Hall of Fame - 1995

Inducted 1995

Some made it into the Dansville Hall of Fame as outstanding business leaders. Some made it in as outstanding civic leaders.  “Tim” Shay more than qualified on both counts.

Harold Shay was born in Ossian in 1913.  His father, Lloyd Shay, was a notable area farmer and businessman who, around 1918, purchased a new REO Speed Wagon and began trucking produce and livestock not only from his own farm, but also from his neighbors’. After attending the University of Alabama, young Harold became his father’s business partner in their various business ventures. In 1936, they purchased a tract of land on North Main Street upon which they would headquarter their shipping business, officially dubbed Shay’s Service Trucking Company. For decades, the fleet of semi-trucks with the distinctive SHAY’s blazoned on the side would be a familiar fixture on the area roadways. They also founded the Shay Oil Company which transported petroleum products from the Pennsylvania oil field. Other business ventures in those early years included a restaurant (1936-1942), a car dealership in the late 1940s, and a share of the Dansville Furniture Company which operated for many years out of the old Eagle Hotel on Jefferson Street.

After Lloyd’s death in 1950, Harold (who married Margaret Bacon in 1941) continued to oversee the family’s business holdings. Yet another Main Street venture, Main Tire Exchange, was launched in 1972, and would later expand to Rochester and Buffalo. In the early 1960s, he was instrumental to expanding the Brae Burn golf course into the Brae Burn Recreational facility with its new clubhouse that included a bowling alley and dining hall. (Shay was an avid golfer and bowler, although how he found the time to do either, given all his activities, was something of a miracle.) He was a founding member of the Dansville Fish & Game Club, which in 1945 obtained the land at Deer Park where their clubhouse would later be built. And he was the first president of the Livingston County Chamber of Commerce.

But wait, there’s more. Shay was a town councilman and town supervisor, a president of the Dansville Exchange Club, a member and president of the Board of Education, a trustee of the Dansville Presbyterian Church, a member of the advisory board of the Monroe Savings Bank, president of the local United Fund Campaign, and active with the Steuben Area Council of Boy Scouts and the Protective Fire Company.

He was also on the board of the old Dansville Memorial Hospital on Main Street and when, in the late 1960s, overcrowding at that facility necessitated the construction of a new facility, he donated the land upon which Noyes Memorial Hospital was built.  He personally arranged the construction of the access roads that lead to the hospital.  And, after buying the old hospital property after it had been vacated, Tim turned it over to be converted into an affordable housing project, now known as Faulkner Apartments.

In short, there was very little going on in Dansville in the second half of the 20th century to which Harold A. Shay did not make a significant contribution.

Inducted 1995

A special certificate, presented to Thomas P. Reilly in October 1959, pretty much says it all:

SCIENTIFIC AWARD

The American Horticulture Council through its Board of Directors
presents this citation to you,
Thomas P. Reilly
of Dansville, New York
for demonstrating in a practical way that plants could be fertilized through their leaves; for being the first to develop and market an effective plant food for foliar feeding; and for opening the way to a new cultural practice in horticulture.

Born in Dansville, Reilly was the son of nurseryman Patrick Reilly, who founded the Reilly & Sons Nursery in 1898 when his son was still just thirteen; they specialized in growing fruit trees.  One of young Tom’s daily chores the was hauling around of heavy bags of fertilizer, which led him to wonder: wasn’t there a better way to feed plants?  The search for an answer would dominate his life.

Even as he took over the family business in the 1900s, Reilly spent his spare time pursuing this goal.  His theory (which met with considerable skepticism in scientific circles) was that plants could take in nutrition through the leaves – the “foliar feeding” mentioned in his citation.  It took a quarter century, but in 1932, he announced success: a water soluble formula that provided plants with essential nutrients including nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium.  It still took several years for Reilly to successfully market his invention, but in 1938 his “miracle plant food,” Ra-Pid-Gro, finally hit the shelves in Woolworth stores, packaged in ten-cent packets.  They were filled and sealed by Reilly and a handful of employees including his future wife Frances.  (Ra-Pid-Gro made its Dansville debut in 1939 at the George E. Kern hardware store.)  Sales remained modest until after World War II.

Despite its seeming effectiveness, experts remained skeptical, regarding Ra-Pid-Gro as the Horticulture equivalent of snake-oil tonic. Vindication for Reilly finally came in 1954 when government experiments using radioactive isotopes finally proved conclusively that foliar feeding was for real. Since then, of coarse the plant food industry has become a multi million dollar business – and it all began with Ra-Pid-Gro. (In 1980, the company was bought by Chevron, Which would eventually retire the Ra-Pid-Gro brand name in favor of one of its own trademarks, Ortho.) Reilly died in 1965; in 1982, the Thomas P. Reilly Medical Arts Building, part of the Noyes Memorial Hospital facility, opened, in large part funded by a million-dollar contribution by his wife Frances.

Inducted 1995

Sometime around the year 1900, a pair of teenage brothers were spotted in a sheep’s pasture on the outskirts of Dansville, trying to knock little balls into flowerpots with sticks…a game they picked up in college, but which was still largely unfamiliar to most ordinary folks. Within months, the local papers had taken note of the growing popularity of the game, and the owners of the Jackson Sanatorium, who saw the value to their patients of this not-overly-taxing outdoor activity, rushed in to take over what would soon be given the name “Brae Burn.”

The boys were the Noyes brothers, Jansen and Nicholas, and no one could have imagined that, three-quarters of a century later, one of the lads who had introduced golf to Dansville would see his name on a million-dollar hospital, just a wedge shot away from the sheep’s pasture in question.

The Noyes’ family had been one of Dansville’s most elite families practically from the day that Daniel W. Noyes (Nicholas’ grandfather) arrived in town in 1849 to launch his law practice. Nicholas, born in Dansville in 1883, graduated from Cornell in 1906, married Marguerite Lilly in 1908, and joined the Eli Lilly pharmaceutical company in 1910, headquartered in Indianapolis, where he and his wife would live for most of their lives. He quickly rose in the company’s ranks, becoming vice-president and director in 1913.

In addition to Eli Lilly, Noyes would become president of the Paper Package Company (1919-1947) and director of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago (1933-1951). Noyes would become one of the wealthiest people ever to have been born in Dansville; in his later years, he would be enormously generous with his money. Both his own Alma mater, Cornell, and that of his wife, Vassar, would receive generous contributions. A residence hall on the Vassar campus would be named after Nicholas’ mother, Emma Hartman Noyes.

Nor was his hometown overlooked. He contributed generously to the Dansville Public Library, giving a memorial fund named after his father, Frederick W. Noyes. (Frederick was one of the key figures in the library’s early history.) In 1949, he and his siblings donated the old family residence on Elizabeth Street to the Dansville Red Cross as a headquarters, in memory of their mother Emma Hartman.

But Noyes’ most noteworthy contribution came in 1970 as Dansville was attempting to raise money for a new hospital building to replace the woefully overcrowded hospital on Main Street, He and Foster Wheeler both contributed $100,000 to the project. That date, they were the largest charitable contributions in Dansville history. His reaction on learning that the hospital would be named after him was (in a letter to attorney Helen Pratt): “I appreciate very greatly the thought of naming the hospital with my name, although I would much prefer that it not be identified just that way.”

Nicholas Noyes died in 1977 at the age of 94. And he never lost his love of golf.

Link to Cornell University:  Nicholas H. Noyes ’06 and Marguerite Lilly Noyes

2013 Donation from Nicholas H. Noyes Jr. Memorial Foundation

In his biography, Mr. America, Mark Adams was probably accurate when he wrote, “Dansville is surely the only town in America where most of the residents recognize the name Bernarr Macfadden.”  He goes on to call Macfadden “arguably the most influential figure in the history of this nation’s love-hate relationship with exercise.”  In addition to our own Hall of Fame, Macfadden is also ensconced in the National Fitness Hall of Fame, Along such names as Charles Atlas, Jack Lelanne, and John Harvey Kellogg.

Bernard McFadden (his birth name, which he would “edit” later in life) was born in Missouri to parents who both died when he was young; he spent most of his unhappy childhood being passed back and forth between uncaring relatives. As a teenager, he discovered bodybuilding, which led to an early career as a barnstorming professional wrestler.

Embracing physical fitness, or “physical culture” as it was also known, Macfadden relocated to New York City where he developed a new style of cord-and-pulley exercise machine called the Macfadden Exerciser.  Partly as a means of promoting his device, in 1899 he launched a modest periodical called Physical Culture.

The magazine was an immediate success, no doubt due in large part to the photographs of health-looking men and women wearing as little as the publisher could get away with.  In no time, Macfadden had become one of America’s leading health experts;  his ideas on proper diet largely echoed those of fellow DAHS Hall of Famer James Caleb Jackson, Macfadden would be a constant nemesis of the medical establishment which disagreed with him on a number of health issues (Macfadden, for example, was firmly against vaccination).

But the event that catapulted him into the upper echelon of publishing moguls was the introduction, in 1919, of True Story, the first of the “confessional” magazines that proliferated in the mid-20th century. Reaching a circulation of over two million within a decade, True Story made Macfadden a millionaire and allowed him to spread his wings in ventures ranging from movies and radio to restaurants and hotels

His association with Dansville began in 1929 when he purchased the old Jackson Sanatorium building, which had fallen on hard times since the Jackson family abandoned it in 1917. He rechristened it the Physical Culture Hotel and put the full force of the Macfadden publicity machine behind its revival. Under his ownership, the “P.C.” would enjoy a level of popularity that would rival the Jackson-era golden years, despite the economic ravages of the great Depression. It would be the crown jewel of Macfadden’s holdings and was the focal point of some of his most famous publicity stunts, including his series of “cracked wheat derby” walkathons of the late 1930’s, in which he, and dozens of cereal-eating devotees, walked from New York City (or Philadelphia, or Cleveland, depending on the year) to Dansville, with the press following every step of the way. And in 1949, to celebrate his 81st birthday, he undertook his first parachute jump over the Dansville valley.

Late in life, personal financial reversals would result in the loss of most of his holding, but he would retain possession of his beloved Physical Culture Hotel up to his death in 1955 at the age of 87.

Inducted 1995

Several successful buisinessmen are listed among the Dansville Hall of Famers; but it’s safe to say that more Dansvillians worked for this mans company than anyone elses in the village’s history.

Pell Foster was born in New York City; his father William Foster Jr., was president of the first elevated railroad company in New York. He was also owner of the Retsof salt mine, which was founded in 1883 (Retsof, of course in Foster spelled backwards). That same year, Pell Foster graduated from the School of Mines at Columbia University, and would be employed as an engineer at his father’s mine, and would utilize his know-how to help make Retsof the nations largest supplier of rock salt. In 1897 he married Anne Williams, daughter of John C. Williams of Dansville (Who himself the son-in-law of another Hall of Famer, Dr. James Faulkner).

But Pell Foster had ambitions beyond salt mining. Together with his cousin Ernest, in 1894 he founded the American Waterworks Supply Company, and in begun studying the new superheater technology from Europe. their efforts culminated in 1902 with the Foster Steam Superheater, the first supperheater made in the U. S., which recieved U. S. Patent #744323. They also gave their company a new name, Power Specialty Company. To Manufacture their new product, they contracted, and eventually took over, the George Sweet Manufacturing Company in Comminsville, which had previously specialized in farm machinery and steam engines. The plant would officially take the Power Specialty name in 1914.

Yet another name change would occur in 1927, when Power Specialty merged with New Jersey-based Wheeler Condenser & Energy Company to form Foster Wheeler Corporation. For much of the rest of the 20th century, Foster Wheeler would be Dansville’s largest employer, reaching its peak during World War II, when well over a thousand people worked to supply boilers for Navy battleships.

Pell Foster served as Foster Wheeler’s chairman of the board until his retirement in 1935; he died just a week shy of his 85th birthday, at his winter residence in Arizona. The Property in Dansville which had beloged to his father-in-law John Williams he bequeathed to the village; in 1963 it was formally dedicated as Williams Memorial Park.

James Hathaway Jackson, the subject of this sketch, has been for forty-four years a citizen of Dansville, and intimately connected with the Jackson Sanatorium, in its foundation, growth and development. His great great great grandfather was Lieutenant John Jackson, an inn keeper of Cambridge, Mass., who inherited the Brattle street lands of his uncle Richard Jackson, and who was active in Cambridge affairs from 1660 to 1690, and a member of Major Appleton's company in the Narragansett war. His great great grandfather was Deacon John Jackson, born in Weston, Mass.; and who was one of the first settlers of Tyrringham, Mass. His great grandfather was Col. Giles Jackson of Monterey, Mass., who was major of the first Berkshire regiment of of the Massachusetts militia, and served in the Revolutionary war, being a member of the staff of General Horatio Gates at the Battle of Saratoga, and had the honor of engrossing the terms of capitulation which General Burgoyne signed upon his surrender to General Gates. His grandfather was James Jackson, physician, surgeon and farmer of Manlius, Onondaga County, New York. He was post surgeon at Sackett Harbor in the war of 1812. His father was Dr. James Caleb Jackson, a sketch of whom will be found in this history. On his mother's side he was a descendant of Elder William Brewster and Gov. William Bradford of the Pilgrim Fathers, his mother being the daughter of Judge Elias Brewster of Mexico, N. Y.

Born and reared until the age of seven years in the town of Peterboro, Madison county, N. Y., he then with his father went to Glen Haven, Cayuga county, where he lived until 1858, being 17 years of age the fall he came to Dansville. He attended school in the old brick schoolhouse under Prof. Seager, and afterwards finished his education at the Dansville seminary under the same teacher. He graduated from Eastman's Commercial college in the spring of 1861, and became the cashier and bookkeeper of is father's institution in the month of May of that year, and the next year became superintendent and general business manager, which office he held without interruption or any interregnum until 1883, when for three years the management passed into the hands of William E. Leffingwell, under the new organization of the Sanatorium. In 1864 he married Katherine Johnson, daughter of Hon. Emerson Johnson of Sturbridge, Mass., who afterwards came to live with his son-in-law. On the death of his brother Giles E. Jackson he became a partner in 1864 in the institution, who business he continued to manage. In 1873 he began his medical studies, graduating in the spring of 1876 from the Bellevue Hospital Medical college of New York City, and at once entered upon a professional career as his father's first assistant on the medical staff of the institution. His father's declining health gave him a leading position on the staff from 1882 onward. In the year 1888 he bought out his partners, the brothers Leffingwell, and became sole owner of the great institution. He, however, at once associated with himself in the ownership and management of the institution Dr. Walter E. Gregory and his wife, Mrs. Helen Davis Gregory. On May 4, 1868, James Arthur Jackson was born, the only son of Dr. James H. and Katherine Jackson, who early became associated with his father in the business of the institution, and was admitted to ownership and to the directorate of it in 1900.