Lilly

What began as a tiny laboratory at 15 West Pearl Street in 1876 gave rise to the city’s most important company, its largest charity (The Lilly Endowment), and perhaps its most notable family. With 40,200 employees worldwide and $18.6 billion in annual revenue today, Eli Lilly and Company is one of only two Fortune 500 businesses in Indianapolis. Its discoveries and pharmaceuticals over the years (insulin, methadone, Prozac, Cialis) have become household names. And while the Lilly descendants no longer involve themselves much with the corporation, their wealth and secrecy remain a source of undying fascination here.


The Patriarch - Colonel Eli Lilly (1838–1898)
Born in Maryland, raised in Kentucky, and educated in pharmacology as an apprentice in a Lafayette pharmacy, Colonel Eli Lilly might have been a success even earlier in life had the Civil War not intervened. After fighting in a few major battles such as Chickamauga, he returned to Indiana to establish a pharmacy that perfected the process of gelatin-coating pills. This venture, which he opened in his mid-30s, became known as Eli Lilly and Company (an extravagant name for a storefront with three employees and a wooden sign), and he began development of prescription drugs shortly before his death.


The Endowment
In 1937, Colonel Eli’s son, J.K. Lilly Sr. (1861–1948), used his stock interests in the company to create the Lilly Endowment, a fund that dovetailed with the growth of the company. To date, that organization has given away an astonishing $7 billion. Christ Church Cathedral (where J.K. Lilly Sr.’s son Eli sang in the choir) enjoys major funding from the Endowment, as does the United Way of Central Indiana (more than $295 million to date). Such is the size and scope of its efforts thatwhen the Lilly Endowment pledged$50 million toward Indiana flood relief in June of last year, it barely made news.


The Catalyst - Eli Lilly II (1885–1977)
For all of Colonel Lilly’s early success, it was his grandson, also named Eli, who transformed the company into what it is today. Taking over as president in 1932, the younger Lilly grew the business by nearly 900 percent. Spearheaded by Eli’s focus on re-search and development, thecompany perfected a way to mass-produce penicillin. But he wasn’t as good with people as he was with a balance sheet. “Eli was a very shy person,” says biographer and IU history professor James H. Madison. “He didn’t like the cocktail circuitand went out of his way to avoid publicity. When he started donating his fortune, that didn’t change. He would give with just one stipulation: that his name not be attached.”


The Black Sheep - Josiah K. “Joe” Lilly III (1916–1995)
Having had two sons die in infancy, Eli Lilly II was eager to groom his nephew, Joe Lilly, to eventually take over the company and keep it in the family. But the young Lilly resisted and, feeling the burden, resigned his post as superintendent of the Kentucky Avenue plant in 1946. Dejected, Eli wrote to young Joe, “I cannot but think you have made a grave mistake.” The outsider did, however, make a significant impact in one regard—the land he and his sister, Ruth Lilly, donated at West 38th Street and Michigan Road in 1966 now holds the Indianapolis Museum of Art.


The Gift That Shocked the World
A few of the other family members have used their personal fortunes for philanthropy as well. Not since Calliope visited Homer has poetry enjoyed a muse like Ruth Lilly. Her $100 million gift to Poetry magazine in 2002 (which some called nonsensical) set the philanthropy world on its ear. The donation—100 times larger than the Chicago publication’s modest endowment—posed a pleasant problem for the staff, who initially had few ideas on how to spend the windfall. Fellowships and prizes followed. “Poetry has no greater friend than Ruth Lilly,” says John Barr, president of the Poetry Foundation, which was established in 2003. “[Her gift] is without precedent in the history of literature.”

 

The Local Descendants

Ruth Lilly, 93, philanthropist
Disappearing from society in her teens and supposedly suffering from depression, Indy’s oldest billionaire has lived most of her life in secrecy at a gated home on Kessler Boulevard—a reclusiveness that has fueled wild speculation about her state of mind. Rumors swirled after a 1998 WTHR investigation turned up evidence of the ailing heiress being taken on lavish international trips with large groups of support staff. Even before she was confined to a wheelchair, sightings of Ruth were rare. But a few years after the Ruth Lilly Health Education Center opened, she popped in unannounced. “I was sitting at the front desk,” recalls Louise David. “Her nurse brought her in, and Ruth sat down right in front of me. Our president at the time was so flustered, and this was a man who didn’t rattle easily.”

Eli “Ted” Lilly II, 65
The only one of Ruth’s six nephews and nieces who still lives in Indianapolis, Ted insists on privacy to an extent surpassed only by his aunt. That’s especially true since a judge’s decision in 2006 granted Ted co-guardianship of Ruth’s financial dealings, decreeing that “Ruth Lilly, by reason of illness and infirmity, lacks the capacity to manage her … financial and legal affairs.” His wife, Deborah, sits on the IMA board.

The Legacy

It would be hard to overstate the Lillys’ importance to Indy. The company headquarters on South Delaware Street span 111 acres and 58 buildings, employing more people over the last 132 years than any other local business. “I sometimes wonder what this city would look like if Colonel Lilly had stopped in Louisville or Cincinnati after the Civil War instead of Indianapolis,” says former deputy mayor Steve Campbell. “I can’t think of a single aspect of this community that hasn’t been touched by them. It’s unbelievable when you think about it.”