After nearly four decades in the confectionary industry, the alumnus was inducted into the Candy Hall of Fame
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HOME: Winchester, Massachusetts
Photo: Kathleen Dooher
OCCUPATION: Owner and president of Varick Enterprises, a company that he, his brother, and his father founded in 1978 to import processing and packaging equipment for the confectionery and snack food industries
TUFTS AFFILIATION: B.S., (geology), Class of 1976
SWEETEST VICTORIES: Inducted into the Candy Hall of Fame, the industry’s highest honor, and received the National Confectioners Association Supplier of the Year Award for 2011.
FLUENT IN: Bergamasco. “The first company I partnered with was in northern Italy, and the owner encouraged me in my attempts to learn Italian. On business trips I stayed with him and his wife at their home, immersed in a new language and culture. Only later did I realize that the man had tutored me in a dialect that is specific to his little town. I’d visit other parts of Italy, and people would say, ‘Oh, you sound like you come from Bergamo!’ ”
HIS PROFESSION’S SOFT, CHEWY CENTER: The camaraderie. “I’ve even seen equipment loaned between competitors.”
BEST DECISION: “Taking our autistic daughter out of the local public school.” He and his wife opted to enroll her in the Riverview School, which specializes in helping students like her. “It was among the most difficult moves we've made, but she's now in a place of miracles.”
CHOKED UP BY: Watching his seventeen-year-old son, a cross-country team captain, deliver an end-of-season banquet speech about the special synergy he and his teammates share.
DARK OBSESSION: The RMS Titanic. Next year, for the hundredth anniversary of its ill-fated voyage, “my wife and I are booked on a ship that will travel the same route, leaving out of Southampton, England, and making ports of call at Cherbourg, France, and Cobh, Ireland, then known as Queenstown. A vigil will be held above the wreck of the Titanic at the exact time that, a century earlier, it sank.”
DEFINING TRAITS: Energy, optimism, curiosity—and unsinkability.
INDULGES HIS OWN SWEET TOOTH WITH: Lindt Alpine Milk Chocolate, Atomic Fire Balls, and Hi-Chew, a kind of Japanese taffy that chews like gum but dissolves like candy.
