The Standard Torch: Whiting’s Most Popular Magazine
This staged photo shows a group of Whiting Refinery workers (except one) focused on reading a copy of the Standard Torch. The only person identified is George McKenna, the man who is pretending to be sleeping. The idea of the photo was to show how popular the Torch was among the workers and their families.
John Hmurovic
April 2024
If you worked at the Whiting Refinery in the 1950s you could count on at least one piece of mail every month. The Standard Torch was “published for Standard Oil Company (Indiana) people,” as it said inside the front cover, and everyone who worked for the company got one delivered to their mailbox.
The Torch came into existence in 1948. It took the place of the Stanolind Record, a publication that dated back to 1919. There were a lot of similarities between the two magazines. Both publications had news about the workers who retired, those who were honored for long service, and about what some of the workers did in their free time away from the refinery. The magazines also told its readers what was new inside the company, particularly with the products it developed and those they wanted to promote. It also kept employees updated with news about the benefits that came with the job.
But there were at least two big differences between the Stanolind Record and the Standard Torch. For one thing, the Torch was delivered to the home of every employee. An employee survey in 1951 showed that 44-percent of workers read the magazine more often when it was delivered to their homes. The magazine also reached members of the workers’ families. Over 83-percent of family members also read it. With 27,500 employees company wide, the Standard Torch had a lot of readers.
The other big difference between the Stanolind Record and the Torch was the way they looked. Magazines flourished in the 1950’s. The Saturday Evening Post, Look, and Life, were among the most popular. All three of those had been around before the 50s, but their style of strong front-cover photography caught on in that decade, inspiring the look of new magazines like Sports Illustrated and Playboy. It also may have influenced the Standard Torch.
Below is a sample of the Standard Torch for two of the thirteen years it existed. There are twenty-four covers below. Notice the strong photography, designed to grab a reader’s interest and make them want to see what’s inside. Beyond the front cover were more eye-catching photos, and also a collection of readable articles. None of the articles were long, all were well written. Most importantly, the articles and photographs served a purpose: They showed readers the company’s achievements; the role the employees played in those successes; and they devoted a lot of attention to the lives of the people who worked for Standard Oil.
Standard Oil was much bigger than the Whiting Refinery, and the Torch featured numerous stories about the people and operations in other locations. Whiting, though, was its largest refinery and its largest investment. Every issue of the Torch had articles and photos about what was going on here. Below each cover shown below is one photo from that magazine which has a Whiting connection.
In 1961, when Standard Oil became American Oil, the Standard Torch ceased publication. A new magazine took its place, the Torch & Oval. The new magazine kept many of the features of the Standard Torch.
For the record, those who worked on the Standard Torch staff in 1950-51 were: Bob Siebert, editor; Bob Maxwell & Bob Baker, roving correspondents; Edward Hanna, assistant editor; Bard Clow, editorial assistant.
January 1950
January 1950
If you pulled up to a gas station in 1950 you never had to get out of your car. A gas station attendant, usually dressed in uniform and a cap, would come to your car and pump the gas for you. There was something else you’d see if you pulled into a Standard Oil gas station: Each pump had a crown on top. It was a way to quickly tell the different grades of gasoline apart. Red Crown was Standard’s most popular blend, but in 1950 the company developed White Crown, a winter blend that gave your car “one-second starting” in cold weather. The Standard Torch told the story.
February 1950
February 1950
Ann Sikla of Whiting appeared in this month’s issue, which featured women in the Standard Oil workplace. She is seen here operating one of the giant machines in the blueprint room at the Whiting Refinery.
March 1950
March 1950
Edward Dobbertin of Whiting turned 65 on March 4, 1950. He received a watch and was thanked for his 50 years of service to the company. He started in the grease works at the Whiting Refinery in 1900, at a pay of nine cents an hour. In 1910, he moved to the barrel house and got a pay bump to eleven cents an hour. In the later years of his career, he worked (as seen here) as a water drawer and loader in the filtering oils department.
April 1950
April 1950
Bill Bercik operated a gas station on the south-east corner of 119th and Indianapolis Boulevard, a job which often required him to pump gas into the cars of customers. This photo appeared in a Standard Oil ad, which in turn appeared in the April 1950 issue of the Standard Torch. In 1955, Bill Bercik was elected mayor of Whiting.
May 1950
May 1950
Standard Oil kept a garden and a greenhouse in Whiting, where hundreds of plants were grown. Al Endres (above left) was one of those who attended it under the watchful observation of others, including horticulturist Lloyd Boyd (right). The purpose was to come up with a formula to rid gardens of bugs and fungi that could destroy the plants. Their work produced Standard Garden Spray and Standard Garden Dust, two new Standard Oil products in 1950.
June 1950
June 1950
There were at least two things you could count on if you thumbed through a Standard Torch in 1950: You’d find photos of workers who were retiring, and many of those workers would be wearing hats like the one Albert Schaefer wore for this photo. Albert started work in the Whiting Refinery in 1900, and since he was retiring in 1950 at the age of 65, that meant he started at age 15. He finished his career as the night foreman of Whiting’s heavy oils division. In retirement, he planned to don his hat, get in his car with Mrs. Schaefer, and travel.
July 1950
July 1950
The Standard Torch not only had photos of employees, it also featured some of their children. Ralph Donham worked in the Whiting Refinery and in 1950 his son, Bob Donham, was setting records as a basketball star at Ohio State University. The younger Donham shattered the Big Ten shooting record. The Big Ten first team All-Star shot .426, breaking the old record of .376. He went on to be drafted by the Boston Celtics and played four years of professional basketball. He was a graduate of Robertsdale’s George Rogers Clark High School.
August 1950
August 1950
Standard Oil had numerous athletic/social activities aimed at its younger employees, including the women who worked for the company. This group of Whiting women are shown in attendance at their annual bowling banquet. The women are not identified in the photo, but the new bowling club president was Dorothy Kotch; Mary Furtak was the new treasurer; and Anne Bobin the secretary. The highest game of the season was 223, rolled by June Kras.
September 1950
September 1950
In 1949, the Standard Torch reported on the first year of school for Whiting lad, Freddie Schweikert, son of refinery worker Charley Schweikert. The magazine paid him another visit as he started second grade. It said that Freddie’s footsteps lagged as he headed to school and that he wishes recesses were longer.
October 1950
October 1950
In its goal to make a serious point, the Standard Torch could be a little goofy at times. This issue featured two Whiting Refinery employees dressed as Russians who were visiting the plant. The “Russians” were Lab Technician George Grenchik (left) and Public Relations Supervisor Paul Monastryski (right). The point of the article was to show the value of competition in the American economy. “In this country,” the article said, “we don’t believe in dictators.” The virtues of capitalism were a frequent theme in the Standard Torch of the 1950s, a decade America felt threatened by the Communist system of government in the Soviet Union.
November 1950
November 1950
By day, Bill Wolff was a chemist in the research lab at the Standard Oil Refinery in Whiting. By night, he liked to paint. He entered his work in a contest and took home two prizes. The prize ribbons dangle from the award-winning paintings in this photo. The Standard Torch regularly highlighted out-of-work accomplishments of its employees, as well as what they did on the job.
December 1950
December 1950
Television was new to most Americans in 1950, but because Standard Oil felt the medium had a promising future it became an eager advertiser. One of the shows it sponsored was The Wayne King Show. Wayne King was a bandleader and musician. His show was broadcast on Chicago’s NBC station, WNBQ, which later became WMAQ. There was no recording of TV shows in those days, so the show ran live from the 19th floor of Chicago’s Merchandise Mart. King was called “The Waltz King.” His half-hour program was filled with music and had plenty of ads for Standard Oil. The Wayne King Show ran from 1949 and into 1952.
January 1951
January 1951
A fleet of six Standard Oil test cars left Whiting for a trip to Moorhead, Minnesota in the coldest of winter. The cars, and their drivers and passengers, were from the Whiting Research Laboratory. Their trip north was to test various blends of gasoline to see how they performed in the coldest of winter conditions. Standard was a leader in petroleum research, and the Whiting Lab was the heart of the company’s research efforts in the early 1950s.
February 1951
February 1951
The Standard Oil Athletic Association gave refinery employees a chance to have fun and compete with one another on the fields, and in the gymnasiums, of Whiting. The Standard Torch sent a photographer from their Chicago office to capture some of the Whiting basketball action.
March 1951
March 1951
A new storage building went up just north of the barrel house at the Whiting Refinery. The barrel house was on 121st Street, on the site where BP’s Burton Center is now located. This photo of the barrel house storage facility is looking north. Lake Michigan is in the upper right corner. The uppermost building on the right side is the Whiting railroad depot that was on Front Street. A little to the left of it along the lake shore is the Whiting Gun Club building. The houses closest to the far end of the storage building were on Standard Avenue.
April 1951
April 1951
Every issue of the Standard Torch paid tribute to long-time employees of the company, both in Whiting and in other locations, such as Casper, Wyoming; Sugar Creek, Missouri; Wood River, Illinois; and the General Office in Chicago.
May 1951
May 1951
“The members of this trio of sailors,” it said in the Standard Torch, “have more in common than their uniforms.” All three were stationed in Japan, all three were from Whiting, and all three were on leave of absence from the Whiting Refinery. The Standard Torch frequently showed its workers who were in uniform during the Korean War. The three men in this photo are Paul Urban, Ludwig Kopanda, and Jim Miskovich.
June 1951
June 1951
You can’t see her in this photo, but this was the home of Clara the canary. This issue of the Standard Torch told the story of Clara, and 92 other canaries that lived inside the refinery. Canaries are much more sensitive to gas fumes than humans. When a canary sniffs hydrogen sulphide, it dies. It gives its life, however, to warn humans that there is a dangerous gas loose. The canaries that lived in the refinery were stationed at 46 different locations.
July 1951
July 1951
The Cold War, the battle between western democracies and Communist regimes like Russia, was raging in 1951. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover said there were 43,217 known Communists in the United States, ready to revolt against America. In the July 1951 Standard Torch, Standard Oil reminded its workers to keep their eyes open to any suspicious activity that might jeopardize the refinery. In this photo to illustrate the article, Whiting Refinery workers Bernard Cristoff and John Mateja look over blueprints while a mysterious shadow lurks behind them.
August 1951
August 1951
Who knew that Standard Oil produced a spray designed to keep flies off of cattle? Readers of the Standard Torch knew. The company produced the spray as early as the 1920s. In 1951, the company was in its third year of conducting farmyard research on what was called Standard Stock Spray. The research was conducted by the Whiting Research Lab. Researchers like Monica Javorka, would test the product while visiting four privately-owned farms in Indiana, including one near Crown Point. A main ingredient of the spray was methoxychlor, a pesticide which was banned in the United States in 2003.
September 1951
September 1951
Julius and Mary Kinsock examine the peonies and poppies in their garden. They were a part of an article in the Standard Torch about the Whiting Garden Club. But since the Torch was a Standard Oil publication, the article also had a company connection. The article was a way to mention the Standard 2, 4-D Weed Killer, and the Standard Garden Spray, and Standard Garden Dust, and to showcase some of the refinery employees in the Garden Club.
October 1951
October 1951
The message of the first story in the Standard Torch this month hit on a frequent theme: You Have a Big Stake in Petroleum Progress. It emphasized the important role each worker played not only in the success of the refinery, but in the success of the petroleum industry. “Your progress and oil progress go hand in hand,” was the message, illustrated in the first page of the article. Hand in hand in the photo are plant manager Jesse Ducommun (right), and refinery worker Arnold Hammersley (left).
November 1951
November 1951
Each issue of the Standard Torch consisted of two parts. The first part was filled with articles and photos prepared by the magazine’s staff. The second half consisted of stories and photographs submitted by correspondents from each of the company’s locations. Whiting had several correspondents, one from the asphalt division, one from the engineering division, one from the research lab, and so on. This section of the magazine was called “The Town Pump.” Each correspondent passed along news about the employees, such as deaths, weddings, births, and such news as “Fred Younkers is driving a new 1940 Pontiac.” And there were photos of retirement parties, such as the one above, which shows Mike Kanocz, about to retire, receiving a $100 bill from co-workers in the plant’s protection department.
December 1951
December 1951
In an employee survey, 94-percent said they enjoyed reading the Standard Torch. The success of the magazine was at least partially due to the emphasis its staff gave to stories about employees, as well as stories about what was going on inside the company for which they all worked. But a big part of telling those stories were the photographs that ran in the magazine. The final issue of 1951 featured a seven-page photo spread about Autumn. The story was told with thirty-one photographs of employees and their families, including this photo of Whiting Refinery worker John Harrison and his family offering a prayer of thanks before eating their Thanksgiving Day dinner.