ERNIE'S FIRM KEEPS ON POPPIN'                   POP-TOP CAN COMPANY WILL STAY IN DAYTON DATE: Sunday, May 20, 1990     By Jim Bohman BUSINESS WRITER                               DAYTON DAILY NEWS                   Copyright (c) 1990, Dayton Newspapers Inc.   When Ermal "Ernie" Fraze died last October, the 400 employees of Dayton Reliable Tool & Manufacturing Co. felt a profound loss and a chill of uncertainty.   Fraze, the inventor, gave the pop-top beverage can to the world nearly 30 years ago and made a fortune.   Ernie, the likable, common-touch boss, gave solid, good-paying jobs to hundreds of Dayton-area people. Many of their children followed them into the plants.   Even though Fraze's death at age 76 was not a surprise, the workers at Dayton Reliable Tool, 618 Greenmount Blvd., and its five local shops were leftwondering who their employer would be in the years ahead - or if they would beworking at all.   The private company, with estimated annual sales of more than $50 million, had been sold before - only to be repurchased 15 years later by Fraze when he didn't like what was happening. Fraze feared the new owner, the giant Nestle Co. of Switzerland, might move the company and wreck the lives of his people.   Four years later Ernie was dead, and employees speculated what the future would be like without their champion guarding the door.   Nancy Brelsford, Fraze's administrative assistant, said everyone was worried. But the family took immediate steps to reassure the workers.    "They had a big meeting the day after (the funeral) at Sinclair Community College for all the people," Brelsford said. "It was to tell them the businesswould go on. That was the intention of the family.   Martha "Marty" Fraze, Ernie's widow, said her husband wanted to preserve the firm for his people and the Dayton area: "We intend to keep it as much thesame as we can. We can't do it completely without Ernie, but we are going to try."   "We've had very competent people over there. For the last few years Ernie and I have taken off a good amount of time. And they have handled it very beautifully. So we're going to try to keep up the same thing."   Mrs. Fraze said their sons, Terry, 42, and Mark, 40, in private business, agree.    "As far as our sons are concerned, they want to keep it in the family. In fact, they are very interested in keeping it for their (four) children."    The story of how Fraze got the idea for the pop top can is an American classic.    While on a picnic with friends in 1959, Fraze wanted to open a can of beer.Nobody had a "church key" to punch holes in the top. The flat metal surface finally yielded to the sharp edge of a car bumper.   There has to be a better way, Fraze said.   He had founded Dayton Reliable Tool in 1950, making tools and dies for manyof the corporate giants in the area, including General Motors, Chrysler and General Electric. There were brushes with fame, such as when the company made part of the oxygen system for the Atlas rocket that boosted Astronaut (now U.S. Sen.) John Glenn into orbit.   But the inability to easily open that steel can set Ernie, the engineer trained at the General Motors Institute, to calculating and tinkering.   The result in 1962 was something no one else had been able to do: He perfected a reliable tab-top aluminum can that opened with ease.   The top evolved over the years. The first effort was a sharp-edged lever that peeled open a small opening. But the aluminum edge could be hard on fingers. That lid evolved into the ring-pull top popular for years. The current, more ecological configuration is the punch-top lid in which all the pieces remain with the can.   Last year 85 billion were produced in the U.S. and more than 150 billion worldwide. The majority were made with tools and dies from Fraze's local plants.   Those plants, under the direction of President Henry C. Bachmann, turn out new tooling that is assembled on giant punch presses from the Minster Machine Co. The expanding demand for beverage cans keeps Dayton Reliable Tool busy supplying U.S. and overseas producers.   The company nearly doubled its employment in the last three years when it opened its fifth local plant. A sixth, in West Germany, is to open late this year.   Fraze held 130 patents on the tooling for stamping out pop top cans. Although others have gotten into the business, Dayton Reliable remains the dominant producer of can-lid tooling world-wide. Another Miami Valley company,Stolle Corp. of Sidney, a subsidiary of Alcoa, is the other major tooling producer.   During his life, Fraze always was very protective of his personal affairs and financial dealings. He only hinted at his wealth in mentioning that he gets a royalty on each 1,000 pop top cans produced. Considering that more than150 billion were made last year, the income would be many millions of dollars.   Although he could have lived like a king, Fraze and his wife never changed their lifestyle very much. They lived in the same modest-sized house in Kettering they bought in 1957, Mrs. Fraze said. She still lives there.   Ernie drove a Chevrolet to work, although he kept an older model Cadillac at home.   His one passion was golf. The Frazes had a second home in Palm Desert, Calif., and Ernie was an annual participant in the Bob Hope Desert Classic golf tournament.   Other employees said they will miss the caring way he talked with his people on the shop floor, always wanting to know about the projects they were working on.   "He was very low profile. If you talked to him you wouldn't think he had a dime," one veteran employee said.