Leon Hess
Businessman, sports team owner
Born: March 14, 1914, in Asbury Park, New Jersey
Died: May 7, 1999, in New York City
New Jersey Hall of Fame, Class of 2011: Enterprise
Among New Jersey sports fans, Leon Hess was appreciated as much for bringing the football Jets to the Garden State as he was for building a small fuel-delivery company into a global energy powerhouse.
Hess was born to an immigrant father who had trained as a kosher butcher in his native Lithuania. Coming to America, the elder Hess settled in New Jersey and started his fuel-delivery service. During the Great Depression, the service went bankrupt. The younger Hess, just 19 and a delivery driver for the company, took over the business, reorganized its debt, and started it on a path to growth.
With Leon Hess at the helm, the company built an oil terminal in Perth Amboy and began winning government energy contracts. When World War II broke out, Hess entered the military. Rising to the rank of major, Hess played a crucial, if unheralded role in the European Theater as a fuel-supply officer to the famed tank commander General George S. Patton.
Returning to civilian life, Hess, now skilled in logistics, built his company’s first oil refinery and in 1960 opened the first Hess service station. In the early 1960s, he also built what was then the world’s largest oil refinery in St. Croix, the Virgin Islands.
In 1963, Hess took his company public and eventually used the proceeds to acquire Amerada Petroleum Corporation, a huge producer of crude oil. Hess merged the two companies into a new entity, Amerada Hess Corporation, and took the title of chairman and CEO, which he held until 1995.
In addition to building a major petroleum company, Hess created a cultural phenomenon with his toy Hess tanker trucks. Introduced in 1964, the battery-powered trucks have become ever-more elaborate and continue to draw crowds to Hess stations every holiday season.
Hess entered the sports world in 1963 with a $250,000 investment in a weak football team then known as the New York Titans, later renamed the Jets. By 1984, Hess had full control of the team. Unhappy with conditions at New York’s Shea Stadium, Hess moved the franchise to the New Jersey Meadowlands. As an owner, Hess was admired for his support of his players and his fervent desire to build a winning team. On the field, the results were mixed. Although the Hess-era Jets made eight playoff appearances, they never won a Super Bowl.
Having amassed incredible wealth, Hess was a dedicated philanthropist. The New York Times described him as “one of the New York area’s foremost cultural patrons,” citing his support for the Manhattan’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Charitable causes he supported included the Boys Clubs of America. The Leon Hess Business School at Monmouth University in Long Branch is among the institutions dedicated to his memory.
Hess never forgot his Jersey roots or his love for the Jersey Shore. In his later years, he had homes in Deal and Long Branch—always an easy trip to the Meadowlands to see his beloved Jets.
Connie Hess Williams, daughter
Place he loved best, and where he always came back, was the Jersey shore.
Summer home in Deal; later apartment in Long Branch