Character failures don't have to be fatal

His is a face that you absolutely trust. It just has the “look” — bright-eyed and beaming. Stew Leonard died last week at 93 years.

I — being a Westerner — had never heard of the guy. I learned he grew up in Connecticut and dreamed of being a milkman. He inherited the family dairy at a young age — but lost it when the state wanted to run a highway through the farm.

He asked his milk route customers what to do. They wanted him to build a store and sell his quality dairy products. A widowed customer agreed to sell him pasture land — if he would care for her sheep and chickens.

Stew opened his first store in Norwalk in 1969, carrying only eight retail items. It was built around a bottling plant and claimed of its fresh milk, “You'd have to own a cow to get it sooner.” The store even featured a petting zoo — yep, the widow's sheep and chickens included.

The Stew Leonard's grocery chain — earning $600 million annually — now has seven stores in Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey — and employs more than 2,500 people. It is family-run by Stew and Marianne's (70 years married) four children, and a few of the grands.

Along the way, Stew received prestigious awards, and was among Fortune magazine's “100 Best Companies to Work For.” He loved to stand at the door and greet his customers as they came into the store. Once inside they encountered costumed characters and mechanical singing farm animals. He kept the “wow factor” shined up — but ultimately felt personal attention to detail was his key to success. From his dairy days, he said, “I still believe that a farmer's shadow is the best fertilizer.”

If it sounds idyllic, it is — and yet that “farmer's shadow” ended up causing a big stink. This beaming, jolly man sobbed at his 1993 prison sentencing, “I've hurt my family. I've hurt my children. I've hurt my customers.” Stew Leonard served 44 months of a 52-month sentence in federal prison for what was the nation's “largest computer-driven tax evasion case on record” — skimming 17 million in sales from his Norwalk store.

Over a 10-year period, Stew directed his CFO and office manager to “bundle stacks of cash into $10,000 piles and place them in a safe hidden in his office fireplace.”He carried the money to the Caribbean in suitcases or disguised as baby gifts — until the day he was caught with $80,000 cash on his way to the island of St. Martin.

He had so much. He didn't need to do this. There is a biblical proverb, “A good name is to be more desired than great wealth.” This good guy — who had a good name — laid himself a trap. And landed doubled over sobbing in a courtroom. In the end, did he think the extra cash mattered?

I, too, have been caught in my own trap — a trap of a different making. It's crushing. A person doesn't see the damage — the harm — until the trap is sprung. Stew worked 30 more years to reestablish his good name — and he did.

Character failures don't have to be fatal. It's what comes after that sets the trajectory. A good name is a “wow factor” that — with genuine effort — can regain its shine.