The LuLac Edition #1938, February 9th, 2012

Otto and his wife Phoebe Haas.


The late John Haas who passed away in 2011.


City Wide tower Bob Kadluboski.

OTTO, JOHN AND THE BOBSTER

At last night’s Wilkes Barre City Council meeting City Wide Tower Bob Kadluboski said that Council should send a thank you letter to the Haas family for the donations of the fire truck a few years back. As you all know that donation has been kept secret. After last night’s meeting WBRE reported that the money came from a family named Haas that owned a local café. Anyone short of the Kornfelds, I guess my question is do café owners have that type of money? When Mayor Leighton was asked about the Bobster’s comments, he told a news reporter that if the tower was wrong, he’d have to suffer the consequences. For asking Council to send a thank you note? I might be going out on a limb here but there is a Haas family, they do have a foundation that doles out money and there is also a Haas Foundation on the West Coast. The information that I had was that it was in San Francisco. It would make perfect sense that the Haas family would be the donor given the fact that they do support as they say “disadvantaged towns”. I know Council was stone faced about the comment from Kadluboski. My only confusion is if it was a Haas Grant (and this comes from my early days at WVIA TV and Youth, Inc. where I did submit grant applications) did the city submit an application or was the gift bestowed? Here’s information about the foundation named after Otto Haas.
Otto Haas was the quintessential entrepreneur. Forced to go to work at the age of 15 after the death of his father, a civil servant in Stuttgart, Germany, Otto partnered with the chemist Otto Röhm, little more than a decade later, to create the Rohm and Haas Company, a maker of leather tanning materials. Haas expanded the fledgling company to Philadelphia in 1909 and worked tirelessly over the next half century to create a successful American corporation, which he ran with a firm hand up until two days before his death in 1960.
Otto had a dynamic and influential partner in Phoebe Haas. Born on the North Dakota frontier, she traveled to Vassar and Berkeley to earn undergraduate degrees in mathematics and astronomy. She was among the first women to earn a Ph.D. in astronomy, and met her husband in 1913 while traveling to South America to study the southern sky. Otto and Phoebe were married in 1914. Together, they created the Phoebe Waterman Foundation in 1945, to help fatherless children (including those who had lost a father during World War II) and support medical and educational institutions. Upon his death, much of Otto’s estate was given to the Foundation.

Sons F. Otto and John C. Haas, who followed their father into the family business, took on leadership roles at both the chemical company and the Foundation. In terms of philanthropy, F. Otto and his wife Dorothy (who also served on the board) were most interested in protecting open green space, historic preservation, and arts and cultural institutions. Now here’s the key element in the research I found that leads me to believe this might be the source of the grants. John and his wife Chara primarily focused on efforts to improve the quality of life for children and families, especially in disadvantaged communities. While we are not totally destitute, surely the Leighton administration, especially in the years that the money came in (when the Leighton team was trying to get back the city back on firm financial footing) could be regarded as a “disadvantaged community”

John Haas, Otto’s son died in 2011 at the age of 92. In an article from Philly.com, Sally A. Downey, an Inquirer Staffer wrote: John C. Haas, 92, a retired Rohm & Haas chairman known for his tireless public service,...John C. Haas, 92, retired chairman of Rohm & Haas Co. and a tireless champion of community service regionally and nationally, died Saturday, April 2. He was a son of Otto Haas, cofounder of the global chemical company headquartered in Philadelphia, and Phoebe Waterman Haas, who was among the first women to receive a doctorate in astronomy.
Mr. Haas died of natural causes at home in Villanova, a family representative said. Relatives were at his side.
"Our father was a kind and charitable man, and that was reflected in every aspect of his life," said a statement from his children. "He truly lived the values handed down from his parents, and we are gratified that his good works continue to live on through the people and organizations he touched." Whether Wilkes Barre was one of those communities he touched is still open to speculation, (and not having any information released on this from City Hall, that's all we're doing) thanks to the Bobster.