Meacham Hitchcock - President of Industrial Leasing Corporation
9913 Lake Shore Boulevard
Meacham worked for Kolcast Industries, a subsidiary of TRW Inc., and was later president of Industrial Leasing Corporation. After Leaseway Corporation acquired that company, He became director of development for Hawken School, of which he was also a former trustee and alumni association past president.
Meacham was the Village Treasurer for 28 years.
He had a keen interest in sports car rallies and helped set up the first road course at Mansfield, Ohio. In the 1950’s he drove with the Funny Face Auto Racing Team.
Mr. Hitchcock was an outspoken advocate for family planning and the first man to head Planned Parenthood of Cleveland in 1969 and was a national officer of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and chaired the executive committee. He was also a director of University Hospitals, Cleveland.
Meacham Hitchcock was born in Cleveland on June 8, 1927, a son of Reuben and Edith Hitchcock, who lived at 292 Corning Drive. He attended Bratenahl School through the 3rd grade and went on to Hawken School for grades 4 through 8. He graduated with cum laude honors in 1945 from St. Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire.
After service in the U.S. Navy, he received a B.A. in economics from Yale in 1950. He went on to graduate from Harvard Business School, earning an M.B.A. with distinction in 1952.
He married Robin Hyde on November 15, 1952. Robin was born in 1930 and began her education at Hathaway Brown. During World War II, her family was in the Boston area, where she attended several schools, graduating from Masters School in Dobbs Ferry, New York. Returning to Cleveland, she attended Cleveland College. Robin and Meacham had three children: Eleanor (Anderson), Douglas Robinson, and Andrew Meacham.
Meacham was a trustee of Hawken School and a past president of its alumni association. He also served as president of the Tavern Club. He volunteered at the Free Clinic during his summers in Cleveland and at the Bon Secours Venice Hospital while spending winters in Englewood, Florida.
Hitchcock died on September 25, 2002, at his Bratenahl home and buried in Lake View Cemetery.