Our Own Hall of Fame
GEORGE HOUK MEAD
HOLE-IN-ONE AT 71
Empire of Paper Built by Mead
DAYTON DAILY NEWS FEBRUARY 21, 1961
BY MARY ELLEN LYNCH
Daily News Staff Writer
By the time he was 70, George Houk Mead had guided a once-small paper company to a position of national leadership, and he had made a hole-in-one.
Mead, one of the nation’s foremost paper industry executives, also carved out a career of government service that spanned (although he is a Republican) two Democratic administrations.
WHEN THE native Daytonian was graduated from Hobart college in 1897 he came home to go to work on a machine (11 hours on the day shift or 13 on the night shift) at the paper company his grandfather had founded.
A year later Mead was at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology working toward a degree in chemical engineering which he won in 1900. Then came two years in Boston and an assignment at the Mead Co.’s Chillicothe mill where he was chemist, then foreman, then manager.
He left the family business again to supervise the construction of a silk mill in Philadelphia and serve briefly as general manager. But in 1905 he was back in Chillicothe and back in the paper industry for good.
He presided over a reorganization of the business, became vice president and general manager of the Mead Corp., and in 1912 was named president—a post he held until 1948 when he retired with the title of honorary chairman.
WHEN MEAD became head of the business, the balance sheet showed total assets of $438,909. Last year they topped the $85 million mark. Under his guidance the corporation gradually expanded until today it has more than a score of companies associated with it making paper products and by-products such as tanning liquids and electric power.
Mead also played a key role in forming the Abitibi Power and Paper Co., Ltd., of Canada—one of the largest producers of newsprint in the western hemisphere.
When the depression hit, Mead—like a lot of others—wanted to know what was wrong with the nation’s economy. In 1933 he jumped in actively to help find out as a member of the Business Advisory council named by Daniel Roper, first secretary of commerce in the Roosevelt administration.
Mead felt that government was everybody’s business, no matter what party was in power. And he made it his business, serving as a valued adviser to the Commerce department until 1945.
In his private life he found time for top-notch polo (he is honorary treasurer of the U. S. Polo association), golf (he helped to lay out the first course in Dayton,) tennis, shooting and horses.
WHEN WORLD War II came, he accepted membership on the National Defense Mediation board and National Labor board. Then he helped pilot the country’s return to peace-time economy as a member of the War Mobilization and Reconversion board, the Economic stabilization board and the OPA Decontrol board. In the alphabet agencies, Mead was ubiquitous.
In 1947 President Truman drew on the Daytonian’s skills by naming him to the Hoover commission on reorganization of the executive branch of the federal government.
A glutton for work, Mead also was a member of the 12-man public advisory board of the Economic Cooperation administration—the agency that implemented the Marshall Plan.
An early and vocal advocate of the United Nations, the now-83-year-old Mead helped to found the Dayton Council on World Affairs and has been honored by that group as “the person in the Miami Valley who has contributed most to international understanding.”
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