Hershey, PA

For Deanna Bernardini of Hershey, Pa., life is sweet.

A 43-year veteran at Hershey’s chocolate manufacturing plant, Bernardini savors routine. She leaves her mountain view apartment and arrives at work at 6:20 every morning. After a cup of coffee in the cafeteria with co-workers, she punches in and begins packing candy.

“I enjoy my job,” says the native of Hershey, a town of 12,771. “I enjoy being around the employees. We have a good time.”

When Bernardini began working there in 1958, right out of high school, all the packing and wrapping were done by hand. These days a machine does the wrapping after the chocolate leaves a cooling tunnel, but she still packs.

Candy, of course, is the town’s chief claim to fame. On Chocolate Avenue, the streetlights are shaped like Kisses and the air smells like chocolate. “Another interesting smell is roasting peanuts at the Reese’s factory on the other end of town,” says Matthew Loser, director of information technology for Hersheypark—the town’s second claim to fame.

Hershey—promoted as the sweetest place on Earth—had humble origins. Milton Snavely Hershey, born on a Pennsylvania farm in 1857, bought a cornfield in the Lebanon Valley in 1903 and founded what would become one of the largest chocolate and cocoa factories in the world.

Before that, however, the entrepreneur with a fourth-grade education had his failures. After apprenticing with a Lancaster, Pa., candy maker, he established his first candy business in Philadelphia. It failed, as did two later endeavors in Chicago and New York. But in 1883, he opened a caramel company in Lancaster, selling it for $1 million in 1900 to focus on chocolate—and to build a town dedicated to making it.

His company town sprang up around the factory in the hills of Pennsylvania Dutch country. The idea—cooked up by Hershey himself—included providing comfortable homes, public transportation, good schools, and recreational and cultural opportunities.

“He was a man who believed it was his obligation to take his blessings and put them to use for others,” says Hershey archivist Pam Whitenack.

The second building in town—after the factory—was the Milton S. Hershey School. He and his wife, Catharine, founded the school for orphan boys in 1909. When she died at age 42, he endowed the school with his fortune, and it now offers free education, housing, clothing, meals, and medical care to financially needy children. He also spent freely for town services and in 1935 gave $20,000 apiece to five local churches to help with accumulated debt from the Depression.

Since the candy king’s death in 1945 at 88, his legacy has thrived. Hershey remains a comfortable, well-planned factory town grown into a sweetened tourist destination, with dancing candy bars, roller coasters, and other amusements at the 87-acre Hersheypark. Visitors also can take rides through the chocolate-making process at Hershey’s Chocolate World Visitors Center.

The Hersheypark Stadium presents outdoor sports events, including soccer games with the Hershey Wildcats and hockey with the Hershey Bears, as well as concerts with big-name entertainers.

Matthew Loser is in charge of computers at Hersheypark and the stadium. He works from an office in the arena, where he served as an usher in high school.

“It’s a very safe town. I have children, and I don’t have any qualms about letting them go anywhere,” Loser says.

He’s witnessed a building boom that started in the 1950s, but Hershey’s pride is still its older homes, built by Milton Hershey. They have the same floor plan, but all the houses are distinctly different in construction details. “It makes a big difference between Hershey and other planned towns,” Loser says.

Which was part of Hershey’s plan. At age 21, before he became wealthy, he wrote, “One is only happy in proportion as he makes others happy.” And in Hershey, that recipe still works.

Ronda Robinson writes from her home in Knoxville, Tenn.

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