Harry Burnett “H.B.” Reese Sr. (1879-1956)

Businessman. He was the founder of the "H.B. Reese Candy Company," whose most famous product eventually became the "REESE'S Peanut Butter Cup." Entering the candy manufacturing business in Hershey, Pennsylvania around 1917, by the mid-1920s he started to make an item called "peanut butter cups." Due to sugar shortages during World War II he dropped the other items his company produced in order to concentrate on his peanut butter cup item. In 1963 (seven years after his death in 1956), his six sons merged the H.B. Reese Candy Company with the Hershey Chocolate Corporation in a tax free stock-for-stock merger. REESE'S is now the No. 1 selling candy brand in both the United States and Canada with annual sales exceeding $2.5 billion.