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RIGHT: With Forrest after the ceremony were, from left, nephew Michael Mars ’86, Michael’s daughter Sophie Mars, Forrest and his wife Jacomien, and granddaughter Kimberly Spina ’09.
tiny company with four factories. The office was in Washington – a small one, above a dress shop. But by the time my brother and I became co-presidents in 1977, we were in an office in McLean, Virginia, with a lot more associates.” Under their supervision, and guided by the Five Principles, the Mars brothers grew the company into a worldwide consumer products giant that now has more than 72,000 employees in 72 countries. Still owned only by the family, it is the thirdlargest privately held company in the United States, with $30 billion in annual sales. For several years, Forrest concentrated on growing Mars Inc. overseas. “I started off in Holland,” he told the award ceremony audience. “Then I got greedy and I got Belgium – I took that away from somebody else – then I took Germany, then we got France, and added Switzerland and Austria. Italy was my downfall; I never did get it right in Italy, I have to admit.” After spending a decade in Europe, he said, his daughters “didn’t know whether they were speaking Dutch, reading English, or trying to speak French by the time they came home, but at least they were trilingual.” Two of his daughters, Valerie and Marijke, are alumnae, from the Classes of 1977 and 1982, respectively. Five of Forrest’s grandchildren also are alumni. These days, his chief volunteer activity – other than his work for Hotchkiss – is helping the Brinton Museum in Big Horn, Wyoming. “It’s a museum for Native American artifacts,” he explains, “and we’re building a new building. I got to know the curator, and we began to raise money for the museum.” He also serves on
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I went away from Hotchkiss with a sense of ethics AND A SET OF VALUES. AND THEY’VE BEEN WITH ME ALL MY LIFE, AND THEY’VE BEEN WITH MARS
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INC. THE WHOLE WAY . the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Board of Trustees and is a trustee emeritus of the Fay School and former Board member of Trout Unlimited. His Hotchkiss class has an exemplary record of service to the School, but Forrest says the exact reason for that eludes him. “I don’t really know what made the Class of 1949 become quite so loyal,” he says. “Perhaps it was our time in history, coming here right after World War II. A lot of the class has served on various boards at Hotchkiss, and I think five of us have been trustees at one time or another.” He is the fifth member of his class to be given the Alumni Award. The others are
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Robert A. Bryan, Jon O. Newman, Dan W. Lufkin, and the late Thomas Hoving. It was Dan Lufkin who introduced Forrest at the award ceremony; Dan’s words formed a fitting tribute to a life of service. A few years ago at a Hotchkiss meeting, Dan said, he heard a four-word definition of education “which just struck me right between the eyes. It was: ‘modeling character by example’.” Forrest “is an educator,” Dan said. “You may think of him as a number of other things, but he is an educator. And Forrest has modeled character throughout his life – by example. That’s why I am so proud to be a classmate of his.”
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