Jacob Hiatt

Jacob Hiatt
Born	1905 Lithuania
Died	February 25, 2001 Worcester, Massachusetts, U.S.
Alma mater	University of Lithuania
Occupation	Businessman, philanthropist
Spouse(s)	Frances Hiatt
Children	2 daughters, including Myra Kraft
Relatives	Robert Kraft (son-in-law)

Jacob "Jack" Hiatt (1905–2001) was an American businessman and philanthropist.

Hiatt was born to a Jewish family in Lithuania in 1905, the son of Joshua and Leah Hiatt. He earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Lithuania and became a district attorney and circuit judge.

In 1935 he immigrated to the United States, settling in Worcester, Massachusetts where two of his brothers, Alexander and Sidney, lived. Although he was fluent in Lithuanian, Hebrew, Russian, and German, Hiatt did not speak English when he arrived in the U.S. Frances Lavine, the secretary to the Worcester superintendent of schools, helped find him a school that taught English to immigrants. They married in 1937. In 1946 he earned a master's degree from Clark University.

Hiatt and his wife had two children, Myra and Janice. In 1963, Myra married Robert Kraft. Hiatt's younger daughter, Janice, is intellectually disabled. His wife, Frances Hiatt, died in 1980.

After arriving in the United States, Hiatt worked at his brother Alexander's shoe manufacturing company, where he made boxes. He later went to work for E.F. Dodge Paper Box Corp. in Leominster, Massachusetts, where he eventually rose to the position of company president. The company was later acquired by Whitney Box to form Dodge-Whitney Co. In February 1962, Dodge-Whitney and three other companies merged to create the Rand-Whitney Corporation. Hiatt remained in charge of Rand-Whitney until 1968, when his son-in-law, Robert Kraft, purchased half of the company in a leveraged buyout.

Hiatt was also president of Estey Investment Inc. and the Jacob Hiatt Income Trust and was an investor in the Educator Biscuit Co.

Hiatt's parents, a brother, and his sisters were killed in the Holocaust. After World War II, Hiatt traveled to Europe, where he saw concentration camps, visited the Displaced persons camps where refugees of the Holocaust lived, and had an audience with Pope Pius XII. He then travelled to see the emerging Jewish state of Israel. After he returned home, Hiatt became a supporter of the establishment of the state of Israel as well as the cause of Holocaust victims.

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