Honolulu Publishing Company founder George Pellegrin dead at 85

By Walter Wright
Advertiser Staff Writer

Honolulu Publishing Company founder George Pellegrin died Saturday at The Queen's Medical Center. He was 85.

Pellegrin, an entrepreneur in agriculture before establishing publishing empires on the Mainland and in Hawai'i, was literally a textbook example of a businessman who successfully engaged family members in his enterprises.

He ran a seed business that covered 10,000 acres in Illinois and California, launched a farming magazine and grew it to more than 300 separate editions with a circulation of 700,000 and founded the Johnson Hill Press trade publishing company.

In 1977 he moved to Hawai'i to acquire Honolulu magazine, the oldest magazine west of the Mississippi.

When he moved to Hawai'i, Pellegrin turned Johnson Hill operations over to his son, Jonathan, and brought his other son, David, into Honolulu Publishing Company as a subsidiary of Johnson Hill.

When Johnson Hill was split in 1980, Jonathan retained the Wisconsin-based operations, David took over the magazine division of Honolulu Publishing and George retained the book-publishing division, Island Heritage Limited.

"George's willingness to divide the family business was far-reaching and bold," said John Davis, chairman of the Families-in-Business Program at Harvard Business School, which used Pellegrin's career as a case study.

"It might have been seen as risky for him to have relinquished control and ownership so early, but it ended up serving both the health of the family relationships and the businesses themselves," Davis said.

Pellegrin later acquired the Hawai'i souvenir and postcard business, World Wide Distributors, and Glassware Decorators Inc., but sold all his Hawai'i holdings in 1984 and moved with wife, Dorothy, to Florida and then to the Carolinas, before returning to Hawai'i in 1998.

"He set the highest standards of integrity for those who worked with him," said Jonathan Pellegrin, who sold Johnson Hill in 1994 and joined the faculty of the University of Wisconsin Business School.

In addition to his wife and his sons, Pellegrin is survived by his sister, Jane Rosemurgy of Florida; three grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

No services are planned. Memorial donations may be made to The Compassionate Friends, 707 Richards St., Suite 525, Honolulu, HI 96813.