photo #9450056

He was 11 years old when he crossed the ocean alone. A note on his coat said where he was going. His name was Amedeo Obici. He was born on July 15, 1877, in Oderzo, a small town in the Veneto, not far from Venice. When he was 7, his father died. His mother was left to raise the children alone. Her brother was already in America, in Scranton, Pennsylvania. On his advice, in 1889, she sent her son to him. Amedeo crossed the Atlantic by himself, with his uncle’s address on a note attached to his overcoat. In Pennsylvania, he did what poor immigrant boys did. He went to night school to learn English. He worked whatever jobs he could find. One of them was at a fruit stand that sold roasted peanuts. And he noticed something. The smell of roasting peanuts brought people in. So he built his own roaster from scrap parts. Then he built a pushcart. He even rigged a whistle that ran on the steam from the roaster, so people could hear him coming before they smelled him. He was a teenager selling peanuts on the street. And he was saving every cent. In 1895, he used those peanut savings to bring his mother, his brother and his sister to America. The boy who had come alone was not alone anymore. In 1906, he and another Italian immigrant, Mario Peruzzi, started a company. They called it Planters. In 1913, they built a processing plant in Suffolk, Virginia, in the heart of peanut country. In 1916, the company held a contest for a logo. The winning drawing came from a 13-year-old schoolboy named Antonio Gentile. It was a peanut with arms and legs. A company artist added a top hat, a cane and a monocle. That peanut became Mr. Peanut. The same year, Amedeo married Louise Musante. In 1924, they moved to a farm outside Suffolk. They never had children of their own. So they opened their home to everybody else’s. They held events for the local children, welcomed civic groups and built a clubhouse for the people who worked at Planters. In 1938, Louise died. Amedeo had built one of the most famous brands in America. Now he decided what all of it was for. He set up a trust to build a hospital in Suffolk, in her name. He did not live to see it. Amedeo Obici died on May 22, 1947, at his farm, Bay Point, at 69. His partner, Mario Peruzzi, carried on the work. In 1951, the Louise Obici Memorial Hospital opened its doors. Every Italian American family has an Amedeo. The kid who got off the boat with a note on his coat. Who worked the cart and saved the coins. Whose first big purchase was a ticket to bring his mother over. His trust money kept supporting that hospital and the town for about 50 years. Today, the Obici Healthcare Foundation still gives grants to help people in the region get health care. The old Obici house still stands near Suffolk, on the National Register of Historic Places. And Mr. Peanut is still everywhere, a little top hat on a jar in your kitchen. Amedeo Obici came to America at 11 with nothing but a note on his coat. He built Planters from a pushcart and a scrapyard roaster. When he lost the woman he loved, he turned his fortune into a hospital in her name, and Suffolk is still being cared for by it.