The Hershey Kiss

I eat Hershey's kisses everyday with my tea or coffee. It's my chocolate compromise. Not too fatty and melts in your mouth with a nice hot cup of mint tea or dunkin donuts coffee. Today i learned a little more about the man behind the morsel. And he was not a capitalist corporate tycoon, as one--namely myself--might stereotypically think.

He was, in fact, a man born in the mid 19th century who took up candy making, opened a candy store and failed...yes, utterly failed after six years. He was at the time only 24. He continued to seek candy making business and ventures through the years until learning the value of fresh milk when combined with carmel. By the turn of the century, he'd become so successful, he sold his candy making carmel company for $1 million. He also fell in love with a woman fifteen years his junior (not unlike the age difference between yours truly and dh). So, at 40 and 25, they married; and he was said to be as devoted to his lovely wife as he was to his chocolates, which he continued to make despite the sale of the carmel company. He went on to build a large chocolate manufacturing company and village and bank and department store and park and zoo and churches and golf courses--a whole community, literally.

Him and his wife were also said to have been deeply saddened by their infertility that they quietly built a school for orphaned boys, for which they devoted much of their energy. It wasn't until the wife's death did it become widely known that they had donated their fortune to a trust that runs that school.

Today, the Milton Hershey School sits on 10,000 acres, owns 31.4% of Hershey Foods, controls 76% of the corporation's voting shares, owns 100% of Hershey Entertainment and Resort, and is home to 1100 boys and girls.

Now, that's a legacy. You can have failures in your life. You can suffer infertility--be childless and completely cutoff from progeny--and still be one of the most widely recognized names on the planet and a great philanthropic humanitarian well after you're gone.