Death of a Citizen

Twenty-nine years ago a hawk-eyed, heavy-bearded man strode into the Hartford Hotel, Hartford City, Ind., registered, and went to work for a local paper mill. There he remained, a fixture. Reticent, he won friends by his quiet humor. But he never had any intimates, and no kin ever visited him in his solitary bachelor apartment. Hartford City got to know and respect him as George D. Stevens, who one day became an executive of the paper mill, Fort Wayne Corrugated Paper Co.

As an increasingly prominent citizen, quiet George Stevens joined the Rotary Club, the Elks Lodge, the Masonic Blue Lodge in Hartford City, and the Scottish Rite at Fort Wayne. He became well known in Indiana industrial circles, active in philanthropies. In 1925 he established the Akron Foundation "to minister to human wants and needs and alleviate suffering." He financed the college careers of several boys, contributed to Father Flanagan's Boys' Home enterprise, gave generously to many another charity.

Early this spring, George Stevens' step began to falter. His hair and his heavy beard and mustache had long since grown white. His eyes had never lost their piercing, humorous expression, but he was an old, frail man when they carried him from the Hartford Hotel, after 29 years' residence, and took him to the hospital. Last month he died, at the age of 80.

Hartford City mourned its citizen. Said an editorial in the Hartford City News-Times: "The death of George D. Stevens, paper-mill executive and philanthropist, is the cause of sorrow and widespread regret in this community. . . . Those who knew him best cherished his friendship the most. His philanthropies were large, but the extent of his benevolences was never submitted to public gaze."

That was not all George Stevens had "never submitted to public gaze." For more than 30 years he had hidden behind his beard a secret which his fellow townsmen never suspected, learned only after he was dead. Dying, he had spoken of a brother, Grant, in Akron, Ohio. Grant Stevens was notified, and the body was taken to Akron for burial. Hartford City friends, who attended the funeral and met Stevens' brother, his aunt, several nieces and nephews, made the discovery that George Stevens was a Negro.

As a young man, George Stevens, a pale young Negro, had worked as a porter in an Akron hotel, had got a job in a stove company. His aptitude for mechanics had attracted the attention of an Akron industrial pioneer, Ohio Columbus Barber, founder of the city of Barberton, Ohio, who hired him. Soon he became chief engineer at Barberton's Portage Strawboard Co. Later he moved to Indiana, worked at several plants, migrated to Hartford City, which had long smugly accepted the fact that it had not a single Negro resident.

Said an official of Fort Wayne Corrugated Paper Co., learning of the long masquerade of quietly humorous George Stevens: "That couldn't have shocked me more than if I learned my own wife were Chinese." Said another associate: "Hartford City, where no colored families reside, is better for having had George Stevens as a citizen."

Left to his relatives was the income from an estimated $150,000 trust fund. At their deaths the fund will go to his Akron Foundation.

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