Augustine R. Marusi*

Augustine Marusi was born in 1913 to Italian immigrant parents who lived in a walkup flat in Manhattan. When Marusi was five, his father got a job as a factory worker in Bloomfield, New Jersey, and the family moved to a small company-owned house next to a railroad track. Marusi's father's job title was "mixer of medications." His most famous concoction was cod liver oil flavored with oil of wintergreen and called Scott's Emulsion. At age 11, Marusi began helping his family financially. He sold newspapers and clerked on weekends.

A gifted math student, Marusi was guided by a high school teacher to attend Rensselaer Polytechnic in Troy, New York, where he waited tables and tended the furnace in the dorm to pay his way through school. One summer, he hitchhiked to Nevada to work in a gold mine. Marusi graduated in 1936 with a degree in chemical engineering, but jobs were scarce during the Great Depression. His father had lost his job, as well as the company-owned house. His mother had just opened a small restaurant in New York, so the whole family pitched in to help make it a success.

In 1939, Marusi got a job with Borden, the dairy conglomerate, but that time was interrupted by World War II. He commanded a minesweeper in the Atlantic and Pacific during the war. He returned to Borden and spent almost 40 years with the company, becoming president of Borden Chemicals in 1954, executive vice president of Borden in 1964, and president and CEO in 1967. Marusi spent part of his time with Borden in Brazil and Argentina; under his direction, Borden moved beyond dairy and into chemicals.

Marusi was proud of having co-founded the Minority Purchasing Council in the mid-1970s. The organization grew out of a directive from Elliott Richardson, the then-secretary of health, education, and welfare, to raise the status of minorities in the business community by helping them market their products successfully. Marusi was president of the council until 1979, the year he retired from Borden.

Over the years, Marusi was involved in many humanitarian causes. He helped pay off the debts of a New York charity for victims of multiple sclerosis, and he instituted a curriculum at Monmouth Memorial Hospital in Long Branch, New Jersey, that turned it into a highly regarded teaching hospital. "You've got to work hard and pay your dues," he once said. "You've got to be dedicated to achieving."