Books                                                                           

Richard J. Heath with Ray Elliott. Bittersweet: The Story of the Heath Candy Co. Urbana: New Authors Publications, 1995. Pp. 415. $24.95 (cloth).

If you like Heath candy bars and don't mind having to chew through a lot of filler to get to the good parts, Bittersweet may be a treat for you. The Heaths of Robinson, Ill., were the makers of that American candy icon — the Heath Bar. They were also a bickering, spiteful bunch and the author of this book, Dick Heath, is no exception.

In his younger days, Heath, now 64, did well as a salesman of the family product but not so well by the family itself. His own kin eventually showed him the door. Later, they cut him out of the profits when they sold their candy business for about $60 million to an international conglomerate, Leaf Inc.

Dick went into business for himself, and did nothing to elevate the family name. He was sent to federal prison in 1988 and served four years of an eight-year sentence for bilking investors out of a $15 million deal.

Heath now lives modestly near Marion and works as a golf course developer. He recently sued family members in an attempt to reclaim some of the Heath fortune. This book is his written revenge.

Bittersweet is the outcast's inside story of the contentious Heath clan. And this family's story offers all of the enticements of a juicy American pulp novel — hard work, luck and success eventually tainted by greed, sex and general nastiness.

In the hands of a more skillful writer it might have been best-seller material. As rendered by Heath, this story is too narrowly conceived to be of more than regional interest, but it does have its moments — such as Heath's account of the day the candy factory nearly was shut down because the octogenarian founder, L.S. Heath, had lured the lady on the packaging line into his bedroom.

The book offers an intriguing study of a thriving family business brought down by bullheadedness and rivalry

Credit Heath's co-author and publisher Ray Elliott of Urbana's fledgling Tales From The General Store Press with saving the book from becoming simply an egomaniacal rant. Reining in Dick Heath must have been a chore. As it is, Heath takes credit for everything but the creation of candy and exposes family skeletons while omitting the unsavory parts of his own personal history.

Heath wastes a great deal of ink trying to convince the reader that the family and the town of Robinson lost out when his scheme to swap Heath company stock for stock in a giant tobacco and liquor conglomerate was rejected by other family members. Instead of buying into his self-aggrandizing scenario, the reader is tempted to wonder why the family didn't throw him out sooner. Not that the author isn't an interesting, even charming villain. Those who shake their heads at Heath today admit that in his heyday he was a superior salesman, and his book retains some of his roguish charm.

As long as you take what the author writes with a load of highway salt, Bittersweet offers an intriguing study of a thriving family business brought down by bullheadedness and rivalry. Heath is candid in admitting that the success of the family candy operation was more the result of luck and fortuitous timing than business acumen. And the story of how one of the nation's best-selling candy bars originated out of Robinson makes up the most interesting part of this book.

L.S. Heath was born in 1870 in a log cabin in Heathsville, Ill. Though poor, he grew up determined that "keeping everlastingly at it will bring success." Keep at it, he did. The Heath family patriarch graduated from the University of Illinois with an engineering degree just after the turn of the century at the age of 31, and worked as a Latin and Greek teacher, school administrator, surveyor, insurance and real estate salesman, dairyman and assistant postmaster. He also served five terms as the mayor of Robinson.

His grandson, Dick, writes that L.S. never believed that the family's future was in its candy business, which grew out of a downtown soda fountain the Heaths operated for many years. L.S. was more interested in expanding the family dairy, which was mostly a money-loser, his grandson writes.

The entire family business was on shaky financial terms in the 1940s when a family friend convinced some of the Heaths to invest $5,000 in one of the few local oil leases that had not been snapped up by a major oil company during the state's oil boom. That lease pumped more than $1 million into the family coffers and allowed them to expand their candy-making operation.

The family's English toffee candy bar was a regional hit from the start, but it didn't become a national product until a U.S. Army purchasing agent walked into the Heaths' Robinson plant unannounced one day in 1942 and proclaimed that the Army wanted to make the Heath Bar part of the K-ration package for soldiers in the Pacific.

The Army liked the fact that the Heath Bar had a long shelf life. Little did they know it would inspire a story that fits well on the bookshelf too. *

Wes Smith is a national correspondent feature writer for the Chicago Tribune. He lives in Bloomington.

36/August 1995/Illinois Issues