Tom Howatt, who rose up as the son of a Scottish immigrant to become President and CEO of Wausau Paper, a preeminent leader of Wisconsin’s business community and an exceedingly generous philanthropist, has died at the age of 76 after a two-year battle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
Howatt, who was also a long-time chairman of the Badger Institute, didn’t like the word “poor.”
But “we never hesitated to talk about the fact we didn’t have money,” said his brother and best friend, Terry.
The ancestral Howatts were crop farmers in the Outer Hebrides who became coal miners on the Scottish mainland and then, in the 1920s, emigrated to Gary, Indiana. Tom and Terry’s father, Jack, had a tenth-grade education, drove a fuel truck and instilled in the boys an immutable work ethic.
“Your job is to get good grades, go to college, do well. Move out of this area,” their father told them. “You will have to pay for it.”
The boys were mowing lawns in third grade, had paper routes by the time they were in sixth.
“It was what we were supposed to do,” said Terry, “the ethic we got from our parents. You support yourself. You help others.”
Tom Howatt excelled at Hobart High School, got into the business school at Purdue and earned both a B.S. degree in Industrial Management and a Master of Science degree in Management.
“I was the first one to go to college in the entire family history,” he once told me.
A longtime member of the Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr. School of Business Dean’s Advisory Council, he was profoundly committed to education as the path up — and helping others achieve it.
He and wife Mary eventually established the Howatt Scholarship Program that provides 12 merit-based, full-tuition scholarships in the business school; endowed the Thomas J. Howatt Chair in Management; and made a separate $20 million commitment to the school from their trust.
“He wanted kids who wanted to do good things,” said Cara Giese, vice president of development for Purdue for Life Foundation. He believed in business as a “force for good.”
“His spirit was so contagious. He was on the Dean’s Advisory Council for 25 years, gave so generously of all things — time, treasure and talent. He really embodied that. He touched everyone’s life and was one of those very special people.”
After graduation from Purdue, he took a job at Wisconsin Energy and then Miller Brewing, before joining Wausau Paper Corporation in 1980, when he was around 30 years old.
“He was totally invested from the minute he got there,” said Lon Roberts, former president of the Wausau-based law firm Ruder Ware. “Whatever it takes” it was clear he thought, “for me to make this company successful.”
His early years were spent managing mills, including one in New Hampshire, and making them profitable.
“He never expected more from anyone than he was willing to give himself,” said Roberts.
By the time he’d finished building a house in New Hampshire, they’d already called him back to Wisconsin, where he eventually helped grow revenues to over $1 billion annually. He was president and CEO for 12 years and chairman of the board for two years after that.
There were challenges, to be sure. He had to deal with “an annoying activist investor” at Wausau Paper “and manage a paper company at a time when the world was transitioning away from paper to digital,” said Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce CEO Kurt Bauer. But he “managed all of these responsibilities and burdens with determination, resolve and grace. He was a great man and will be remembered by the Wisconsin business community for his leadership and achievements.”
He was chairman of Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce and actually hired Bauer, who says he is “eternally grateful.”
“To me,” said Bauer, “he was the personification of a Captain of Industry. He was out of central casting for what a business CEO looked and acted like. He had a demeanor that exuded confidence, competence and professionalism.”
At the same time, he never “put on airs,” said Bauer.
He had a sarcastic sense of humor, was quick with a trenchant text about politics or current events, lived a large life traveling all around the world in the years with his wife Mary and brother Terry after he retired, was easy to spend time with. He was, said Terry, just a “fun, honest, did-what-he-said-he-was-going-to-do good person.”
The best thing that ever happened to him, said Terry, was meeting Mary — a turning point in his life.
He was an outdoorsman, a fisherman and a bird-hunter. In addition to Mary and Terry, his stepchildren Boyd and April, and granddaughter Violet, he is survived by his “beloved Brittanys, Skye and Callie,” according to the obit he himself wrote.
Skye was named after the Isle of Skye, which is just south of Harris Island in the Outer Hebrides where the Howatt ancestors once lived in stone huts.
“He was preceded in death by his father, Jack Howatt, mother Joyce Lindborg, and by his treasured bird-hunting companions, Holly, Mandy, Nellie, Arran, Matty and Elle,” he also wrote.
Not just a hunter, Tom was a golfer too until ALS robbed him of his ability to grip a club. He was quiet, very quiet, about the disease for a long time, but the Howatts ask that donations in his memory be made to the ALS Association at als.org/donate.
Roberts says he knew him as a “man on the move” and, despite the stillness that comes with ALS, I think we will always remember him that way. “He got the most out of his life that he possibly could,” said Roberts. “Only in America.”
Mike Nichols is president of the Badger Institute.
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