two sons were close to their father and their brother-in-law, Leon, as well. After graduating from Perth Amboy High School, Warren Wilentz, the elder son, attended the University of Virginia, interrupting his college education to fight in World War II, where he served in France and Germany before returning to school and graduating in 1946. He went to Rutgers for law school, and launched a career that resembled his father’s – by 1956 he was prosecutor for Middlesex County, New Jersey. Like Leon and David, Warren joined in the singing at family gatherings and was known to serenade the crowd with renditions of “Yea Boo” and “Heart of My Hearts.”
While starting to stake out his place in the political machine that his father had run in New Jersey, Warren was known for getting people jobs, occasionally passing them along to Hess Corp. When his cousin, Seymour Miller, approached him, looking to get out of routine accounting work and into something more interesting, Wilentz told him that his brother-in-law Leon was hiring and connected the two – Seymour would stay with Hess for four decades, serving in financial roles at the company. Warren later went into private practice, joining his father’s firm at Wilentz, Goldman and Spitzer. In that capacity, he became a trusted adviser to Hess Corp., providing legal guidance as needed.
David’s younger son, Robert, attended Princeton, taking two years off for the Navy, and then graduated from Harvard and Columbia Law School. Like his father and brother, he initially pursued politics, before going into law. Robert N. Wilentz was elected to the New Jersey Assembly in 1965 and served until 1969. Like his father, Robert considered running for governor, but opted against it in 1973.
Instead, Governor Brendan Byrne appointed Robert in 1979 to be chief justice of the Supreme Court of New Jersey, despite never having been a judge before. He held the position for nearly two decades, arguing for fairer courts free of gender discrimination. “There’s no room for gender bias in our system,” Justice Wilentz said. “There’s no room for the funny joke and the not-so-funny joke, there’s no room for conscious, inadvertent, sophisticated, clumsy, or any other kind of gender bias.”20
Robert’s court was known for its fairness and effectiveness in generating regulations (and getting the political machinery to support his decisions), and also for the consensus he was able to build. Through Robert’s smarts and persuasive demeanor, he was often able to achieve unanimous decisions. “Many consensuses were reached during 10-hour discussions in the Chief Justice’s chambers, in which he would ply the justices with pickled herring, lox, and coffee cake,” the New York Times wrote at the time of his death.
Robert’s effectiveness as a leader drew on the Wilentz family’s tradition of political leadership – Constance quipped that it was inherited, either through genes or cigar smoke. While Leon was never a politician, he also appropriated some of David’s leadership style, whether it was attention to sartorial details, a penchant for hard work and long days, or the ability to balance family and an all-encompassing job.
David and Leon continued to share a deep connection until David’s death in 1988, when those who remembered him recalled their special bond. “He didn’t mind rich people. He liked them, but the ones he really liked started out poor, like his son-in-law Leon, whom he loved,”21 said Robert Wilentz, speaking in a eulogy for his father.
Hess Corp. was fully established as Leon’s first child before he met Norma, and he spent long evenings and weekends dedicated to the company’s birth and early upbringing. At the time of their marriage, Ethel, Leon’s mother, was said to have warned Norma that “All Hess men are strong, so don’t let him get away with anything.”22 In their marriage, though, he adopted a more Wilentz-style balance of family and career.
After they wed in 1947, Norma supported his career while prevailing upon him to spend more time with their family, which at first included Constance, Norma’s daughter from her previous marriage. Their family then grew with the birth of Marlene in 1948 and John in 1954. All three were treated equally as Leon’s own children. “If you were with Marlene and Connie and John, those were his children. The fact Connie was not his biological child didn’t matter to him,” said Gutman.
Just as David Wilentz had balanced a demanding career with dinner at home each evening, Leon strove to do the same, sometimes returning to his office for long hours at night after spending time with his wife and children. Norma and Leon formed a partnership in which she was his closest, most trusted partner in navigating problems, even in business.23
“You knew when you were in their presence that they were a team and that there was a great deal of love and respect between them,” Gutman said. “She could count on Leon for being a kind of father and provider and life creator. And he could count on her for making sure she took care of all the family-related obligations and represented them well.”
As a young girl in the 1950s, Marlene said she remembered wearing her pajamas, robe, and slippers and returning to Leon’s office with him after dinner. This was before the company’s headquarters had moved to Woodbridge, and it was still based in trailers in Perth Amboy. He would let her sit at the desk of Bernie Deverin, the company’s vice president who shared an office with Leon, and play with the adding machine. Then he would nod at her, and she would get them each a bottle of Coke for a dime out of the building’s vending machine, and then they would talk while drinking the cold soda.24
The company remained in the background of the family’s activities, with Hess corporate values and Hess family values of philanthropy, hard work, and total commitment deeply intertwined.
For his role as a father, the billionaire magnate is remembered for highly ordinary things: taking his children to the office, attending swim meets, and making a legendary fish soup at holiday celebrations – a family secret combo of the freshest catch from the New Jersey docks, for which there is no exact recipe. The family would spend every Sunday afternoon together, either driving to visit the Hesses in Loch Arbour or going to the rides, one of which was operated by Ethel Hess’s relatives. The family would also go on vacations, joining David and Lena Wilentz.
Outside of the office, Leon impressed those around him with his ability to be there for his children while still running an increasingly major company – at summer swim meets, he would arrive at the beach club just in time to see John swim, and would then get back into his car, where a driver was waiting to whisk him away. The ability to coordinate timing impeccably in an age before cell phones or text messages was perceived as unique, and created a mystique around Leon as he balanced parenting and corporate life.
Leon had a lighter side at home, too: home from college on vacation, Marlene came in to find her bed shortsheeted (a practice that involves folding the sheets in a way that the unsuspecting sleeper is unable to fully stretch out in bed). She assumed her brother John was responsible for the prank, but didn’t complain. The next night, it happened again, and she confronted John, who denied it. The third night, her bed was again shortsheeted, and the lamp from the bedside table was tucked into the sheets. “I started to plead with John to stop the torture, only to realize that the newspaper was shaking in my father’s hands and he was laughing hysterically. I couldn’t believe it – and always wondered where he learned to shortsheet a bed,” Marlene said in her reminiscences about her father.
Despite their relative privilege, his children recall a normal home life, with regular generational struggles. Constance remembers challenging his beliefs in the 1960s. He would get angry, and send his children to their rooms, but later would always come to apologize following one of his favorite lessons: “Turn the page.”25
On
David Stout, “Robert Wilentz, 69, New Jersey Chief Justice, Dies; Court Aided Women and the Poor,”
Robert Wilentz eulogy for David Wilentz.
John Hess eulogy for Leon Hess.
Marlene Hess eulogy for Leon Hess.
Marlene Hess eulogy for Leon Hess.
Constance Hess eulogy for Leon Hess.
