When I was in Breckenridge the Sunday before last, I picked up the weekend edition of the Summit Daily, a free newspaper covering all the news in Summit County, Colorado. It was only yesterday that I finally went through it and saw an obituary for Robert J.R. Follett. He retired as Chairman of the Board of Follett Corporation, a textbook wholesaler and operator of college bookstores, in 1994, and with his wife Nancy moved from Oak Park, Illinois to Keystone, which is located in Summit County. I am pretty sure he and his wife were at the grand opening of the Follett-run University of Denver Bookstore, where I worked for a year after it was outsourced by DU, back in 2012. Since they lived relatively close to Denver, I suspect they came to the opening to represent the family. The article in the Summit Daily stated that Follett was most involved with Follett Publishing Company, publishing 1,000 textbooks during his tenure. This publishing division was sold by the company back in 1983. I remember the Vice Chancellor of Finance for DU gave a grand speech that day about what great things Follett would do to serve the students, when in actuality it was just a way to guarantee a revenue stream for 7 years and brag to the Board of Trustees that they were able eliminate 20 or so full-time positions. After retirement, Follett founded and became the first president of the Keystone Citizens League, served on a number of boards and commissions in Summit County, and donated to various local charities, evidently a civic-minded citizen who left Follett Corporation before the textbook went the way of the dodo bird. And by the way, Charles M. Barnes, who founded the company in Wheaton, Illinois back in 1873 and sold it to C.W. Follett in 1923, moved to New York where he partnered with G. Clifford Noble to start Barnes and Noble. Follett and Barnes and Noble, of course, are the only remaining major operators of college bookstores. Pretty interesting, no?
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