Publishing Mean and Lean

Joe Eby and the Huge Heart of Hershey, PA

Last week’s story of the great American chocolate company streamlining its operations and laying off 1,500 workers, brought back memories of an extraordinary day 30 years ago that I spent in Hershey, Pennsylvania.

Joe Eby was a thin, taciturn guy who owned a real estate business in Hershey and was married to a peppy, delightful little blonde named Muriel. The Ebys loved the game of curling and always received a private invitation to our Nutmeg Curling Club’s annual bonspiel (curling tournament), the Golden Handle, which was held every year at the Darien Country Club in Connecticut.

The Ebys would drive up from Hershey with the other two members of their team, Muriel’s sister and brother-in-law, Bob and Bev Sponaugle. They brought with them an enormous supply of Hershey Kisses that they dispensed to gleeful curlers of all ages throughout the weekend.

Joe was quiet and self-effacing. It was only when I was researching this story some thirty years later that I discovered that he had been in the Air Force during World War II, had piloted 37 missions over Germany and received six oak leaf clusters. This was not the kind of thing he would ever mention.

One year, in the early 1970s, three other guys and myself entered a men’s bonspiel in Hershey and we drove down in the dead of winter where we were joined by teams from around the Northeast.

It was there that I really got to know Joe Eby and how his life had been changed by the magnificent vision of Milton and Catherine Hershey—a legacy that endures to this day.

Hershey Chocolate Company
In 1876, Milton Hershey started a candy company in Philadelphia, but it failed six years later. At the 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition, he got hooked on chocolate and bought some German candy-making machinery and had it shipped back to Pennsylvania. After much experimentation, Hershey figured out the formula for making milk chocolate—a secret process known only to the Swiss at the time. He started the Hershey Chocolate Company and the rest is history.

A Company Town
From the Hershey Web site:

Hershey’s success was not simply a matter of luck. Having learned from his past failures, he had become a shrewd and astute businessman. He believed, along with the more forward-thinking industrialists of the age, that workers who were treated fairly and who lived in a comfortable, pleasant environment would be better workers. Accordingly, he set upon building an infrastructure to take care of the people who were employed by his company. He had plans drawn up for a model community that included housing for executives and ordinary workers alike, schools, churches, parks, recreational facilities and a trolley system. Unlike other “company towns,” Hershey’s was not intended to exploit its resident workers, but rather to provide for their welfare. As time went on, Hershey saw to it that the town (named Hershey, naturally) added a community building, a department store, a convention hall, an amusement park, a swimming pool, and schools. Lots of schools.

In its heyday, Hershey was a grand place to live. The four-star Hershey Hotel had one of the finest restaurants in Western Pennsylvania and many of the expenses of the Hershey Country Club—including the golf course and curling facility—were underwritten by the company. Membership was cheap.

One of the curlers—a pilot for Allegheny Airlines (later merged into US Airways)—had moved to Hershey with his family because of the good schools, virtually no real estate taxes, fine medical facility and proximity to Harrisburg, his home airport.

He told me that every fall, the town’s arborists would come to his property and trim all the trees and neatly stack the cuttings in his woodpile. No charge.

His routine was to get up at 4:30 in the morning, make himself a pot of coffee in the kitchen and read the paper before heading off to the airport for work. On his first day in the new house, he looked up from his paper into the darkness outside and noticed the headlights of a car that had stopped near the foot of his driveway. The driver turned off the lights and sat in the darkness for a few minutes and then turned them on and drove off. My friend was spooked.

The next day, the same thing occurred as well as on the third day. On the evening of the fourth day the phone rang. The caller said that he may have noticed a car outside the house in the early morning and revealed that it was a squad car from the Hershey Police Department. “We heard you had just moved into the neighborhood,” the officer said, “and we just wanted to learn your habits, so that we know it is really you at home with the lights on in the early morning and not a burglar.”

In this current era of everybody snooping on everybody else—via the media, the Internet, illegal phone taps and dumpster-diving—a person could get the willies knowing that the local police routinely spies on you. But having lived in Manhattan—where I watched as a plainclothes policeman was shot dead across the street from where I lived on East 78th Street—I found the Hershey scenario comforting. So did the Allegheny pilot.

In addition, the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center is one of the great hospital facilities in Pennsylvania. With 504 beds and 351 resident physicians, if you are going to get sick in Western Pennsylvania, Hershey is the place to be.

Joe Eby’s Story
The average curling game lasts 2-1/2 hours, and in a typical bonspiel, you will curl two games a day until you lose—unless you get to the finals. Curlers have plenty of time to watch other games, go see the local sights or hang out with chums from around the country.

At one point, the four of us from Connecticut were having a beer and burger at the club between games when Joe Eby ambled over and joined us. We got talking about Hershey and all the corporate sponsored benefits of living there. I asked Joe how he got to Hershey.

“I was an orphan as a child,” he said. “I graduated from the school and stayed here.”

“What school?”

“The Hershey School for Boys,” Eby said.

For the first time, I saw Joe Eby come really alive, his eyes bright and his voice filled with enthusiasm. He said that when Milton and Catherine (Kitty) Hershey learned early on in their marriage that they could not have children, Catherine came up with a life-changing idea. In 1909, they started a trust fund for a school for “poor, healthy white orphans between the ages of 8 through 18 years of age.” Originally called the Hershey Industrial School, it was boys only when Eby attended.

When an orphan boy arrived there, he was given everything—schoolbooks and all his clothes right down to shoes, underwear and a toothbrush. The boys were housed in small, comfortable homes with other boys. A married couple—trained in childcare and hired on a full-time basis—acted as surrogate parents. The boys had three good meals a day, played sports, did chores and received a first-rate education.

Everything was free.

In 1915, Kitty Hershey died after a long illness and Milton donated his entire worth to the Hershey School Trust—thousands of acres of land and all his stock in the chocolate company that he had founded.

Joe said suddenly, “Would you like to see the school?” The response was a unanimous yes.

We all piled into Eby’s car and spent a magical two hours as he took us on a behind-the-scenes guided tour of the institution that changed his life. Being a weekend, no classes were being held. We went through Founders Hall, the impressive, domed administration building with its 2,700-seat auditorium, visitors’ center and cafeteria for students and faculty. We saw some classrooms and one of the private homes that housed a dozen students.

Joe was on a first-name basis with everybody—teachers, security, cleaning people, house parents. The exchanges were not only cordial and collegial but also heartfelt.

The four of us felt privileged and honored to have seen this magnificent facility close-up.

The Milton Hershey School
Over the years, the school has undergone both philosophical and physical transitions. The original school was founded for boys only. The Hersheys’ thinking:

First, in an orphan situation, they are less wanted around the house because they don’t take to housework and homemaking chores like girls do, mainly because they think of cooking and cleaning and sewing as ‘sissy’ things to do. The other reason is because the boy is in need of training as a future head of a family and the main wage earner. If he’s trained well enough, he can buy a home and support his family so his wife won’t have to work—outside the home that is.

The deed stated:

All orphans admitted to the School shall be fed with plain, wholesome food; plainly, neatly, and comfortably clothed, without distinctive dress; and fitly lodged. Due regard shall be paid to their health; their physical training shall be attended to, and they shall have suitable and proper exercise and recreation. They shall be instructed in the several branches of a sound education … The main object in view is to train young men to useful trades and occupations, so that they can earn their own livelihood.

The modifications to the deed over the years included:

1951—The name was changed to the Milton Hershey School.

1968—It was announced that students of any race would be accepted.

1976—The Milton Hershey School went co-ed and the definition of “orphan” was expanded to include any child not receiving adequate parental care at home. These were called “social orphans.”

In 2005, the enrollment was 660 boys and 704 girls for a total of 1,364 from ages four to 18. Of these 47 percent were Caucasian, 31 percent African-American and 11 percent Hispanic with a small group of Asians and Native Americans. Seventy-six percent of the students are from Pennsylvania with the remainder being from 29 other states, including Washington, DC. Roughly 40 percent of students have siblings enrolled in the school.

The campus is situated on 2,640 acres of verdant Pennsylvania country. In the last few years, an expansion program has added a number of new buildings. The students are housed in 133 private homes that accommodate nine to 13 children in the same division level. The admissions criteria:

* Come from a family of low income, limited resources and social need.
* Have the ability to learn.
* Be free of serious emotional and behavioral problems that disrupt life in the classroom or the home.
* Be able to take part in the school’s program.
* Be born in the United States.

Financial eligibility:

Family Size	Total Household Income Must Be Less Than
2	$19,800
3	$24,900
4	$30,000
5	$35,100

As of May 1, 2005, the average household income of students enrolled in 2004-05 was $13,748.

All of it is still completely free. In the words of the original 1909 deed:

All the advantages and benefits to be derived by the scholars under this deed, shall be in every respect gratuitous, and under no circumstances shall any charge be made to any scholar, or any fees, rewards, or other compensations be accepted by the Managers from or on account of any scholar.

On graduation, Continuing Education Scholarship money can be made available as well as the opportunity for studies abroad. Job placement help is ongoing.

The Funding
The endowment is breathtaking. The Milton Hershey School Trust has grown to $6 billion—roughly $4.4 million per student. Were the Hershey School a college or university, it would rank as the seventh richest school in the United States, falling between MIT and Columbia University.

By comparison, my old boarding school (also that of George Bush père et fils), Andover, has 1,096 co-ed students, charges a boarder $35,250 and has an endowment of $670 million—roughly one-ninth that of the Milton Hershey School. Andover is considered a very rich school.

In addition, the Hershey School Trust owns about 33 percent of the Hershey Company’s total equity (current market cap is $8.9 billion) and 74 percent of voting control.

Recent Benefactors in the Tradition of Milton and Kitty Hershey:

* Dikembe Mutombo. The 7’ 2’’ center of the Houston Rockets and the second greatest shot blocker in the NBA after Hakeem Olajuwon, is the major donor of the $29 million Biamba Marie Mutombo Hospital (named for his mother) in his home town of Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, which officially opens this month.

* Oprah Winfrey. Last August, the great American actress and talk-show host opened the 50-acre Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy outside of Johannesburg, South Africa. Like the Milton Hershey School, everything at the $40 million facility for disadvantaged African girls is free. “Education is the way to move mountains, to build bridges, to change the world,” Winfrey said. “Education is the path to the future. I believe that education is indeed freedom. With God’s help, these girls will be the future leaders on the path to peace in South Africa and the world.”

* Danny Thomas. Although not built entirely with his own money, Thomas’s energy, vision and dogged pursuit of donors, built St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital into one of the great health care institutions in the world. As with the Milton Hershey School and the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy (and unlike the rotten American health care system), “All patients accepted for treatment at St. Jude are treated without regard to the family’s ability to pay.”

Joe Eby—the Rest of the Story
The last time I talked to Joe Eby was by phone—in the first week of April in 1979. Unit 2 of the Three-Mile Island Nuclear Energy plant outside Harrisburg had just blown. It was practically within eyesight of Joe Eby’s backyard. Suddenly, the utopian haven of Hershey was neither utopian nor a haven. Eby was shaken. Out of the blue, he called me to talk—and to vent. Why me? I guess my living on the East Coast led him to believe that I had some kind of window on the world that he lacked in Western Pennsylvania. We spoke for an hour about the state of the nation and the world. He was fearful and depressed.

Joe Eby died on Feb. 15, 2001 at the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center. He was 77.

It was Joe Eby that opened my mind to the idea that it is possible for a company—to have as an agenda—to make the world a better place rather than simply growing the business and making its numbers quarter after quarter.

I will be forever grateful to him.

We've always known it's smart to collaborate. Now we're realizing it's stupid not to.

This is one of the profound effects of the digital publishing revolution. Before the digital era, it was easy to talk about cooperation and teamwork, and then go about our business much as we always had. Graphic designers didn't have to care about how an editor did their work. Editors didn't have to care about production technology.

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