Jaquelin H. Hume

Jaquelin Holliday Hume was born in 1905 in Harbor Point, Michigan.[1][2] He had an older brother, William Mansur Hume (1900-1976),[1][2] with whom he would later pioneer the family dehydration business. Hume grew up in Indianapolis, Indiana[1][2] and graduated from Princeton University in 1928, where he had been a member of the Charter Club,[1][2][3] subsequently receiving an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1930.[1][2][3][4]

With his brother, he co-founded the Basic Vegetable Products Company in 1933.[1][2][3][5] The company sold dried onion and garlic as well as dried beans.[1][2][5] After it successfully merged with its competitors, it became the world's largest producer of dried onion and garlic.[1][2][3] In the 1950s, he founded the American Potato Company.[1][2][3] It became the world's largest producer of dried potato products, including instant mashed potatoes.[1][2][3] Both companies later became known as Basic American Foods.[1][5]

On December 8, 1966, he filed the patent named "Process of producing large dehydrated onion pieces": 'US 3607316 A'.[6]

He served as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Pacific Presbyterian Medical Center.[1][2] He also served as Chairman of the San Francisco Museum of Art and Vice Chairman of the Asian Art Foundation.[1][2]

In 1962, he established the Jaquelin Hume Foundation.[7] Seventeen years later, in 1975, he established the Foundation for Teaching Economics, a non-profit organization which promotes the teaching of economics in elementary and high schools in the United States.[1][2][3] He received the George Washington Honor Medal from the Freedoms Foundation near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, a conservative organization, for his philanthropic work to promote free market economics.[3]

He was a staunch supporter of and donor to Ronald Reagan, both in his gubernatorial and presidential campaigns.[1][2][8] Indeed, he had known President Reagan as earlier as 1965.[9] He was also "a close friend" of Edwin Meese, who went on to serve as the 75th Attorney General of the United States from 1985 to 1988.[9] Hume established Citizens for America and the served on the Board of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, two organizations which promoted Reagan's ideas.[1][2] He also advised President Reagan and helped him choose top advisors in his first Cabinet.[3][8] A letter from President Reagan to Hume and his wife dated April 27, 1981 has been published in Reagan: A Life in Letters.[10] He also raised funds for other conservative Republicans.[2]

He served on the Alumni Council of his alma mater, Princeton University.[3] He received the Alumni Achievement Award from his other alma mater, the Harvard Business School, in 1981.[4] He was a member of the Pacific-Union Club, a gentlemen's club in San Francisco, California.[11]

He was married to Caroline Howard Hume, a philanthropist.[1][2][3] They had four children: Patricia Highberg, Carol Tolan, William J. Hume, and George H. Hume.[1][3] They resided in San Francisco, California.[1]

He died of a cancer-related stroke in San Francisco on Tuesday, October 1, 1991.[1][3][8]