Page 10 | February 28, 2020
Amedeo and Louise Obici
At top, a nod to Louise and Amedeo Obici inside Sentara Obici Hospital; above and background image, the exterior of the hospital; opposite page, a portrait of the Obicis (courtesy “Peninsula in Passage”).
Suffolk News-Herald | Strides 2020 BY ALEX PERRY Staff Writer
The Obici name is deeply entrenched in Suffolk history, and it’s fair to say that the man himself has shaped the development of this city as a whole. Amedeo Obici was just 11 years old when he immigrated from Oderzo, Italy to America in 1889. His father died when he was 7, and his maternal uncle, Vittorio Sartor, invited young Amedeo to come live with him in Scranton, Pa. He spent his formative years with his uncle in Scranton, where he worked as a hotel waiter and later as a fruit-stand vendor, according to “Suffolk: A Celebration of History,” by Kermit Hobbs and William A. Paquette. “Intelligent, enterprising, and ambitious, Amedeo Obici soon grew tired of arranging fruit displays,” the book states. “Intrigued by a man eating roasted peanuts, he decided to peddle peanuts, himself, in nearby Wilkes-Barre, (Pa).” The Suffolk News-Herald declared Suffolk “the greatest peanut market in the world” as early as 1907, and the entrepreneur with the greatest impact on Suffolk was Obici, Hobbs and Paquette said in their book. By 1906, Obici and his brother-inlaw, Mario Peruzzi, had earned enough money from peanut sales to go into partnership. In 1906 they founded the Planters Peanut Company in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., and in 1913 Obici built his first mass-processing plant in Suffolk, according to planters.com. According to “Suffolk: A Celebration of History,” the name “Planters” was thought up in a “back-room discussion” by Obici and Peruzzi. “A catchy name was needed and Obici liked Peruzzi’s word Planters, ‘one who plants peanuts,’” the book states. Obici was widely recognized as a
CALL FOR DETAILS
marketing genius. Obici created nationwide advertising campaigns, and placed ads in the “Saturday Evening Post” that advertised “the five-cent lunch,” which was just peanuts and Coca-Cola. He also opened his own Planters retail stores to sell company products. Then there was the Suffolk contest that he sponsored, which led to the creation of the celebrated “Mr. Peanut.” A local teenager named Antonio Gentile submitted an animated peanut for the contest. Obici gave him $5, and a Wilkes-Barre artist later added the iconic cane, hat and monocle to the design, according to Suffolk: A Celebration of History. “Obici liked the idea of an ‘aristocratic’ peanut. The tuxedo was a symbol of class,” the book states. Obici and his wife, Louise, were generous enough to endow hospitals, donate to charities and provide well for Planters employees with their financial success. An article in the Suffolk-Nansemond Historical Society collection describes Louise as a “quiet, cultured and generous woman,” with a fondness for flowers, music and entertaining. According to “Suffolk: A Celebration of History,” she held an annual Weigela Festival on the grounds of Bay Point Farms, the 263-acre estate on the Nansemond River where she and her husband lived. The festival was named for a flowering shrub grown on the property that she loved, and the public could tour the estate during the festival, for a small fee that was donated to charity. The Obicis were childless and had no heirs or family members who possessed “the interest or the aptitude” to run the Planters enterprise, “Suffolk: A Celebration of History” states. Instead, Obici left his estate in trust to a hospital that was yet to be built — the Louise Obici Memorial Hospi-
Like Us On
www.arzillorecycling.com
