MELTON, SAMUEL MENDEL

MELTON, SAMUEL MENDEL (1900–1993), U.S. industrialist and philanthropist. Melton was born in Saros, Austro-Hungary. His family immigrated in 1904 to Toledo, Ohio. He established the Capitol Manufacturing and Supply Company in Columbus, as well as several pipe and nipple companies, which later merged with the Harsco Corporation (1968) and became a leader in the metals industry. Melton extended the Capitol Company to Israel in 1949 and deeded it to various Israeli institutions in 1955. Active in numerous communal and national Jewish organizations, he was a member of the UJA "cabinet" and the board of the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS), where he founded the Melton Research Center in New York (1959) to develop Jewish educational materials. He established the Samuel Mendel Melton Foundation (1951); professorships in Judaica at Ohio State University and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem (1965); a vocational school in Bat Yam, Israel (1968); the Melton Center for Jewish Education in the Diaspora at the Hebrew University (1968); the Melton Building at the Hebrew University; the Melton Journal of the JTS; the Melton Fellowship; the Jewish History and Studies Center at Ohio State University (1976); and the Melton Coalition for Creative Interaction at the JTS, devoted to Jewish arts education (1993). (Edward L. Greenstein / Ruth Beloff (2nd ed.)