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Tuesday, April 01, 2003

By Jan Ackerman, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

He was called "Dixie," in honor of his Southern roots, but Whiten C. "Clyde" Thurman was better known as the "Candyman."

More than 50 years ago, Mr. Thurman founded a chocolate manufacturing company in McKeesport that eventually moved to North Versailles and produced Tris Anne candy. In his Munhall neighborhood, his modest home was a favorite stopping place for children looking for candy treats and giant chocolate bars.

As founder of Thurman's Inc., Mr. Thurman was a self-made man, a shrewd investor and a quiet philanthropist. He lived simply and donated generously and quietly to causes of his choice.

At the age of 87, Mr. Thurman and his late wife, Ida Mae, donated $500,000 to match an earlier gift by the H.J. Heinz Foundation to fully endow a nutrition chair at Penn State University to do research for food for children in underdeveloped countries.

"He was a very giving man," said Larry McGrail of Peters, who was Mr. Thurman's accountant.

Mr. Thurman died of pneumonia Thursday at Southwestern Nursing Home in Pleasant Hills. He was 99.

In 1904, Mr. Thurman was born in Mississippi to an impoverished family that soon moved to Louisiana. As a young man, he traveled around to find jobs in the shipyards. Eventually, he joined Woolworth Co. in New Orleans and was promoted into management positions in Memphis and Knoxville, Tenn., said his niece, Louise Eliason of Glen, N.H.

After serving in the Army in World War II, he started a candy manufacturing company in Bethel Park in 1946. In 1950, he purchased the former Crown Chocolate Co. on Market Street in McKeesport and began producing candy there.

In 1967, he opened a 60,000-square-foot candy manufacturing plant in North Versailles, at the site of the old Vogue Terrace, a nightclub that had burned several years earlier. The candy plant employed 140 people, used state-of-the-art equipment and produced candy that was sold under several brands, including the Tris Anne brand, according to a 1967 story from the McKeesport Daily News.

Mr. Thurman's workers made solid chocolates, covered nuts, Easter molded candy, confections of fruits, nuts and coconut.

Eliason isn't sure what year her uncle got out of the candy business, but she said his mind remained active. She said he belonged to the Royal Order of Jesters at the Syria Temple and "loved a good story" and a good poker game.

"I used to tell him that his mind could have been preserved," said Mary Csokuly of West Mifflin, a friend who was his caregiver in his later years.

McGrail said Mr. Thurman made the bulk of his money in the stock market, which he played until shortly before his death.

It was while reading materials that H.J. Heinz Co. sends to its stockholders that Mr. Thurman learned that Heinz Co. had donated $500,000 to the Helen Guthrie Chair in Nutrition at Penn State University and was looking for a matching donation.

McGrail said Mr. Thurman decided to help endow the chair because "He loved children and he admired [former Heinz chief operating officer] Tony O'Reilly."

Helen Guthrie, for whom the chair was named, said Mr. Thurman's donation "was as much a surprise to me as to anybody." He had no connection to Penn State or its College of Health and Human Development, Guthrie said yesterday from her home in Fort Myers, Fla.

Martha Sterling, former director of development for the College of Health and Human Development, said Penn State officials wanted to honor Mr. Thurman, but "he didn't want much recognition." Finally, Sterling said, she took three Heinz executives to visit Mr. Thurman at his house in Munhall.

"That flattered him," Sterling said. "He loosened up a little."

Burial was yesterday in Jefferson Memorial Park. Pleasant Hills. Arrangements were handled by the George Irvin Green Funeral Home, Munhall.