By Jim Knippenberg
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Barbara Gargiulo and some of the books she has published. (Joseph Fuqua II photo) | ZOOM |

Barbara Gargiulo is on her way to becoming mainstream and she's happy about it.

Gargiulo, a 56-year-old wife, mother of three and former legal researcher, owns Little Miami Publishing Company, a small firm run from a beehive of an office in the rear of her Milford home while husband Joe is off at General Electric doing the things aeronautical engineers do.

"I began five years ago by publishing strictly works in genealogy that were bought by libraries and serious researchers. Now, I'm nearing publication of my 30th book."

It's a pictorial history - emphasis on pictorial - of all 55 Cincinnati firehouses beginning in 1853 when Cincinnati became the first city in the nation to pay its firefighters. It goes to present day.

"A gentleman named Eddie Bilkasley came in with all these wonderful photographs he had collected. There were black and whites and color, and they were all exteriors. That became the basis for the book with the two of us as co-authors.

They filled in gaps by getting shots of firehouses Eddie missed. "We borrowed from the Historical Society and library, too," she says, adding, "for some of the firehouses, ones with a history dating back to the early 1800s, I had my daughter-in-law sketch them."

May release date

The result is Cincinnati, Ohio, Fire Stations ($24.95), 90 pages of photos, illustrations and mini-histories. It will be on the streets by May 1 (check for updates and preorder at www.littlemiamibooks.com; Joseph-Beth Booksellers is also taking reservations).

"I want to emphasize that this is not a history of the fire department," Gargiulo says. "It's all about individual neighborhood station houses and their individual histories."

One of the cool things about the book is that so many of the shots include firefighters past and present. The other cool part is uncovering fun stories like this one about four generations of firefighters:

"Howard Lange joined the force in the early 1940s and was assigned badge 150. His father-in-law was a captain in the fire department in Brooklyn, New York. Both of his (Lange's) sons, Jerald and Thomas, also became firefighters, with Jerald wearing his father's old badge No. 150. His (Lange's) grandson, John Rainey, followed the family tradition and is currently wears the badge No. 150."

Meanwhile, in her continuing march to the mainstream, Gargiulo is about to start reading a manuscript of a historical novel set in the 1700s.

"It's factually accurate, and that's something I insist on when I publish a book. Plus, another author is querying me about another book, and the way I feel, as long as there's historical relevance, I'm game."

Finding historical relevance

Relevance such as you find in the Don Tolzmann books she has published or is about to publish.

Tolzmann is the University of Cincinnati historian who specializes in studies of Cincinnati's German heritage.

Gargiulo has published his German Pioneer Accounts of the Great Sioux Uprising of 1862 ($15.95; 102 pages), a book full of horrific eyewitness accounts and a batch of Cincinnati names - men and women from Cincinnati's German Turner Society who settled there prior to the outbreak.

Her next Tolzmann book will include even more local names: "It's called German Heritage Guide to the Cincinnati Area and I plan to have it out soon." It's difficult to pin her down on exact publication dates because she's a one-woman show, so time is often at a premium.

Jack of all trades

For some of her books she's editor, publisher, re-writer, introduction writer, indexer, secondary researcher, photo editor, graphics designer and just about anything else that goes into the publication process.

Doesn't leave a lot of time for this Portsmouth native who moved here from Columbus in 1989 and started a publishing business because there were a couple of books she thought needed to be published.

"I started researching, a lot on the Internet and a lot of talking to other small publishers. I found out what I needed to do and jumped in ... although I still manage to get in play time. You know the reason I named the company what I did is because my husband and I spend so much time on the Little Miami Bike Trail."

That is, when she isn't babysitting three grandchildren, or traveling to Furnace Creek in the California desert as well as Italy and Germany. Which doesn't leave much time for her to write her own book: "I definitely have one in me, but I'm not telling anyone about it. It's going to be a surprise when it happens. Let's just say that I have files full of information about Cincinnati and what I do will be a completely different approach."

E-mail jknippenberg@enquirer.com