William Hewitt
 William Hewitt    (businessman) | |
|---|---|
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| Born | August 9, 1914 |
| Died | May 16, 1998 (Age 83) |
| Nationality | US |
| Alma mater | University of California at Berkeley, Harvard Business School |
| Member of | Bohemian Grove, Pacific-Union Club, Trilateral Commission |
John Deere's sixth president. Attended 3 Bilderbergs in the early 1960s
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William Hewitt was John Deere's sixth president. Marrying the daughter of Charles Deere Wiman, Hewitt the last Deere family member to lead the company. He attended 3 Bilderbergs in the early 1960s.
Contents
Early life
William Alexander Hewitt was born in San Francisco, California, on August 9, 1914, to a prosperous family that had arrived from England in 1883. William's father, Edward T. Hewitt of San Francisco, operated the Hewitt-Ludlow Auto Company, which manufactured trucks, tractor-trailers, and fire engines until 1930. William's mother Jeannette Brun Hewitt was born to the Brun family of Napa Valley, California. His maternal grandmother and grandfather Brun were descendants of French winemakers who arrived in 1882.[1][2]
Hewitt attended Lowell High, graduating in 1931 at the age of 16. After graduating, he worked for two years as a messenger for the American Trust Company to save money for college tuition. Hewitt's father died the same year William started at University of California, Berkeley.[3]
In 1937 Hewitt graduated from the UC Berkeley as a member of Alpha Delta Phi fraternity, with a Bachelor of Arts in economics and a minor in political science. After graduating he attend Harvard Business School for a year, but he lacked the funds to complete a graduate degree and returned to California. He took a job with the accounting department of Standard Oil of California in San Francisco (1938–1939), and then with Texaco in 1939. In 1940 he worked as a copywriter for Roos Brothers, a men's clothing chain in San Francisco.[3][4][5] Immediately after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hewitt joined the Navy, commissioned as an ensign.
Family life
After the war, Hewitt took a job as territory manager for Ford-Ferguson Equipment Distributor. While representing Ford, he was invited by a former Alpha Delta Phi fraternity member to a wedding in Santa Barbara with other members of their fraternity. During his stay, he met Patricia Deere Wiman.[3] Tish, as she was known, was the daughter of Pattie Harris Southall Wiman and Colonel Charles Deere Wiman, President of Deere & Company. She was the great-great-granddaughter of the founder Deere & Company.[6]
Hewitt and Patricia married in 1948. In 1955, the couple moved to Moline, Illinois, where Hewitt became chief executive officer of Deere & Company after working for them in San Francisco. They had three children. Twin girls, Adrienne Deere and Anna Deere Hewitt, were born on July 17, 1955. Alexander Southall Hewitt was born on July 15, 1957[1].
While the children attended St. Katherine's School, Patricia worked at her Rock Ridge home and at Friendship Farms, their 375-acre equestrian horse farm for breeding and training Arabian horses and growing grains and feed. Patricia was an award-winning equestrian, long distance horse rider, horse jumping trainer, published photographer, and philanthropist. Her charity work focused on the Red Cross during and after World War II and later on environmental, social causes, and civil rights. "Active in charitable organizations, she sought to fight AIDS, to help disabled children and to ease the plight of American Indians."[7] She held meetings for civil rights leaders in her home and organized volunteers and provided disaster relief for families and farmers across the country.[7]
Modern-day father of Deere & Company, 1948–1982
Hewitt was the fifth chief executive officer and last representative of the Deere family to run the company. During his tenure at Deere & Company, Hewitt turned the small domestic company into the world's leading farm equipment manufacturer with sales of over $5 billion.[8]
In 1948 Hewitt took a job the San Francisco branch of Deere & Company and was elected to the board of directors in 1950.[9] He was named as executive vice president in 1954 and upon the death of Charles Deere Wiman in May 1955, succeeded him as chief executive officer and president. At the time Deere & Company was a domestic manufacturer with $339 million in yearly sales.[10]
Hewitt worked to build a robust brand and worked closely with the firm's public relations department to increase consumer awareness of their products. Deere & Company soon offered a new line of four tractors, rated with the smallest at under 36 Power Take-off horsepower, with the largest at 84 horsepower. All four models had power steering and the two largest had hydraulic power brakes. New transmissions were designed for all four, and all sizes had a choice of gasoline, diesel, or LP engines. The agricultural press and farmers were enthusiastic about the products.[11]
During Hewitt's early administration the company made an aggressive move into international markets, which ushered in a time of growth.[3] While on vacation in France in the late 1940s he had been shocked to see some farmers still using a horse or oxen and a plow. Competitors were expanding abroad, but Deere & Company had a less than dozen manufacturing entities in the United States and one in Canada. He convinced the board and got approval for international expansion in 1955.[3] The first international venture, in 1956, was the German tractor company Heinrich Lanz AG. He went to Mannheim, Germany, to negotiate the purchase.[12][13] Acquisitions or plant constructions followed in France, Spain, Argentina, Mexico, and South Africa. Hewitt struggled with unforeseen problems with foreign exchange, Communism, and apartheid-related problems.[14]
In South Africa, while many companies were divesting from Africa and pulling out, he believed that a foreign presence "could apply pressure to implement change" and that he could work to eliminate inequities. He started cautiously in the 1960s, but by the 1970s he had pushed hard to make the Deere plant in Nigel, Gauteng a model for moving black workers into management. Apartheid leaders pressured black workers not to show up to work. Hewitt helped the black township of Duduza, where the workers lived, to upgrade the schools by working with the government and providing grants to build a new school. When Nelson Mandela became president, the Deere South African plant became significantly profitable. Hewitt continued to expand in Canada, Western Europe, and Latin America.[10]
Hewitt described ]]Russia]] as a reluctant customer. In the 1920s and early 1930s, Deere sold huge quantities of agricultural machinery to the Soviet Union, but sales then dried up. When Khrushchev visited the U.S. in 1959, he made a surprise visit to Deere & Company, which prompted a small sale to the U.S.S.R. and encouraged Hewitt to make efforts to increase sales to that country.[13] In 1972 a Deere delegation visited the Soviet Union. After many trips, Hewitt learned that the Soviets were more interested in cotton harvesting equipment than plowing and planting. With this knowledge, Hewitt developed a lighter and faster tractor for cotton harvesting. The Soviet government was ready to agree to the purchase, the Carter administration declared an embargo on shipments of American products to the Soviet Union and the deal fell through.[10]
Later actvities
William Hewitt retired in 1982, and was named as US/Ambassador to Jamaica that year. He hosted President Ronald Reagan for first ever overnight visit by a sitting US President.
He died in 1998 at the age of 83.
Events Participated in
| Event | Start | End | Location(s) | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bilderberg/1961 | 21 April 1961 | 23 April 1961 | Canada Quebec St-Castin | The 10th Bilderberg, the first in Canada and the 2nd outside Europe. |
| Bilderberg/1962 | 18 May 1962 | 20 May 1962 | Sweden Saltsjöbaden | The 11th Bilderberg meeting and the first one in Sweden. |
| Bilderberg/1963 | 29 March 1963 | 31 March 1963 | France Cannes Hotel Martinez | The 12th Bilderberg meeting and the second one in France. |
References
- ↑ a b William Alexander Hewitt, editor, Brun Family, Napa Valley, from 1874 Hewitt Family, San Francisco, from 1882. (Rutherford, CA: 1989, 605 pages: illustrated (some color) ISBN 9780866911269)
- ↑ https://familysearch.org/eng/library/fhlcatalog/supermainframeset.asp?display=titledetails&titleno=2337426&disp=Brun+family%2C+Napa+valley%2C+from+1874%
- ↑ a b c d e http://ibhf.org/laureates/william-hewitt/
- ↑ https://www.reaganlibrary.archives.gov/archives/speeches/1982/81882a.htm
- ↑ http://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=SFC19081201.2.117
- ↑ https://www.si.com/vault/2001/08/06/308499/tractor-pull-to-save-the-endangered-quad-cities-tournament-da-weibring-helped-seed-a-deal-among-the-areas-first-family-its-biggest-employer-and-the-tour
- ↑ a b http://articles.philly.com/1992-11-29/news/26009306_1_memorial-service-disabled-children-brandywine-river-museum
- ↑ http://m.sfgate.com/news/article/William-A-Hewitt-3005974.php
- ↑ Broehl, Wayne G., Jr. John Deere's Company. New York: Doubleday and Company, 1984, page 606
- ↑ a b c Broehl, Wayne G., Jr. John Deere's Company. New York: Doubleday and Company, 1984.
- ↑ Forbes magazine, March 1, 1961
- ↑ http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Deere__Company.aspx
- ↑ a b https://www.deere.com/en_US/docs/Corporate/fans_visitors/publications/plowshare_issue28.pd
- ↑ David Magee, The John Deere Way: Performance That Endures, Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2005. ISBN 978-0-471-70644-1, page 61
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