Stone's shares decades of experience
BY BETTY ARCHER ALLEN Gulf Breeze News betty@gulfbreezenews.com

Betty Archer Allen/Gulf Breeze News Maryann "Ruth" Renfroe Stone helped her husband found Stone's Studio 62 years ago. At 91, Mrs. Stone still works in the family business, which takes school portraits.

Maryann "Ruth" Renfroe Stone of Stone's Studio still works every day at age 91. She is a tall, slender, very attractive lady who loves her work and the business that she and her husband started together.

Her husband, Eugene Stone, with Ruth's able assistance, established a very successful photographic studio in Pensacola that is now located at 2503 North 12th Avenue in 1945.

Even after her husband's death, Ruth and her children have carried on in the tradition that he established. Ruth is the treasurer of the company and her three children are now part owners of the business: Dan Stone is President; David Stone is Vice-President; and Joy Stone Emmanuel is Secretary. January 2007 marked the 62nd year of Stone's Studio, Inc.

Ruth was raised in Wallace near Chumuckla where the Renfroes owned 100 acres. Ruth had just completed the 11th grade and visited her aunt and uncle in Ponce de Leon that summer.

Betty Archer Allen/Gulf Breeze News Ruth Stone with her three co-owners of Stone's Studio, David Stone, Joy Emanual and Dan Stone.

Her aunt and uncle took the family to watch the Square Dancing in a little town called Caryville, where her uncle introduced her to Eugene "Gene" Stone. Stone asked her to go across the street to a drugstore to get a coke and the rest is history. It must have been love almost at first sight because Eugene wanted to get married immediately but her family insisted that she finish high school. She finished Milton High School in 1935, they were married July 13th of that year and Maryann Ruth Renfroe Stone's adult life really began. She and Eugene formed a loving partnership that lasted until Gene's death on October 21, 1981.

When Ruth and Gene were married Gene worked as a salesman with Gulf Power. But in 1941 he went to work for the C.W. Wright Co. Most all of the old-school studio owners in the southeast once worked for the C.W. Wright Co., who had a branch laboratory in Birmingham. Gene worked the Virginia and West Virginia region until the war started. So many of the Wright employees were drafted or took defense jobs but Gene stayed with company and worked Florida and Alabama districts.

Then, in 1945, Eugene and Ruth decided that they would start their own business taking and developing School Pictures so they opened a small finishing laboratory in their basement. That was their start in black and white photography using Dupont film and Haloid paper. They mixed all their own chemicals from powdered materials. Ruth said, "I had to wear red nail polish to cover the stains on my nails from the chemicals."

In 1949 Stone Studio moved to the 12th Avenue location. They were still in black and white but used a Nord automatic printer. In 1952, they remodeled and enlarged the building on 12th Avenue and put in black and white continuous processing. Ruth Stone raised three children, ran the studio and helped with the processing sometimes up till midnight.

Ruth said, "We were proud of every step we made toward improvement and excited about all advancements in photography." Stone's Studio was "speculation printing" a package for each student for schools to sell or return. The school handled all monies.

During the 1955-56 schoolyear, Gene went to California and purchased equipment with a camera for making school pictures in color and they began their own color lab. They were using a type R printing process. The package that the Stone's sent to the schools included an 8x10 color composite of the whole grade with the school name in print and six individual color photos for each student.

Ruth said, "I still have my daughter Joy's photos and they have never faded."

In 1960 they expanded their building again and put in a new processor, an old type R processor that Kodak TSR's converted to a type C process. Their business had grown and now the Stone's were covering Florida and Alabama schools.

In the summers the Stone's took photos of soft goods manufacturing plants through out the south and Puerto Rico. They photographed each of the plant's employees to make color ID cards. This was done under Stone's Personnel Services, a subsidiary of Stone's Studio, Inc. In 1971 the Stone's remodeled and again added more space to accommodate a new Kodak continuous processor, and went to newer printers.

Maryann "Ruth" Stone likes to relate the story of her husband Gene's background. Eugene Gaston Stone quit school at the age of 12 or 13 in the 6th grade, left home with his clothes tied up in a large red handkerchief, hitchhiked to Miami and got a job as a hotel bell boy. He later joined the Merchant Marines and traveled to California. He liked to tap dance and do the Charleston so when he left the Merchant Marines he went into Vaudeville where he had his own act. He traveled for some time with a Vaudeville show. The woman that headed the Vaudeville act had two daughters; one talented and pretty and other plain and untalented. The plain and untalented daughter later became Gypsy Rose Lee.

Now in 2007 thanks to damage from Hurricane Ivan, Ruth and her children co-owners updated quickly to computers and digital photography and now have to remodel their building again. The remodeling has already begun and should be completed by September.

The little girl who was raised in Wallace and her talented and innovative husband made a kind of poignant journey to success; a success which Ruth and her children have continued.

Stone's Studio is a very successful photographic studio that has served not only the Gulf Coast area but other states as well.