George Foerstner; Longtime Head of Amana

George Foerstner, 91, who transformed a request for a reliable beverage cooler into the Amana line of household appliances. Named for the town of Amana, Iowa, the company was created in 1934 as Electrical Equipment Co. to market the electrical beverage coolers he invented for a local businessman. The company was renamed Amana Refrigeration two years later when it was purchased by the Amana Society, a former religious commune. Foerstner, who dropped out of school at the age of 13 to work in his father’s auto parts business and was a salesman for Amana Woolen Mills before he invented his cooler, headed Amana for 48 years, long after it became a subsidiary of Raytheon. (Sold to Goodman Manufacturing in 1997, the company is now known as Amana Appliances.) An innovative marketer, Foerstner hired Hollywood stars including Gary Cooper and Groucho Marx to tout his appliances in the 1940s and, when the safety of microwave ovens was challenged, hired a scientist to rebut the charges. “We can’t come close to making enough of them,” Foerstner said in 1976, a short time after doomsayers predicted the quick demise of the new microwave appliances. Foerstner’s original cooler line has expanded to include refrigerators, freezers, dishwashers, wall ovens, ranges, cooktop microwaves, washers and dryers, dehumidifiers and heating and cooling systems. On Sunday in Bal Harbour, Fla.