Hershey Trust Series – Chapter One
Here’s the first of the Hershey Trust series on the long stalled state investigation of alleged political looting of the foundation by special interests. This is a narrative of former Hershey School student Ken Brady who today is 91 years old.
Brady is very active in reform Hershey groups.
The narrative is divided into two parts. The first tells Ken’s story of meeting Milton Hershey. Not many people living today have personal memories of Milton Hershey, who was known by students simply as Mr. Hershey.
In the second part of the narrative Ken describes what he feels went wrong at Hershey over the decades.
In the teeth of the Great Depression, in 1929, eight-year-old Ken Brady was accepted into the Hershey Industrial School, founded by chocolatier industrialist Milton Hershey.
We recently visited with Brady and asked him about Milton Hershey, and how Brady came to the school, and his observations about what went wrong at the school over subsequent decades.
Here is his story:
My father died at age 36. My parents had six children — three girls and three boys. At the time my mother had never worked outside the home. She was a homemaker. And she had no experience at working. When my father died there was no Social Security. The family sort of deserted her. She was left on her own. And she had to do something because she didn’t own a home. She had to get an apartment. Well there was no way to get an apartment and keep six children.
So she heard about this lady who had two children — two sons — in the Hershey School already. And this lady told my mother about the school and how to do it and everything. So that’s how my two brothers and I were able to get admitted to the school.
That was in 1929. At the end of December 1929, the enrollment in the Hershey School was 272. So since I came in December I’m somewhere around that number of 272. I was eight. Just turned eight.
My mother was able to get us in here in a comparatively short time. Now at the time of course the school only admitted boys. And the reason was, back in those days, the women were homemakers. And what Mr. Hershey wanted was to have a home for boys so they would learn a trade or education in order to take care of a family when they grew up. So he only admitted boys for that reason. Of course, if he’d admitted girls there would’ve been less boys.
As his income from his trust he established increased, that’s how the enrollment increased, up to a point. After his death then that whole philosophy changed because of the greed that took over. But that’s another story
Anyway, that’s how my two brothers and I ended up here. My mother then had a two-bedroom apartment for herself and the three girls. That was in Baltimore.
My brothers and I came up from Baltimore and the two house mothers said we came up from the south, so we had to stay in since it was in December when we came here. I’m just grateful that he took us in. My two brothers and myself. He (Mr. Hershey) took us in.
My mother brought us up on the train. The train used to run from Baltimore to Harrisburg. Up through York. We came up by train. Central Railroad, and I guess it got its name because it’s right in central Maryland. It was a subsidiary of the Pennsylvania Railroad. The engines that pulled it had “Pennsylvania” on the engines. So it was owned by Pennsylvania Railroad.
We got off the train in Harrisburg, and got the streetcar in Harrisburg: Harrisburg to Hummelstown. That’s where the Harrisburg streetcar stopped. The Hershey streetcar used to come and just meet it like that. So you’d get off one and get on the other.
So when we got to Harrisburg we took the streetcar to Hummelstown, and then the Hershey streetcar into the school.
The unit that I and my younger brother was in was right near the streetcar line, so I guess we really didn’t have that far to go, to walk.
Do you remember the Cocoa Inn? Right in front of the Cocoa Inn was a double track. And that’s where streetcars coming from, say, Hummelstown, would come into Hershey and stop on the one track; streetcars coming from Lebanon would come up from the other direction. And that’s where streetcars would pass. Once you got several blocks from there it went to a single track.
Of course the factory was there. You could smell the chocolate. You could really smell it. But you can’t anymore. The Cocoa Inn, that’s gone. When we came up here, like I said, I was only eight years old.
I really can’t remember being scared. I probably was. Now my younger brother was only four. So I’m sure he didn’t realize what was really happening. And by the time he realized he probably was acclimated to being there in the school. At age four.
My mother would come up maybe two or three times a year for a weekend to visit us. Of course she didn’t have any money to really travel. A year after we came up to Hershey my older sister died. So my mother then was left with two daughters. That was another burden on my mother. I don’t know how –.
Of course, we were in the school and had no contact, but I don’t know how she was ever able to bury my sister. My mother finally got a job in a bakery store, selling bread. And that’s how she took care of the girls. My mother’s name was Elsie.
So I was raised in the school.
Mr. Hershey would spend more time checking on us than he would the chocolate factory. He had some good managers operating the chocolate factory.
I was on a school farm called “Venice.” Venice was a mile down the road. All the farms had a name and a number. That farm down there was number 3B Venice.
Anyway, Venice had two barns. We had two barns because the main, big barn was divided in half. And half the barn was used to raise heifers. We’d get heifers from this farm, and the other different farms, and we would raise those heifers until they were age two, ready for breeding.
And then the other half of the barn was just the milking parlor, where the cows would come in at milking time. So the second barn was where the cows would stay overnight, for example.
At milking time there was nobody in that second barn at all. But one if us was always given the job of always going over there at the evening milking time to put in hay, so when the cows came back from milking, they would have hay to eat.
Well one evening it was my job to be in there. I’m in there all alone putting in hay, and I felt a tap on my shoulder. When I turned around, here was Mr. Hershey. All by himself.
He always called us his children, since he couldn’t have any. And he said, “Son, do you know what kind of hay you’re feeding the cows?” At age 13, hay was hay. But I soon found out it was alfalfa hay.
He was very friendly. Being a bachelor then, after his wife died — he never remarried — you never knew when he would be coming out to have dinner. He would sit down with us and have dinner.
And not an entourage, or putting on a show, or anything like that. He wanted to know what was going on.
Of course he never treated us that way, but I understand he could be real strict with the working people. Whether it’s the factory or the school or whatever — he had his own telephone company, he had his own water company, he had his own dairy, he had his own lumber company, he had his own abattoir. He took care of everything. He had his own electric company. He had all of those other industries to support the town and the factory and the school. All under what he called “The Hershey Estates.” It was a non-profit.
But when he gave the school the $60 million, that $60 million consisted of all these different companies; controlling stock in the chocolate factory. The school doesn’t own the chocolate factory, but they have controlling stock. They can tell the chocolate factory what to do.
We know how (Mr. Hershey) treated us. He was very good to us.
Milking time started at 4 o’clock. So between four and five we milked the cows. Five o’clock was dinnertime. The milk went to the Hershey creamery. Ice cream and milk and so forth.
The milk for the chocolate factory was purchased from a lot of farmers all around. They’d come in on the streetcars. Remember the streetcars? They used to stop along the way to Elizabethtown and pick up cans of milk. They’d pick up cans of milk on the way to Lebanon.
I remember seeing big tank trucks bringing milk into the chocolate factory.
Mr. Hershey would come out for dinner (with us kids) quite often. I can’t remember for sure, but we must’ve kept an empty chair at the dining table. There were six boys at a table. And I’m sure at one of the tables must’ve been an empty chair. He would just show up.
Oh yeah. He was very kind to us. I understand with managers and so forth he was a strict businessman. He was strict with them. They would never know when he would pop in to the chocolate factory. He would just come unannounced.
But we were his kids. He was very kind to us.
***
Mr. Hershey made two mistakes. One mistake was that he made the Board of Managers self-perpetuating. And being self-perpetuating, when they got an opening the other members decided who would go on.
In his original Deed of Trust it did not have any clause in there to prevent conflict of interest on the Board of Managers. In 1938 he made a change to his Deed of Trust and put a clause in there that any member of the board could not be on any other Hershey board. For example, the Hershey Estates had a board; the chocolate factory has a board; the Hershey Trust, that controls all the money, they have a board of directors. So if you were on the Board of Managers, you couldn’t be on any of these others
He died in 1945. So he was trying to get his ducks in order. Let me stress that this whole mess, after Hershey died let’s say up to today, it’s actually two different phases. The first phase, after he died, went up to 2002. The second phase started in 2002 and is there now. The first phase was controlled by alumni of Penn State
(Author’s note: In 1963, the superintendent of the Hershey School, J.O. Hershey, became president of the school and one of eight members of the board. J.O. Hershey was not related to Milton Hershey.
J.O. Hershey was an alumnus of Penn State. When he got on the board of manager and an opening came, he was able to talk the other members into getting Joe Blow on the board. And then another opening, he was able to get Harry Smith on the board. Well finally they had a majority. And that’s one mistake Mr. Hershey made when he made it self-perpetuating. It allowed that to happen. As soon as they got the majority, that’s when the dirty work started. Early ’60s, when J.O. got on.
Yes, his name was Hershey. He was no relation to Milton Hershey. He barely knew Mr. Hershey. He came to Hershey after Mr. Hershey had died. But he ended up running the board. We alumni were naive, and I guess we were psyched in, because here’s a man named Hershey. He can’t do anything wrong. And it took us years to realize what he was up to.
What they did then, they started shutting down farms.
They were alumni of Penn State. They were looking out more for Penn State. When they got control of the Board of Managers, the Board of Managers doesn’t answer to anyone else for their daily actions. They only answer to the state of Pennsylvania for certain aspects of a trust.
J.O. Hershey and the other Penn State guys, they went to the State of Pennsylvania, without publicizing it or anything, with this proposal to give $50 million of the Hershey School money to Penn State. Then they went back to the state of Pennsylvania, and asked the state of Pennsylvania if they could give 100 acres of land to Penn State for the medical center. Later on they gave them 204 more acres. So Penn State has 304 acres of farmland that should be used for needy children.
In 1970 they went to the state of Pennsylvania and had that clause deleted, about conflicts of interest. That’s part of the problem today. That’s why they’re making their millions, because of conflicts. They answer to themselves. They put themselves on this Board of Directors that answers to the Board of Managers, and they’re on the Board of Managers.
They closed down farms. They gradually closed a lot of the farms. They eventually eliminated the dairy program. They’re no farms at all left. They own the land. But that’s part of the problem too. The land, a lot of it is sitting idle.
J.O. Hershey’s gang, when they were shutting down farms, they built on the south side of Hershey what they call a centralized campus. I call it a centralized compound. What they did was, they built a lot of homes real close. There were several homes in that area. They all had big playgrounds, and athletic areas and so forth. Well that land was now used to build more homes, so the children on the farms were all moved on to this centralized compound.
Are you familiar with Founder’s Hall? Founder’s Hall was one of the first things that J.O. Hershey had built. The dome is the second biggest dome in the United States, or the world. Mr. Hershey would have hated Founder’s Hall. All that Vermont marble! Mr. Hershey didn’t want money spent honoring him. He wanted it to go to the needy children.
When they built Founder’s Hall, it was designed for only 1,600 children. When they built the centralized compound, it was designed for only 1,600 children. They had plans to limit enrollment at 1,600. The endowment could have thousands of children. But you would need all that idle land, for homes.
The enrollment at one point dropped down to about 1,100 children. Terrible, it is. They gradually filled it back up to around the 1,600 figure. But we kept pestering them, and to try to get the pressure off what we were telling the public, they built some new homes over in South Hanover Township, and they increased the enrollment by 200. The enrollment is now 1,800. But it’s been stagnant at 1,800 for years.
The endowment has so much money they could be taking in thousands of children. And Mr. Hershey said that every dollar earned should be spent on needy children.
It started with the Penn State guys. When the Board of Managers was reconstituted in 2002, and (former Pennsylvania Attorney General LeRoy) Zimmerman and these political guys got control then. They continued this greedy process that put the children secondary, even though it was a different group in control. From 2002 on there was a different group in there.
It’s no longer what Mr. Hershey intended. He set it up for the school. Period. He was dedicated to us.
As I say, why would he come into an empty barn like that if he wasn’t interested in us?
If you or someone you know has personal memories of Milton Hershey, we’d like to hear from you.
