He was born in 1857, the only child of a dirt poor Pennsylvania farming couple. As he grew up, the hard life of those who labor scratching out a meager existence on the land always overshadowed his childhood dreams. He never got a real education because his father needed both his help in the fields and for him to learn a trade to bring in much needed extra cash for the family. Fourth grade was as far as he got before his father took him out of school permanently so that he could apprentice with a local printer in the nearby town.
Milton showed no talent for the printing business and he felt mired in a preordained path that offered him little opportunity for either financial or personal success. To make matters worse, his father eventually abandoned his family and disappeared. Milton, at the age of fourteen, along with his mother, took on the responsibility for maintaining their bare existence. Taking in laundry and cleaning houses in addition to farm chores, eventually Milton’s mother was able to scrape together enough money to apprentice Milton to a local candy maker. This was a trade that Milton quickly learned and learned to love. At the age of nineteen, he started his own taffy shop.
It soon went bankrupt.
Undeterred, Milton started another candy shop in New York. It too went bankrupt. The same thing happened in Chicago. After he learned to make caramel, Milton opened the Lancaster Caramel Company. His mother and grandmother stayed up nights hand wrapping the caramels Milton made, and this time, his business grew and prospered. The company enjoyed excellent sales and within just a few years, Milton’s caramels were sold all over the country.
Though now hugely successful, Milton was not satisfied with where his business was taking him. Though he loved making candy, Milton still felt unfulfilled. In 1900, he sold his caramel company for over $1 million, a massive sum at the time. Just 43 years old, Milton decided to start a new company. He still loved making sweets, but had developed a new passion—chocolate. He now poured his expertise and effort into building a new sweetie empire.
In 1905, Milton opened the doors of his new enterprise when the Hershey’s Chocolate Factory opened and began making the milk chocolate bars that are still loved today. But Milton Hershey wasn’t satisfied with just a factory. Eventually, he built an entire town for his workers, with good housing, schools, churches, parks and every other amenity. Even during the 1930’s Great Depression, Milton kept all his workers promising that no one would lack a paycheck. The town of Hershey, Pennsylvania became a model community.
Unable to have children of their own, in 1909, Milton and his wife, Catherine, founded the Hershey Industrial School. Originally for orphaned or abandoned boys, the school offered education, training in a trade, and help finding employment. Upon graduating, each boy received a new suit of clothes and $100 as a gift to help him get started. Renamed the Milton Hershey School, it is still in operation, although girls as well as boys are now accepted. More than 1,900 children are boarders at the Hershey School each year.
Milton Hershey died in 1945, but his legacies of chocolate making and helping others remains intact today. His amazing life can certainly be embraced as a guidepost for all of us who invariably encounter bumps and ruts as we travel our road of life. Things don’t go wrong and impede or stop our progress so we can become bitter and give up. Rather, they happen to break us down in order to afford us the opportunity to build ourselves up so that we can become all that we were intended to be.
“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.” – Maya Angelou
Have an AWE-full weekend!
William J. “Bill” Bacqué