focus is on maintaining that tradition of service that stretches back 75 years.

“In a small community you do have to go that extra mile,” said Mike.