Wolfe family legacy seen throughout Columbus
Influence extended far beyond ownership
The Wolfe family did not start The Columbus Dispatch, and the family no longer owns the newspaper. But the paper and the Wolfes are inextricably linked, growing and evolving together for more than a century.
When the family sold the paper in 2015, followed a year later by the death of the last family publisher, John F. Wolfe, an era came to a close in Columbus.
Like the Blethens in Seattle or, earlier, the Binghams in Louisville, the Wolfes were a powerful publishing family who used their money, voice and influence to shape their community for decades.
The family’s legacy can be found
throughout the Columbus region, sometimes in obvious ways – Wolfe Park, John F. Wolfe Palm House at the Franklin Park Conservatory, and John F. Wolfe Columbus Commons park. But those are the exceptions.
“The family was just very quiet,” said Ann Isaly Wolfe, the widow of John F. Wolfe. “They never requested their names on anything.”
Less obvious is the family’s role in countless other Columbus institutions. From COSI to John Glenn Columbus International Airport, Franklin Park Conservatory to the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, as well as the Crew, the Columbus Blue Jackets, Nationwide Arena, Nationwide Children’s Hospital, the Scioto Mile and Ohio State University, the family’s legacy can be found throughout Greater Columbus.
“For three generations, they had the most understated and underappreciated impact on the development of Columbus than any other family by far in the city’s history,” said Michael Curtin, who worked at the Dispatch Printing Company for 34 years before retiring in 2007 as associate publisher of the paper.
“Members of the Wolfe family were prime movers behind Port Columbus, the Columbus Zoo, COSI, the James Cancer Hospital. Those institutions would simply not have come about at the time they came about – maybe they would have later – but for Wolfe family leadership.”
Shoes, banks and news
The Wolfe family business stood on shoes, not newspapers.
The family got its Columbus start in 1888, when Robert F. Wolfe landed in the city at age 28 after bouncing around the nation in a novelistic string of jobs including canal boat crew member, New York newsboy, Atlantic coast shipper, Louisiana lumberjack and Texas cowboy. Following those adventures, Wolfe returned to Ohio to work at H.C. Godman Shoe Co., one of Columbus’ many shoe factories.
Encouraged by his success, he persuaded his younger brother, Harry P. Wolfe, to join him two years later from the family’s home in Corning, in Perry County. Soon after, the sons teamed up with their father, Andrew Jackson Wolfe, a cobbler who had moved to Columbus to open a boot and shoe shop of his own.
In 1893, Robert and Harry founded Wolfe Bros. Shoes on South Front Street Downtown.
The business rapidly expanded, and by 1900 employed 800 workers. Wolfe Bros. morphed into the Wolfe Wear-u-well Corp., a chain of shoe retailers that reached about 3,500 outlets in 30 states before its demise in the late 1950s.
Turn-of-the-century Columbus was a boom town, with the population increasing nearly five-fold between 1880 and 1920, offering endless possibilities for ambitious entrepreneurs.
The Wolfe brothers, both former newsboys, soon channeled their energy into newspapers. In 1903, they bought The Ohio State Journal, which traced its roots to 1809. Two years later, in April 1905, they acquired The Columbus Dispatch, then called The Columbus Evening Dispatch, which had been founded on July 1, 1871.
Wolfes rise to civic prominence in Columbus
By the turn of the century, the family was starting to flex its civic muscles. Soon after the Wolfes acquired them, The Journal and The Dispatch led a crusade against the street railway and light company monopoly, and in 1910,
Robert Wolfe helped lead the creation of the Columbus Convention Bureau.
One of the most colorful stories of the family’s early civic activism came during the flood of 1913. Watching the waters rush over Franklinton from his shoe-factory office, Robert Wolfe chartered a freight car to haul boats from Buckeye Lake to rescue stranded residents, earning him a commission as a commodore in the Ohio Naval Reserve.
In the 1920s, Robert’s son, Edgar, an early champion of aviation, invited the famed aviator Charles Lindbergh to Columbus to promote an airport. Voters approved bonds for the venture and, as a result, Port Columbus opened in 1929.
The family’s business interests advanced with the century and the city. An early investment in the Ohio Trust Co. led, in 1929, to the family forming Bancohio Corp., which National City (now PNC) acquired in the 1980s.
In the 1920s, the family also started expanding its media holdings with the acquisition of the AM radio station, WCAH, rebranded as WBNS (Wolfe Banks News and Shoes). The family’s broadcast holdings expanded in 1949 with the founding of WBNS-TV (Channel 10), followed by WBNS FM radio station. In 1975, the family added WTHR-TV of Indianapolis to the stable.
During the Great Depression, the family branched into real estate, eventually acquiring thousands of acres to the west of Columbus in Madison and Clark counties, along with investments throughout the core of Columbus.
At the end of 1985, the family consolidated its hold on local media when it allowed a joint operating agreement between The Dispatch and the Columbus Citizen Journal to expire, resulting in the shutdown of the “CJ,” as it was widely known, and leaving The Dispatch the community’s sole daily paper.
Another generation of Wolfes
After the death of Robert in 1927 and Harry in 1946, the family business passed to their sons and grandsons. Through much of the second half the century, Harry’s son, Preston, and Robert’s grandson, John Walton Wolfe, shepherded the company while deepening the family’s leadership role in the community.
While Preston Wolfe’s interests centered on horticulture, the development of the Scioto riverfront, COSI and the Columbus Zoo, John W. Wolfe focused on business activity, including the development of the city’s medical facilities.
The family exercised its influence in multiple
ways, including ways that some observers no doubt considered heavy-handed. When the Mid-ohio Health Planning Federation and its director, Gordon Labuhn, for example, opposed a new cancer research hospital at Ohio State University, John W. Wolfe persuaded then-governor James Rhodes to eliminate the agency.
“Gordon Labuhn woke up one morning to read in the paper that his agency had been abolished,” said Curtin.
The result was the Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute.
“John Walton Wolfe was not shy about using political power in getting something done in the city,” Curtin said. “His big passion in civic life was cancer and making sure Columbus was among those cities that could offer its citizens first-rate cancer care.”
After John W. Wolfe’s death in 1994, the family leadership went to Preston’s son, John F. Wolfe, who already had served as publisher of The Dispatch for nearly 20 years. For many central Ohioans, “John F.” was the face of The Dispatch.
John F.: The last Wolfe lion
By the time John F. Wolfe took the reins of the family’s business interests, his sixth-floor office overlooking the Statehouse had become a center of power in the community.
“There’s not a leader who has been around for the last 30 or 40 years who didn’t come to John’s office to seek his advice on any major development,” said Guy Worley, the former president and chief executive officer of the Columbus Downtown Development Corp.
One of those was W.G. “Jerry” Jurgensen, who arrived in Columbus in 2000 to become chief executive officer of Nationwide.
“When I got to Columbus in 2000, he was one of the first meetings I took,” Jurgensen said. “He explained everything in Columbus, and he couldn’t have made me feel any better about coming to town. There isn’t anything significant in central Ohio that John Wolfe did not have a hand in, not a single civic project.”
John F. Wolfe shared his father’s passion for horticulture – he chaired Ameriflora ‘92, the first internationally sanctioned floral and garden show held in the United States – and for Downtown.
“John and his father before him felt that it was really important if you were in a city with a river running through it, that you should build around the water, and that the Downtown was really important to the city overall,” said Ann Wolfe.
Wolfe worked closely with the city to develop the Scioto River waterfront, bring the National Veterans Memorial and Museum to the riverfront and replace the failed City Center Mall with Columbus Commons park, which was renamed in honor of him after his death.
“We had a Downtown master plan, but not a lot of action in the early 2000s,” recalled Worley. “John was an action-oriented person and he wanted to see things get done.”
Wolfe championed the development of a park on the site of the former Columbus City Center Mall, even though there was considerable development interest in the property, Worley said.
“We had developers wanting to build an outlet mall on the City Center site,” Worley said. “John said, ‘We’re not having an outlet mall 50 yards from the state capital.’
“When John spoke, everyone listened.” After the successful care of a daughter at Children’s Hospital, Ann and John F. Wolfe’s interest in health care centered on the institution (now called Nationwide Children’s Hospital), illustrating how the family’s influence plays out in multiple ways.
“I led three capital campaigns,” said Ann Wolfe. “And John always was advising them. He told them if something becomes available on Livingston Avenue, you better buy it if you’re able to because the hospital will continue to grow. John had great vision.”
The family was an investor in the Brewery District and was an early partner with Nationwide in developing Nationwide Arena and the surrounding Arena District. The Wolfes also were a minor partner in the arena’s main tenant, the Columbus Blue Jackets hockey team, following their earlier investment in the Columbus Crew soccer team.
“The success of the Crew gave us an entrée with the NHL,” said Ron Pizzuti, also a minor partner in the Blue Jackets. “John Wolfe was right up front with one of the early investors of the Crew, and subsequently with the Blue Jackets.
“The entire family is devoted to the city, and they’ve been in the forefront of so many things – the OSU cancer center, Children’s Hospital, Franklin Park Conservatory, the Zoo.”
Through Dispatch editorials and in other ways, John F. Wolfe led a campaign against placing a casino in the Arena District in 2010, leading some to accuse the family of putting their Arena District investment interests ahead of the community’s interest. Jurgensen dismisses the accusation. “He never put Wolfe family interests ahead of the interests of Columbus, Ohio,” Jurgensen said. “He never did.”
Even though the Wolfes had a financial stake in the Blue Jackets, The Dispatch, under John F. Wolfe, sued to get records that the hockey team had sought to seal involving the death of a young fan killed by a puck in 2002.
“John’s commitment to First Amendment principals that underpinned journalism was fierce,” recalled Curtin, who credits Wolfe for elevating the journalistic stature of the paper.
“The Dispatch was rightfully criticized for a long time for not being aggressive enough when it came to sacred cows, for being too ‘Chamber of Commerce-ish,” Curtin said.
“John F. allowed the paper to spread its wings, to elevate itself to a higher place in the order of newspapers. He knew it was time,” he said. “It wasn’t in John’s nature to do things suddenly, but The Dispatch slowly but surely became the best paper in Ohio under his leadership.”
Eager to create a vehicle for the city’s business leaders to focus their civic efforts, Wolfe and L Brands founder Les Wexner in 2002 created The Columbus Partnership, comprised of the CEOS of Columbus’ top corporations.
“John cared so deeply about Columbus,” Wexner said in a statement for this story.
“He cared about the people and every aspect
of the quality of life,” Wexner said. “It is impossible to think of any facet of our community that he didn’t care about. That caring was guided by his unselfish thinking and engagement. His impact on Columbus can never be overstated.”
The Wolfe empire shrinks
By the early 21st century, cracks were showing in the family’s financial world. A low-cost airline the family helped fund, Skybus Airlines, failed in 2008 less than a year after leaving ground, and the television news channel Ohio News Network shut down in 2012 after a 15-year run.
More critically, the newspaper industry, the foundation of the family’s business world, was starting to struggle. Advertising revenue at The Dispatch and other newspapers plunged as classified advertisers moved to online sites such as Craigslist, ebay, Monster and Realtor.com.
Between 2006 and 2015, newspaper advertising revenue fell 60%, according to the Pew Research Center. Newspaper circulation fell with it, dropping 27% over the same period.
Despite efforts to adjust – including launching dispatch.com in 1995, moving to a smaller print format in 2013, acquiring competing Columbus publications, and expanding commercial printing to include other newspapers – the Wolfes were unable to repair a disrupted business model.
After holding out longer than many independent publishers, in June 2015, the family shocked the staff and the community by announcing it was selling the Dispatch and its sister publications –including Columbus Monthly, Columbus CEO and Thisweek Community News – to New Media Investment Group Inc., the New York-based parent company of Gatehouse Media, for $47 million. (In 2019, Gatehouse acquired Virginia-based publisher Gannett and took its name.)
“It was heart-wrenching to my father,” said Katie Wolfe Lloyd. “He really struggled — it was very difficult. That was his family’s legacy, and just to think he had to be the one at the helm when it happened.”
A year after selling the paper, at the age of 72, John F. Wolfe died of cancer, which he had been quietly battling for two years.
Three years later, in June 2019, the family’s long history in media came to a close when it announced that it was selling its broadcast properties, including WBNS-TV and WBNS AM and FM, to Virginia-based Tegna Inc. for $535 million.
Today, the family’s business is largely in real estate, but its civic activities continue. Family members are active on local boards, including the zoo, where Katie Wolfe Lloyd serves as secretary, and the Nationwide Children’s Hospital Foundation board, chaired by Ann Wolfe.
“You find a lot of families where the first generation is active, and the second, but the third isn’t,” said Columbus historian Ed Lentz. “That’s not true of the Wolfes. They are involved in a variety of things, and they stayed involved, in media, in banking and in economic ventures.”
Lentz likened the Wolfes to the Jeffrey, Huntington or Deshler families for the longevity of their prominence in Columbus.
“The family casts a long shadow,” he said. “Whether you’re talking about the economics, philanthropies or politics of Columbus, they’re involved for more than 125 years.” jweiker@dispatch.com @Jimweiker