Inducted in 1989
Inventor; Manufacturing Executive
Member, Prep Board of Trustees (1969-1977)
Father of a Prep Graduate

Anyone who knows the Prep knows that a highlight of each school year is the Turkey Bowl, the annual Prep-Xavier Thanksgiving game.  In 1938, Big Bob Abplanalp, a husky six-foot senior, kicked the winning extra point in that game — a feat that in and of itself would have secured him a place in school history. But winning that game was just the beginning of what Robert Abplanalp would do for the Prep.

Robert Henry Abplanalp was born in the Bronx in 1922 to Swiss immigrants Hans and Marie Abplanalp. Marie was a homemaker, and Hans earned his living as a mechanic charged with keeping a fleet of bakery trucks on the road.  As a boy, Bob would spend hours with his father in the family’s basement machine shop — he would later remark to a reporter that by the time he was seven years old, he could run a lathe. And when they were not tinkering down in the shop, the inseparable father and son could often be found fishing in Long Island Sound.  In fact, it was at the shore that young Bob Abplanalp first displayed glimmers of mechanical ingenuity, where he devised a way to rapidly collect huge quantities of bait crab for his dad — leaving the other bait-catching kids in the dust — or sand, as it were.

When Bob graduated from the Prep, he entered a mechanical engineering program at Villanova. He stayed for several years, but dropped out to open his own machine shop. He then served in the US Army in Europe from 1943 to 1946, part of that time in a railroad battalion based in France. Bob returned to his machine shop after the war, but the immediate post-war years were lean. He would often recount that in those days there were weeks when he barely took home $10 from the business. Still, he persevered, making parts for just about any type of industrial machinery.

Benjamin Franklin said that diligence is the mother of good luck, and certainly, a 27-year-old Bob Abplanalp proved that proverb true in the spring of 1949. One of his customers, John Baessler, dropped by the shop one afternoon to show Bob some poorly functioning aerosol valves that were hindering sales of an important product line. At that time, aerosol valves were notorious for leakage, corroded easily, and were expensive to produce.

Abplanalp devoted himself to the problem for several months, partnering with Fred Lodes, a friend of Baessler’s, who helped Bob learn the science behind aerosol containers. By the end of that summer, Bob had invented the modern aerosol valve, which contained seven metal, plastic, and rubber components and could be easily mass-produced, reducing the price of a single valve from 15 cents to 2.5 cents. He was granted a patent, and he and Baessler and Lodes formed the Precision Valve Corporation in September of 1949. The rest, as they say, is history: sales were astronomical, and the company was incredibly profitable during its first year of business. Bob would buy out his partners, Baessler and Lodes, in 1962.

Looking back on those early days of the Precision Valve Company, the New York Times once wrote that industry insiders considered Robert Abplanalp

"the Henry Ford of the packaging industry."

Bob Abplanalp’s life intersected with the Prep again nearly 30 years after his graduation. By the mid-1960s, the Prep's enrollment was growing at a pace that the facilities of the day could not handle. It was clear that the school’s time at Hughes Hall was nearing an end. The kick-off for the new building program was held at an alumni dinner in February 1967 at the Waldorf Astoria. That night, anonymous donors gave a half-million dollars to the campaign. Not anonymous for long, Bob and his wife, Josephine Sloboda Abplanalp, gave another $500,000 soon after, and would later donate an additional million to meet the escalating construction costs. When asked, he said the donations were in tribute to the Prep's legendary prefect, or dean of students, Rev. Arthur V. Shea, SJ.

The "New Prep Building," or Shea Hall, the school's current home, was dedicated on October 28,1972, but the school's troubles were not quite over. The mid-1970s marked the nadir of the Prep’s financial woes. Fordham Prep was nearly forced to close its doors. A fund-raising effort took place in the face of overwhelming odds. There were high-power entertainment events headlined by Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney, Mayor Abe Beame, entertainer Ethel Merman, legendary actors Gloria Swanson, Eli Wallach, Anne Jackson, Maureen Stapleton, Geraldine Fitzgerald, newsman Mike Wallace, and comedian Bob Hope. Behind the scenes, the Abplanalps and many others worked to keep the school afloat. The school also caught a few lucky (though some would say miraculous) breaks involving a bankrupt lending institution and the FDIC. Bottom line: the Prep survived.

Married in 1956, Bob and Josephine — the parents of two, John and Marie — would not only both serve stints on the Prep's Board of Trustees, but were generous contributors to many other organizations too, including their daughter's high school, the Ursuline School in New Rochelle, New York; Josie's own alma mater, the University of New England; and the Sabin Vaccine Institute. In fact, the Abplanalps hosted the Institute’s annual Vaccine Colloquium at Grand Cay, their private island in the Bahamas where President Richard M. Nixon, a close friend, was a frequent guest. In honor of their unstinting support of so many Catholic charitable organizations, Robert and Josephine were inducted into the Order of the Knights of Malta and Order of the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre.

Bob Abplanalp never stopped tinkering, and he eventually held hundreds of patents. When the dangers of fluorocarbons were revealed, he worked to help develop water-soluble hydrocarbons. His days fishing with his father had nurtured a lifelong interest in aquatic life, and at one point he even owned several fish hatcheries.  Naturally the environment would concern him.

Robert H. Abplanalp saw to it that the headquarters of Precision Valve remained in Yonkers, with offices and plants around the world. He was chairman and chief executive officer until his death in 2003, leaving behind his wife, his two children, and four grandchildren. His son John, also a Fordham Prep grad, Class of 1975, would continue the Abplanalp legacy as president of the company. At the time of Robert Abplanalp's induction to the Hall of Honor, the company was producing billions of valves annually, and Pepsi and NASA had selected a Precision Valve product to use on beverage containers aboard the space shuttle.

It is hard to imagine the world without the many variations of Robert Abplanalp’s inventions. But it is heartbreaking to imagine a world with the Prep as a closed chapter in the history of Catholic education. Fordham Prep will always owe a debt of gratitude and honor to Robert Abplanalp, a loyal son of Fordham who gave his beloved alma mater nothing short of a future.