Hess. Resnick-Ault Jessica
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Leon had already begun expanding his business beyond trucks when he joined the Army in 1942, one of millions of men who signed on to the war effort after Pearl Harbor. David offered to watch over Leon’s terminals in his absence, and make sure that they were well cared for.17
Wilentz was widely known for his role in counseling politicians and luminaries across the state. He had gone from being an environmental lawyer to becoming a trusted adviser and caretaker of the business for Leon, who was 20 years his junior. Both men loved spending time at the Monmouth Park racetrack, where Leon would often breakfast while the trainers put the horses through their morning workouts. When Leon took an ownership stake in the racetrack, a room was eventually named after Wilentz.
Both shared an attention to detail in their own and employees’ dress, at times pushing their own fastidious need for order onto others (Leon more than once gave his executives new socks after noticing their sagging hosiery). Both balanced long hours with significant time spent with family – for Wilentz, the dedication was shown by being home for nightly dinners. Leon was remembered as an available ear for his children and even grandchildren. Both were able to use their political skills to enrich themselves.
But both shared, perhaps more than anything, the ability to talk with anyone, whether it was a Republican foe, a taxicab driver, or a dictator halfway around the world. Through this candor, they were able to connect with those who ultimately helped them leave striking legacies. Both men created webs of connections across New Jersey and, in Leon’s case, around the world, which helped them succeed.
Possibly with Wilentz’s help, Leon garnered attention from Chase Manhattan Bank. He gave his underwriting business entirely to the firm, run by David Rockefeller. He was exclusive, he later said, because of the effort they put into the relationship. “They’re the only ones who ever paid any attention to me,” Leon said later. “The rest never took me seriously.”18 The bank loans from Chase helped back Leon’s earliest truck purchases as he expanded.
While Leon became far better traveled and connected than his own father ever could have imagined, he retained a deep love for New Jersey.
“While his work took him all over the world, the place he loved best and where he always came back was the Jersey Shore. Asbury Park, where he was born, Loch Arbour, where we would drive from Perth Amboy every Sunday to visit his parents, and in the summers, the house on Roosevelt Avenue in Deal, where he could smoke his cigars and barbecue every Sunday night,” his daughter Constance said in a 2011 speech upon his posthumous induction into the New Jersey Hall of Fame.
“Dad is now buried in the shadow of the symbol of what he created, the Hess building in Woodbridge, near his refinery and in New Jersey.”
While Leon Hess left a deep legacy in New Jersey – with his name across oil terminals, gas stations, and a refinery, the town he hailed from now stands as a shadow of the way it looked when he was growing up. No longer a vacation getaway for elite New Yorkers, the town shows signs of wear, from the carousel on the shore to the house Leon lived in. If Asbury Park is known now, it’s primarily for the Stone Pony bar that helped make Bruce Springsteen a music superstar.
The Santander Hotel and other buildings stand covered in scaffolding now, as an effort is under way to renovate the area, parts of which fell into disrepair in the decades that followed the progress of the seashore town in the 1920s and 1930s. The area still shows signs of damage from Superstorm Sandy.
On Asbury Avenue, where Mores Hess first saw his family and businesses grow, it’s hard to imagine the decades of hard-won success he found here. Today, some driveways are filled with old mattresses, discarded couches, and other refuse. Windows are blocked with plywood, the results of Sandy, which tore through the area in 2012, and of neglect.
Two houses have been torn down, recalls Josephine Hammary, whose family moved onto the street in 1957. “White Italians and Jews lived here,” but the property values sank over the years and those immigrant groups moved out, ceding their houses to rentals and Section 8 tenants who failed to maintain them, she said.
The Hess family sold their house to one of Hammary’s relatives, and moved on.
Leon stood next to his son, John, at his wedding to Susan Kessler. It was 1984 and the ceremony was in the family’s New York apartment. Leon wasn’t only the groom’s father, he was also his best man, one sign of the close ties that remained between Leon and his only son – a bond that still showed years after his father’s death, with a son who has been known to get his Starbucks coffee order as “Leon.” He would leave his father’s office untouched for a long time after his passing, a living historical record of Leon’s last day in the office.
Leon’s brother Henry had served as best man for his own son Robert, when Robert married nearly 25 years earlier. The Hesses were a close-knit family – they spent time together not out of obligation but out of general affinity, and they were fiercely loyal to one another. For Leon, his life’s ventures were centered on family, whether it was the family business he created, the fatherly approach he brought to the New York Jets football team, or his actual family, who remain intensely protective of his memory and his legacy.
Leon made sure that all the Hesses gathered at least twice a year without fail: once in the spring for Passover, recognizing their Jewish heritage, and in November at Thanksgiving, celebrating the American traditions of football and turkey. While there were other vacations – in the Bahamas in the winter or on the Jersey Shore for summer months to escape sweltering Manhattan, holidays with the in-laws or trips with grandchildren to London – the major Passover seder and Thanksgiving celebration showed the Hesses as a unified whole, generations assembled together.
Through these gatherings, Leon passed along the lessons he had learned from his father-in-law and father to his children, and eventually, grandchildren. He strove to impart a sense of loyalty, the value of hard work, and humility. While Leon managed a company that was growing into a multibillion-dollar enterprise, making him one of America’s richest men, he still found it important to bring his family together. He created a family atmosphere at the company, where it was clear to all who worked there you had to be well dressed and clean-shaven to please the boss. That family approach extended to the football team, where Thanksgiving gatherings after practice eventually expanded to include Jets players and staff along with their families. Leon played the role of patriarch across several platforms.
“He was an extraordinary father and role model,” Marlene Hess, his second daughter, remembered in her eulogy for her father. “His standards for himself and for our family were high. He couldn’t tolerate ‘deadbeats’ or liars. He was a man of his word, so we had to be, too. He expected the best of himself and also of all of us. He worked hard – [and] so did we. He cared deeply for his fellow man, and instilled that in us, too.” The lessons, daughter Constance Hess remembered, were clear: Treasure a good name. Hold your cards close to your chest. Love is unconditional. If you have to talk to the press, make sure that you aren’t the story.
Rarely photographed by the press and not quoted in profile pieces, Leon tried not to call attention to himself or to his family, though he would speak about his business. “He worked hard to keep his personal life private,” Constance said in a 2011 speech.
Leon combined his father’s entrepreneurial spirit, his father-in-law’s political savvy, and his own smarts to succeed in a hardscrabble business at a time when many were failing. But perhaps the role he enjoyed most of all was that of father figure, creating new families beyond just his immediate relations.
While it was Mores Hess’s financial struggles and failing coal business that opened the door to the oil business for Leon, Mores’s earlier efforts starting shops in Asbury Park and trying his hand at real estate showed a willingness to try anything. That sense of daring, that willingness to innovate, the vision to see opportunities others had missed or weren’t
John Hess eulogy for Leon Hess.
O’Toole, “Leon Hess.”