J. Roy Lewis Collection

Background on J. Roy Lewis

A native and long-time resident of Holyoke, Mass., J. Roy Lewis was a prominent businessman in the lumber trade and a model of civic engagement during the decades prior to the Second World War. A 1903 graduate of Phillips Academy, Lewis worked as an executive with the Hampden-Ely Lumber Company and was active in trade associations as well as civic and political groups such as the Kiwanis Club, the Chamber of Commerce, the Tax Association, and the Holyoke Planning committee. Locally, he may have been best known as the writer of hundreds of letters and opinion pieces to the editors of the Holyoke Transcript-Telegram and the Springfield Republican. An ardent conservative, Lewis was a vocal opponent of women's suffrage, prohibition, and anything he deemed contrary to the interests of business. When Franklin D. Roosevelt first took office in 1933, Lewis was particularly incensed at what he deemed "a real bloodless revolution" and the threat of redistribution of wealth. "The keynote of the inauguration was the removal of fear," he wrote. "If they have not put the fear of God into business, who has?"

Lewis's pugnacious style elicited a steady response from opponents and apparently more than a little resignation. As early as 1915, one writer commented that "every now and then J. R. Lewis pops up with some [com]plaint about the democracy of which he was born a part." Lewis appears to have died prior to 1955.