John Harney was born outside of Cleveland in 1930. The Depression and family tragedies shattered his family. He was farmed out to relatives at age 8. The first relative was truly a farmer. John did not like plucking potatoes in the cold ground, so he moved to Manchester, VT to an uncle that had several country inns. There he fell in love with hotels. Also he fell in love with the love of his life: Elyse. She encouraged him to apply to Cornell after his Korean War service.

That was a special time at the Hotel School with many older students and many with families already. The staff at the School were so kind to him and his growing family. Important staff members: Edna Osborn, Mary Loughnan and Helen Ayers were the linchpins for veterans returning to school. The government deferred GI Bills funding, so money was a scramble. Everyone had two jobs,  Chuck Feeney maybe had three, but faculty and friends all pulled together.   At that time Bob Beck (later Dean Beck ) taught accounting and John became his Teaching Assistant.  By 1956 John & Elyse had two babies and the entire student loan fund with his last semester unfunded.   Dean Meek gave John a special project so that he could finish early. The Hotel School was where he made many lifelong friends.

After managing a small inn in Connecticut, he started Harney & Sons Teas. Beside no money there were no sons in that fledgling company.  His two sons did join him later. As a Cornell friend told him, the first million is the hardest. Harney & Sons is now consumed on all 7 continents, even Antarctica. John never forgot about the School on the Hill. He interviewed prospective students. Set a record for the number of HECs attended. And was proud to donate an office in the Food & Beverage area occupied by The Cheryl Stanley.

Bon Appetit magazine named him Food Artisan of the Year. And the U.S Tea Association named him Man of the Year in 2011. He was proud to have his tea enjoyed at the Historic Royal Palaces over in the UK and all the great hotels, restaurants & stores. All this would never have been possible without the support of the Hotel School family. All hail Cornell!

From the New York Times, June 26, 2014

John Harney, Missionary Who Spread the ‘Gospel of Tea,’ Dies at 83

By Paul Vitello

June 26, 2014

John Harney, the founder of Harney & Sons, a specialty tea company that helped restore the American palate for high-quality teas, died on June 17 at his home in Salisbury, Conn. He was 83.

Mr. Harney was part of an informal community of American entrepreneurs and food pioneers who barnstormed the country in the 1980s and ’90s to acquaint restaurant managers, their luncheon patrons and the public — one afternoon-tea demonstration at a time — with the dying art of tea appreciation.

He conducted demonstrations for the waiters and waitresses at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York and for the book club at the public library in Rye, N.Y., introducing the nuances of aroma, body, complexity and aftertaste in loose teas from China, Africa and India to people whose experience with tea had often been limited to what came in store-bought tea bags.

“John became a missionary of tea,” said Peter F. Goggi, president of the Tea Association of the USA, a trade group.

An inveterate and jovial campaigner — he was involved in community affairs and politics, and helped secure the Republican nomination for a neighbor, James L. Buckley, in his unsuccessful campaign for the United States Senate in Connecticut in 1980 — Mr. Harney described his tea-promoting efforts, in a 2001 CNN interview, as part entrepreneurial and part inspirational:

“All we wanted to do was get out there and convert — sort of like St. John with his gospel of tea. That’s what I consider myself.”

Though far from re-establishing tea as the No. 1 beverage in America (status it lost as a tragic side effect, by tea lovers’ accounts, of the 1773 tea-tax protest that ignited the Revolutionary War), efforts by Mr. Harney and his like are credited with quadrupling tea consumption in the United States in the last two decades.

Harney & Sons, which began with a selection of six varieties in 1983, expanded its catalog to over 300 blends, many of them now standard fare at luxury hotels, including the Waldorf-Astoria and Ritz-Carlton in New York and the Dorchester in London.

The Historic Royal Palaces, which operates sites in Britain like Kensington Palace and the Tower of London, stocks its gift shops with a proprietary line of teas blended by Harney & Sons.

John David Harney was born on Aug. 26, 1930, in Lakewood, Ohio, to William and Hildegard Harney. His father, an engineer who moved frequently to find work in airplane factories, left his children with relatives after their mother died in the early 1940s, when John was 12. As a teenager he lived with an aunt and uncle who ran a country inn in Vermont.

He served in the Marine Corps from 1948 to 1952, then graduated from Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration. By 1960, he had moved to Salisbury to become part owner and innkeeper of the White Hart Inn, a two-century-old restaurant and hotel.

It was at the White Hart that Mr. Harney, a committed coffee drinker, was converted to the gospel of tea. His St. John was Stanley Mason, an Englishman who had settled in northwest Connecticut after 50 years in the London tea trade. In retirement, Mr. Mason had started a small company to blend and package premium teas, and he persuaded Mr. Harney to add some to his menu.

Mr. Harney’s guests liked the teas so much that he bought Mr. Mason’s company, hired Mr. Mason as his consultant and began a 10-year apprenticeship in the tea trade. In 1983, two years after Mr. Mason died, Mr. Harney sold his share in the inn and established Harney & Sons with family help and a handful of employees.

The company now reports about $30 million in annual sales and employs 150 people. It imports about a million pounds of tea each year, which it sells in the United States and abroad in a wide variety of styles and packages at prices ranging from $2 to $500 a pound. It moved its packaging operations to Millerton, N.Y., in 2000.

Besides his son Michael, Mr. Harney is survived by his wife, Elyse; three other sons, John Jr., Keith and Paul; a daughter, Elyse; a sister, Susan Rooney; a brother, Jerry; and 10 grandchildren.

Mr. Harney remained modest about his expertise. But he held to two absolute rules in making a good cup of tea, whether using a camomile from Egypt or a Darjeeling from India, a tangy black Lapsang souchong or a soft jasmine blossom pouchong.

First, to use “furiously boiling water,” he told The New York Times in 1983, defining furiously (with a thermometer he always carried in his pocket) as exactly 212 degrees Fahrenheit.

Second, to make sure it is properly steeped: “Five minutes,” he said. “No more, no less.”