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 bold enough to exploit – just the sheer chutzpah of believing in yourself enough to risk your livelihood on what you could dream possible – that was something Leon inherited in spades. While other boys might’ve looked at the many ways Mores tried his hand at business after business and blanched at the risk, Leon was brave enough to pick up the entrepreneurial torch, striking out on his own even in the depths of the Great Depression. Where did he get such confidence? Some who knew both Leon and his son, John, say that John is less of a risk-taker than Leon, perhaps a natural outcome when you are trying to preserve wealth rather than building it.
But Leon was not only an innovator, he was also extremely focused on details and appearances. “The first thing I look at on a tanker is the engine room bilge,” he told a reporter for BusinessWeek in 1987. “Clean bilges denote good housekeeping.” Right from the start, he made sure his trucks were kept clean, and employees learned early that working at a Hess facility meant painting and repainting to make everything look like new, whether it was huge storage tanks or the white curb on the Hess service stations. Leon realized early on that having the cleanest, safest-seeming gas stations was not only aesthetically pleasing, it could also provide a business advantage. As the family car and car trips were becoming more prevalent, and as women began driving more, it could be an easy choice for those looking for quick service and clean bathrooms, giving him a potential leg up on rivals who did not put as much emphasis on appearances.
Mores also instilled family loyalty in his sons – unlike his brothers, Leon turned down a scholarship to college to work for the family business, bringing it back to profitability after his parents’ bankruptcy. In turn, Leon made sure that Mores always had a role in his business – his father was employed by Hess Corp. into the 1950s. Even as his father aged, he still wrote checks for the company – which sometimes had pitfalls. One accountant remembers when an elderly Mores signed all of the week’s checks on the wrong side, forcing them to all be redone.
All of Mores and Ethel’s children went on to successful careers, some of them in New Jersey, some heading elsewhere to try their luck. Henry Hess, the oldest, had two children and moved to Miami Beach, where he worked as a salesman, and then vice president of an insurance company. His son Robert would attend Yale for his undergraduate and doctoral degrees, and became a scholar, specializing in African studies. Robert would eventually rise to become president of Brooklyn College, a position he held from 1979 to 1992. Robert was brought in to lead the public college after his predecessor was ousted. The prior president had served through a decade of upheaval – the college’s enrollment had risen to 35,400 students because of an open admission policy that lasted until 1974, and then crashed to just 17,500 two years later.19 Robert acknowledged that the college was a mess when he took over in 1979, and led it to a dramatic resurgence, working to smooth racial tensions and improve its academic offerings. Robert died of lymphoma in 1992.
(Beyond his tenure at Brooklyn College, Robert and his wife left the physical gift of The Hess Collection on Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa and the Robert L. Hess Collection on the Continent of Africa, both of which were donated to the school’s library after his wife’s death in 2015. Robert’s own children followed that more academic tradition, with two becoming professors, and one a teacher, while only one pursued business, going into accounting.)
Harry, the next eldest son, remained in New Jersey and had one daughter before eventually retiring to Florida.
The sole girl in the household, Rebecca, known as Betty, lived in Asbury Park and Deal for most of her life. She married Joseph Gilbert, and she became a teacher. Joseph and Betty had one son, Miles.
While Leon may have shared many of his father’s traits, the role-model who had the most influence over his life and his fortune was David Wilentz. A consummate politician and talker, David had the connections and the ability to show Leon the many ways in which the political system could be used for gain. Leon relied on David as one of his most trusted advisers.
When Leon left for World War II, putting David in charge of his business, David’s daughter Norma was newly married to Samuel Feder, a Philadelphia native who had graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard College before attending Harvard Medical School. Samuel served as Chief of Medicine at a station hospital on the Pacific front during the war. While Leon was in his early days of launching his fuel business, Samuel was a pathology fellow and medical and radiology resident at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, before doing a fellowship in psychiatry, the field he ultimately chose. The couple had one child, Constance, born in 1944.
Norma’s marriage to Samuel failed, and not long after the war David introduced Norma to Leon. He would later tell stories of borrowing the money to pay for a suit for their first date. The daughter of the attorney general, who had grown up with a great deal of privilege, was of a different class from the owner of the fledgling fuel business. But the two quickly bridged the gap, and David had blessed their union. A contemporary of Norma’s remembers that at the time she met Leon he was driving an oil truck, but was welcomed by the Wilentzes.
Leon married Norma in 1947, and they maintained a close relationship with her parents, taking vacations together and including them actively in their lives. Leon’s respect for David Wilentz was shown in business as well, where the father-in-law was brought on as a board member.
This second marriage for Norma, who was seven years younger than her husband, would be a lasting union. She was known for her intellect and strong support of Leon. New York Jets executive Steven Gutman tells a story about attending a play with Leon and Norma, and Leon becoming particularly animated when he was introduced to one of the comely ladies staring in the production. When he turned back to his wife as the starlet walked away, Norma said simply, with a smile: “I forgive you, Leon.”
“If Norma had been born in the era that we’re in today, no glass ceiling would’ve kept her from being whatever she wanted to become,” said Gutman, who socialized with the couple outside of his Jets responsibilities. Norma, he recalled,
Bruce Lambert, “Robert Hess, 59, Historian, Dies, Was Brooklyn College President,”
