People of Interest

Clarence C. Newcomer graduated from Mount Joy High School in 1941. He was born in Mount Joy and is the son of Clarence and Clara Charles Newcomer. After high school he entered Franklin and Marshall College. He entered the Navy in 1943 and enlisted in the Navy V-12 program. After graduating F&M in 1944, he entered active duty and became a Lieutenant (J.G.) on a landing craft support ship in the Pacific and was discharged in 1946. He then entered and graduated from the Dickinson Law School in Carlisle. After his marriage to Jane Martin of Lancaster, he practiced law in in Lancaster. At the same time he practiced in Lancaster, he also had an office in Mount Joy. The couple had three daughters: Judy, Nancy, and Peggy.

He became a Special Deputy Attorney General of Pennsylvania for two years; Assistant District Attorney in Lancaster County for eight years; and District Attorney for five years. He was appointed Federal Judge in 1971 in the United States District Court, Eastern District of Pennsylvania, and assumed senior status in 1988. Judge Newcomer died on August 22, 2005. To read his New York Times obituary and learn about Judge Newcomer’s “no-nonsense” reputation with the Court, please visit: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/25/national/25newcomer.html

Clarence Schock graduated from Mount Joy High School in 1881 when the high school was two rooms on the second floor of the Marietta Street school building. Mr. Schock was the fourth child born to John Schock and Mary Ann Patterson Schock. In 1951 he wrote, “I was born in the year 1865 and have continued to live in the town of my birth for 86 years, living since I was ten years old in the house which my father built.” (This house was the former Schock Presbyterian Home and is now owned by St. Mark’s United Methodist Church.) Mr. Schock married Evetta Tupper Jeffers, New Wilmington, Pa. in 1916.

…I was ambitious to be a mechanic…. Later on I realized that the most important thing was to get an education…. I had two years in what was called the elementary course in the Millersville State Normal School, and one year (1889) at Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster. …Owing to the illness of my mother and the declining business of my father, I was convinced that it was my duty to come home. …At the time I joined my father the business was chiefly the sale of anthracite coal with a small amount of grain. I immediately added the lumber business.

Clarence Schock

The next addition was kerosene (coal oil) which was first sold in wooden barrels. The oil business continued! Throughout his business career, he was always known for his independence of thought and conduct.

In 1898 he installed storage tanks for both kerosene and gasoline. Deliveries were made with one horse-drawn tank wagon. From Mount Joy, the company extended its territory, and by 1924, there were distributing stations located in Allentown, Carlisle, Columbia, Ephrata, Harrisburg, Lancaster, Lebanon, Lemoyne, Llanerch, Mount Joy, Oxford, Philadelphia, Reading and York. Mr. Schock started several companies: Schock Independent Oil Company, Crane Hook Oil Storage Company and Rollman Manufacturing Company. He bought the capital stock of each and transferred it to the SICO Company which he organized in 1941.

More important than remembering Clarence Schock as a business man is to remember him as a philanthropist! The SICO Company was organized as a non-profit corporation with all profits going solely to public schools. Beginning in 1951, because of a great shortage of teachers in the elementary grades of public school, SICO began contributing funds to state teachers colleges. Scholarships for those planning to teach elementary grades of public schools followed, but were later changed to include any education major due to an over-supply of elementary teachers in 1976. Two years later the requirement changed to any major offered by the college.

In the first year of its existence, $48,000 was contributed through Clarence Schock’s generosity. By 1981, a total of $2,299,875. had been spent on 1,455 students, and the board of directors announced, “We are justly proud of this tribute to the life, the business acumen, the economic enterprise, and the philanthropic philosophy of Clarence Schock.” As of 1999, a total of $10,922,875 has funded scholarships that have benefited thousands of students over the years.

Clarence G. Stoll graduated from Mount Joy High School in 1899 when the high school was housed in two rooms of the Marietta Street School. He was born in 1883, the son of Mr. and Mrs. John H. Stoll. He graduated from Penn State in 1903, after which he went to work as a $10.00 a week student apprentice in the Chicago plant of the Western Electric Company. His first job was soldering jacks in the factory cabling department.

By 1908 he became engineer of the manufacturing branch of Western Electric in New York. Summoned abroad in 1912, he was shop superintendent in the company’s Antwerp, Belgium, plant until World War I forced the factory to close.

When he returned to the United States, he continued to rise through supervisory positions in both manufacturing and technical operations in Chicago. In 1928, he was directing all Western Electric operations in the manufacturing of equipment and apparatus for Bell Systems companies at four plants – Chicago, Illinois; Kearny, New Jersey; Baltimore, Maryland; and New York City, New York. In 1940, he was named president of the Western Electric Company. He held this position until 1947 when he retired after a 44-year career with the Western Electric Company.

He and his wife, the former Winifred Broughton, lived in Richmond, Virginia. His successful philosophy is summed up in a statement he made during an interview in the 1960s: “I made it a practice just to look at the job ahead and work toward that job. Sometimes I had to revise my sights somewhat, but I always concentrated on the next job, putting every ounce of effort into every job I held.” Mr. Stoll died at the age of 83 in 1967.

K. T. Keller graduated from Mount Joy High School in 1903 when the high school was housed in two rooms of the Marietta Street elementary and high school building. He was born in 1885, the son of Zachariah W. and Carrie Thuma Keller in Mount Joy. By 1906 he went to work as a clerk at Westinghouse and later became assistant general foreman in the department making engines for Chalmers Company. By 1910 Keller moved to Detroit and took the job of chief inspector of the Detroit Metals Products Co.

By 1911 he started “his climb” in the automobile industry. Walter Chrysler encouraged him to join the Chrysler Corporation, and by 1940, he was president of Chrysler Company. The next year Keller was the highest paid executive in the United States. In the 1940s, he was decorated with the Medal of Merit by the president, named chairman of President Truman’s five-man advisory committee on the Merchant Marine peacetime trade and national security, and named by Forbes magazine as one of America’s 50 foremost business leaders.

On September 30, 1948, all work halted at noon, businesses and schools closed and 5,000 citizens turned out to honor Mr. Keller during “K. T. Keller Day” in Mount Joy. Governor Duff presented K.T. with a citation naming him official “Pennsylvania Ambassador.” K.T. gave Mount Joy two fire trucks; one in 1935 and one in 1949.

In the 1950s, K.T. Keller became chairman of the Board at Chrysler, and was awarded the rare Gorgas Gold Medal for Distinguished Service to his country.

Mary Reich Bowman graduated from Mount Joy High School in 1896. She was born in Mount Joy and was the daughter of John and Elizabeth Reich Bowman. She did her pre-medical work at Wilson College, Chambersburg. Dr. Bowman received her medical degree from the Women’s Medical College of Philadelphia in 1907, with an emphasis on psychiatry. The fifty-fifth annual commencement was held in the American Academy of Music, May 22, 1907. Dr. Clara Marshall conferred the degree of Doctor of Medicine upon Dr. Bowman and twenty-eight others. She was the first woman from Mount Joy to become a doctor with a specialty of psychiatry.

Dr. Bowman was licensed to practice in Pennsylvania in 1907 and served as a resident physician in the Women’s Hospital of Philadelphia in 1908. She began her practice in 1908 during a time when the teaching profession was very nearly the only professional work open to women. In 1909 she became a member of the Lancaster County Medical Society. During her long career, Dr. Bowman practiced in Lancaster County, worked for the Pennsylvania State Department of Welfare in the area of mental health, and also worked in New York and Michigan.

In 1957, she received a plaque for completing 50 years of service by the Lancaster City and County Medical Society. Dr. Bowman lived at 52 East Main Street following her retirement. She was a member of First Presbyterian Church, Mount Joy; Lancaster City and County Medical Society; Pennsylvania Medical Society; American Medical Society; American Association of Mental Deficiency; and the Business and Professional Women’s Club, Mount Joy. She died in 1970 at the age of 88.