Chapter 1
Hess Family

Leon Hess's family story is in many ways a well-worn tale of the American dream: an Eastern European Jewish immigrant comes to the United States, followed by other relatives, starts businesses to try to make a living, and leaves much of the old world behind. The family faced hardships and mishaps common from immigration in the early 1900s, including names distorted by officials who didn't speak their language, housing in crowded immigrant neighborhoods, an inability to use skills from the old country, and bankruptcy. In the second generation, though, the story takes a wild departure: filled with a unique mix of Depression-era creativity, World War II logistical knowledge, and inspiration from a powerful mentor, the youngest son would reimagine his father's failed business and establish himself as one of the richest men in the country.

In the first decade of the 1900s, immigrant families-particularly Jewish ones-flooded New York and New Jersey, overflowing available houses, apartments, and tenements from the Lower East Side to the Jersey Shore and beyond. They joined the garment industry or started small businesses as tailors, milliners, and peddlers.

The Hess family's story is in many ways indistinguishable from dozens of others: Mores Hess, a kosher butcher, came from Lithuania with little in 1904-a year that brought more than 1 million people to the United States. Like Mores, three quarters of all immigrants were bound for the New York area, while others disembarked at other large East Coast ports: Boston, Baltimore, and Philadelphia.1 His ship left Europe from Bremen, a popular departure point on Germany's northern coast, and was called the S.S. Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, named for the first emperor to rule a united Germany. The other passengers were mostly men, largely ranging in age from 27 to 56. Many were German, but the ship also carried Russians, Hungarians, and people of other nationalities. They were merchants and workers, but also an actor and a jurist. The ship's manifest appears slapdash, with lots of shorthand and empty columns, like many others of its time, a product of the sheer quantity of emigrant paperwork that faced European shipping lines. The manifest suggests that Mores carried over $50, and had never been in the United States before this passage. The exact reasons for his departure were not recorded, but can be imagined as the same ones that propelled many to leave Lithuania: religious freedom, the prospect of education for his children, and economic betterment. The wave of immigration from Lithuania to the United States had many drivers, and began before Mores headed to Bremen. The 1861 abolition of serfdom had increased the number of free people, who were able to leave the country at the same time, and the rising availability of railroads and other transit made it easier for Lithuanians to leave. A depressed farm economy and increased control from Russia also pushed immigrants out.

Two-thirds of the 1904 immigrants were male, like Mores, and 145,000 came from the Russian Empire, which then included Lithuania and Finland. Russia produced the largest group of immigrants behind Austro-Hungary and Italy. Half of those who came in 1904 had less than $50 to their name. Of the more than 18,000 Lithuanian immigrants, Mores was one of the relatively prosperous ones-only 531 carried more than $50. Only 18 of the Lithuanians had ever visited the United States before moving. Three quarters of the 1904 immigrants could read and write, though few spoke English. Together, the 1904 arrivals brought $25 million to the United States, but Jewish immigrants-noted in records of the time as "the Hebrews"-accounted for only $2.6 million of that inflow, whereas they made up far more than 10 percent of the émigrés. Those arriving in the United States were mostly young-under 45-and considered to be in their prime for working and contributing to the economy.2 They were screened at each point of the journey. Control stations had been set up in Germany's ports, aimed at preventing ill voyagers from bringing diseases like cholera, for which immigrants were blamed for an outbreak in the late 1800s. Steamship companies then reviewed the passengers' health again before boarding. Weeks later, they would be examined upon arrival in the United States, where centers like the immigration checkpoint at Ellis Island had been established to screen them. A handful were turned back for insanity, idiocy, or contagious disease. There was a pervasive skepticism about the potential ill effects of the immigration boom, so people were also turned back for being anarchists, paupers, or entering illegally. Still, the bulk of the immigrants were admitted to the United States, where a booming garment industry and other factories were ready to employ them.

The U.S. government did not expect the influx to boost the economy by much, though, as most immigrants continued to send earnings home. Like many others who arrived, Mores arrived in the United States alone and would have to work for the funds to bring in the family he had left behind in Lithuania. The manifest from the ship doesn't indicate whether he had relatives here with whom he planned to stay, or where he planned to live.

Mores was joined the next year by his wife, Ethel,3 and toddler son, Henry. The immigration boom was continuing, with 10,000 people a day admitted to New York during a particularly busy season for immigration. Early records of the Hess family after its arrival are sketchy, with different spellings of the family's name and birthdates for Mores4 on federal census documents suggesting that he could have been anywhere in his 20s or 30s at the time of his move. His family believed he was 34 when he arrived, which is consistent with his ship's manifest.5

A couple of years after her arrival, Ethel gave birth to their first daughter, Rebecca, who was born in Pennsylvania in 1907. The family then moved to New Jersey, where Mores started a fruit store in Asbury Park, and a second son, Harry, was born in 1909.

The 1910 census paints a sparse picture of their life: they rented a home on Springwood Avenue, a few doors down from where Mores's fruit store was located. The couple were listed as speaking Russian at home, and Mores could read, while Ethel could not. Ethel stayed at home caring for their three children while Mores worked. The census suggests that Ethel had also lost a child during the year between Rebecca's birth and Henry's, in an era where childbirth was risky for both mother and infant.

But the census document refers to Ethel and Mores as the Mayerowitz family, and calls their next-door neighbors Lewis and Mary Hess-they, too, were Russian grocers, with a daughter called Rebecca. It is possible that the census taker confused the names of the residents of the block. There are other possible explanations: a language barrier may have caused confusion between a census taker and two related families, or Mores may have been known in some circles as Mores Mayerowitz, and had changed his name to Hess to navigate life in the new country more easily, using it on the ship's manifest and his daughter's birth certificate. While the census leaves lots of room for conjecture and interpretation, city directories, photos, and property records make it clear that Mores and Ethel became established as the Hess family of Asbury Park. If Mores chose his family name, it was his fourth child who would go on to make it famous.

On March 14, 1914, Leon was born to Mores and Ethel in Asbury Park. On the day of his birth, 600 girls working in a Newark garment factory narrowly escaped a fire-poor working conditions had been highlighted by a 1911 fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in New York that killed 145 workers. Standard Oil's John Rockefeller was said to plan a $50 million donation with his newfound wealth. The British ocean liner Lusitania, one of the largest of the time, worked to set a new record for a speedy crossing of the Atlantic, a year before it would be sunk by the Germans during World War I.

Leon's first few years were spent in Asbury Park on the shore, where his father continued to work as a produce man and, eventually, as a butcher. While many immigrants in the New York area coped with cramped quarters and extended families lived in two-room tenements, Mores was successful in improving the accommodations for his family, buying a house by 1920 and arranging for all of his children to go to school, at a time when many others were forced to work from a young age.

On the eve of World War I, the United States still had an optimistic outlook, with President Woodrow Wilson expecting an economic revival in 1914, easing worries of an early depression.6 On a more local level, Mores's family likely had a positive outlook, too-10 years after their arrival in the United States, they had their own home and a profitable business.

The family survived traumas both local and international-the Hesses were insulated from a 1917 fire, which started in the swimming center on the boardwalk on Asbury Park's Ocean Avenue and swept through the town, fueled by 60-mile-an-hour sea gales. The damage encompassed a dozen blocks, and major hotels and boardinghouses were flattened, some by the flames and others by dynamite, as firefighters blasted homes to contain the blaze.

A 1918 outbreak of Spanish influenza infected more...