Steven Hess was born in Amsterdam, Holland in 1938, after his German parents were forced to flee Nazi Germany. After the fall of Holland, the Nazis interned Steven, his twin sister Marion and their parents in first the Westerbork transit camp, and later the infamous Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The family was imprisoned from 1942 until their liberation by the Russians in 1945, after surviving what became known as the “Lost Transport”—one of several trains full of prisoners sent out of Bergen Belsen in desperation by the Nazis, who knew the war was ending and the Allies were nearly at their doorsteps.

After miraculously surviving as an intact nuclear family, Steven, Marion and their parents arrived in the United States on January 1, 1947, aboard the RMS Queen Elizabeth. To this day, Mr. Hess recalls waking up to see the Statue of Liberty as the ship entered New York Harbor, and hearing his father’s reassurance that they were now safe. 

Mr. Hess began his Scouting journey early in his new life in the United States, achieving Eagle Scout in 1955. He is a graduate of Columbia College, where he was active in the Naval ROTC program and Rifle Team. Mr. Hess then served as an officer aboard the Destroyer USS Forest Sherman, during its operations in The Bay of Pigs, as well as the Mediterranean and North Atlantic. After his sea tour, Mr. Hess served ashore as Public Relations Officer with the Third Naval District, where his duties included covering the sinking of the USS Thresher. He separated from service with the rank of Lieutenant.

Following military service, he was employed at The New York Times, and then as a public relations specialist with the Western Electric Company. In 1967 he joined the then-prominent photographic equipment company Berkey Photo, serving in a variety of roles—eventually as president of the firm’s manufacturing division.

In 1975 Mr. Hess moved to Rochester, NY and purchased Saunders Photo/Graphic, at the time a six-person photographic equipment company. Later renamed The Saunders Group, the company grew to one of the most successful and respected U.S. manufacturers and distributors of professional photographic equipment. Saunders manufactured or imported over a dozen different brands, and employed over one-hundred people in Rochester. Many of these employees worked their entire careers at the company, reflecting positively on the quality of leadership and the care Mr. Hess showed for them. Mr. Hess successfully sold the business in 1998, and shared a substantial portion of the sale proceeds with his employees.

Not content to retire, Mr. Hess accepted a very different role, as Chief Financial Officer of Finger Lakes Clinical Research. He grew this company from a small niche practice into a nationally recognized Central Nervous System clinical research practice, with a specialty in Pediatric research. He retired in 2019.