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[Musical Interlude] >> Tom Handwerk: I came to Berks County back
in 1942.
I was an auditor out of Philadelphia
I started auditing Narrow Fabric, Wyomissing Glaze Paper
and later Textile Machine Works.
They were my clients and I was the manager on the audit.
Then I was offered a job with Narrow Fabric and Wyomissing Glaze Paper company through
Sam Fye
and I took that job on January 1, 1951
and then moved up to Wyomissing. Been here ever since.
I got to know Mr. Janssen a little bit,
and Mr. Thun I had met and, of course, the next generation I knew pretty well.
Ferdie and Louie both,
and *** Wetzel,
so I got to… oh and Masters, Dr. Livingood.
These were all people I got to know a lot through my auditing contacts
Dr. Livingood was the son-in-law of Mr. Janssen, and so was Mr. Wetzel.
I knew there was a change in the family, there was a death in the family – the Janssen
family – and that would be some changes.
So we were going to, we had been offered, and given…I guess we had been given the
land of forty acres across from the Reading Motor Inn
that was donated to the University.
So they had forty acres of land and they planned to build their campus there.
This was about the late sixties – 67, 68.
And they actually had drawn plans for the campus on that forty acre tract,
which is all now road system. And I kind of knew that was going to happen.
Hal Perkins asked me to come on the board in the late sixties.
That’s when I became active, and he put me on the building,
I believe it’s called the building committee.
And they were about to go to bid for the campus over there in the forty acres,
and I said wait a minute let’s see if we can do better than this,
knowing the problems that they were going to have, and it wasn’t enough acreage.
So we contacted the Janssen family about the farm, it was the farm then,
and after negotiations we struck a deal where we bought a hundred and five acres, was the
initial purchase,
and then we were given later by Mrs. Wetzel this property here, which is about thirty
acres.
But when we wrote the contract for the initial fye (?) we negotiated for land across the
street,
across Broadcasting Rd, where the farm is now.
And we wrote four, five year options on various tracts that each had a price on the acreage,
and today the price is a bargain. So we wrote that initially, we didn’t exercise it but
we had a contract,
and that was negotiated with the Janssen family,
Elroy Masters, and Helaine Masters was involved, and so was Liz Rothermel.
They were the Janssen grandchildren, so they were involved in that.
And that was what really set that pace for this.
How did we pay for it?
Well, we negotiated a sale of the forty acres to Irv Cohen,
and that gave us the money to buy this land here, plus the…not the options, but we got
the options with the purchase of this property.
But Dr. Perkins was involved in this
when we initially, when I asked him to hold up on the building on the forty acre tract
I think he was ready to throw me off the board
because they were all ready to go, and I didn’t like it,
I didn’t like the deal
I can’t say enough nice things about him.
He’s the reason I came on the board.
He came to me originally, and I served three years,
three terms as chairman of the board…three different terms.
Working with him was just a pleasure – you wanted to work with him.
I guess my dream when we got our option acreage, it was over a hundred acres across the street,
my dream then was that we would have
a graduate school over there.
That’s why we were anxious to get it.
Thank goodness we got it. I wish we had more.
I love land, and if you can get it, get it. Don’t ever give it away
because we only have so much of it.
I think it’s the key to our campus here is the land, that we were able to do things
with it.
I’m delighted with what has happened.
I think it’s a beautiful campus, and its been my dream come true. I really like it.
We have more work to do, more buildings to build, but the growth has been great.
I still would like a graduate school here, but that’s down the pike I guess.
The Thun and Janssen family. They really were the founders of Wyomissing.
And a lot of the things we have, including the highlands
were beneficiaries of the Thun family. But the Janssen family has done a whale of a lot
of nice things for the community,
and you just can’t thank them enough.
Irv Cohen was a real benefactor, and continues to be.
His buying the acreage that we had enabled us to buy this, without borrowing it.
I have a good feeling about Penn State
and our current chancellor does a good job, too.
She keeps in contact with us, keeps us involved.
And it’s growing. The place continues to grow.
[Musical Interlude]