Donovan Roberts Witmer
Anne Beiler
Lancaster
Anne Beiler apologizes for her casual outfit. She’s on grandma duty this day. Lots of running around to do. This is the Anne you’d expect behind Auntie Anne’s and its decadent pretzels, the best part of any shopping excursion. It’s hard to imagine that this friendly, personable woman has risen from the depths of unimaginable despair.
In 1975, Beiler’s little blonde daughter, Angie, died in a farm accident at 19 months old. Six months later, Beiler turned to her pastor for counseling, but he sexually assaulted her and took advantage of her fear and shame to continue the abuse for six years.
Today, Anne Beiler speaks freely about her transformative experiences. For 25 years, she sank into depression, even as she and her husband, Jonas, transformed a farmer’s market pretzel stand into a worldwide franchise.
Always, Anne and Jonas Beiler devoted their money to helping heal broken families and individuals. Jonas founded and still runs a free counseling service in an 18th-century brownstone, beautifully renovated by the Beilers.
With proceeds from the sale of Auntie Anne’s in 2005, the Beilers embarked on another venture-transforming a 125-acre, Lancaster County farm into the Family Center of Gap (www.gapfamilycenter.org), with a nutritionist, physician, child care, professional counseling, café, library and food bank.
“There’s a world of hurt out there. I could have known that by watching the news or reading the newspaper, but when it really hit us, you think, ‘Wow, what do we do with all this pain?’ Working through all of that over the years is what motivated us to build the Family Center.”
The road to recovery is paved with hard work as well as prayer, says Beiler. She is “all about body, soul, spirit.” From a series of groups she founded where women shared their hidden stories of trauma, Beiler came to understand that sexual abuse is an epidemic, affecting one woman in three. The sharing groups inspired Beiler to found the annual Free Indeed conference, now in its fourth year, where 375 women convene to share their stories and find the courage to seek help.
“Once you tell your story, you cannot let it lie dormant,” Beiler says.
Beiler believes that little Angie is smiling with pride at the help her parents have given families and their children. She gets her greatest satisfaction from giving back.
“You can be at wit’s end for a very long time. If I had not experienced that tragedy, I would be very quick to judge and maybe to criticize. It’s made me compassionate. I would hope that when people hear my story, they would say ‘Oh, wow. Because she did it, I can.’ That makes it worth the trip.”
Kim Schaller
Hershey
Kim Schaller keeps a list taped to her computer. It reminds her to maintain a positive disposition. Have more grace. Stop saying “never.” It’s about the work needed to improve, because “change doesn’t just happen.”
That’s how Schaller, executive vice president and chief marketing officer for Hershey Entertainment & Resorts, hopes women learn to shed any cattiness tendencies and, instead, “help to pull each other up.”
“When we are at our best, I think women are unbelievable,” says Schaller in her bright office overlooking downtown Hershey. “Women are amazing.”
Women hold a special place in the Hershey brands, Schaller says, as employees and as primary decision-makers among customers. In 2004, Schaller helped found Women in Leadership, an internal mentoring and support initiative designed to build leadership skills among women managers.
Women in Leadership is preparing a 10th-anniversary rebranding, but Schaller intentionally stepped away from the helm.
“By continuing to drive it, I was not allowing others to flourish with it,” she says. “For me, it was ‘get out of the way,’ because other people had ideas. I’m excited that they’re excited about it.
Now, Schaller is concentrating on Women of Hershey, which she helped found in 2006 to convene women from the Hershey entities-Hershey Entertainment & Resorts, Penn State Hershey Medicine Center, Hersheypark, and Hershey Chocolate-to promote leadership. The legacy of Milton and Catherine Hershey is “the glue that holds all of us together,” Schaller believes. “It’s the power of the difference that one person can make.”
Despite the Hershey area’s sheen of prosperity, Schaller knows there is “tremendous need in this community.” She co-chairs the Giving Tree of Hummelstown (givingtreeofhummelstown.org), which provides help of all kinds-food, eyeglasses and dental appointments, school supplies, a shed painted for an elderly woman-to people in need, crisis or transition.
“When my ex-husband died, Giving Tree was at my front door with lasagna and bread and salad,” Schaller says. “Whenever you find yourself in need, we’re there.”
It is, she says, her way of giving back. At age 55, she’s looking forward to her 60s, when she hopes to travel, living in one place at a time for six months or so, getting to know the culture. Nashville is on her list. So is Stockholm. When her confidence wanes, her empowerment trick is signing up for a hiking trip. She has trekked in Spain and recently returned from hiking the Alps. Morocco might be next.
“I always want to challenge myself,” she says.
Marion Alexander
Harrisburg
Marion Alexander leads the way straight to the children’s reading room, equipped with a colorful toy train and window seats overlooking the real train tracks of Hummelstown.
“They can keep their eye on the trains as they’re coming and going,” says Alexander. “Isn’t it great? The children love to come here. They just love to come here.”
The list of civic groups that Alexander has supported with her time and fundraising talents would exceed a magazine story word count, but perhaps the best illustration of her passion for causes is here, at the William H. and Marion C. Alexander Family Library. For many years, she has volunteered with the Dauphin County Library System, through upgrades, renovations and construction projects that have doubled attendance at some facilities.
“I believe in libraries,” says Alexander. “I believe in the ability to research and read and educate. There’s nothing like having a book you can take down and read in some cubbyhole.”
Alexander’s mark is everywhere in the region, as founder, fundraiser or board chair. Harrisburg Area Community College. Whitaker Center for Science and the Arts. Susquehanna Art Museum. WITF. United Way of the Capital Region.
Alexander grew up in the Harrisburg-area urban enclave of Paxtang and still brings church groups on mission trips in the city. Her father was one of the nation’s first professional fundraisers. She found his work fascinating. She has learned that a successful “ask” requires her to believe in and commit personally to the project.
“Don’t think that you can’t make an ask to anybody,” her father taught her. “Don’t be intimidated by people who are more powerful than you are. They’re just people. And don’t be disappointed if you don’t get what you ask for.”
Alexander is attracted to bootstrap causes, the kinds that help people help themselves. She gets excited when describing United Cerebral Palsy’s new Dream Partnership, enrolling young people with intellectual disabilities in colleges for certificates that help them get jobs and live independently.
She and her husband are “on the same page” in their civic interests. When the library bearing their name opened, she overheard a little girl taking her mother to the cheery sunroom. “If you can’t find me, I’ll show you where I’ll be,” the girl said. “I’ll be sitting in that chair.”
That’s her legacy, Alexander believes, places and institutions that nurture families and promote learning. “I feel really good about the fact that I think I’ve helped make the community
a better place.”
