Who is C.W. Post?

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The C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University is named for the cereal tycoon Charles William Post.

Born in Springfield, Illinois on October 26, 1854, C.W. was the commercial genius who built, unaided, the mammoth Postum Cereal Company and amassed a $5 million fortune in only five years.

A health food pioneer, C.W. was the first person to create and mass-market tasty and healthier food products. Plagued by chronic health problems in his 30s and financially destitute, C.W. convalesced at the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan, run by Dr. John Harvey Kellogg whose family later developed Kellogg Corn Flakes. At the sanitarium, C.W. was introduced to caramel coffee and flaked wheat cereal, among other products created by the Kelloggs for the patients. Finding the food almost inedible because of the unappetizing taste, and still not cured, C.W. left the Sans nine months later and embarked on a grand mission to not only create an alternative to coffee and tea but other ready-made breakfast cereals.

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On January 1, 1895 in his barn in Battle Creek, Michigan, he created a caffeine-free coffee substitute called Postum. In 1897, he created his first cold cereal, Grape-Nuts. In 1899, he created Post Toasties (which became the rival cereal for the Kellogg's Corn Flakes® marketed to general public in 1906.) A natural born salesman who was considered the “grandfather of advertising,” C.W. promoted his products by creating his own catchy and inspirational print advertisements and employing the enigmatic sales line “there’s a reason.”

After C.W. Post died in 1914, his only child, Marjorie Merriweather Post, inherited the Post Cereal Company and parlayed it into an international food empire, forming General Foods Corporation. With her great wealth, she purchased many homes throughout the nation, including a country estate on Long Island’s glamorous North Shore. In January 1951, she sold her estate to Long Island University for $200,000 to establish a college campus in Nassau County. In May 1954, the Long Island University Board of Trustees voted to name the new school after Mrs. Post’s father.

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C.W. Post College was officially dedicated on Nov. 29, 1954, which coincided with the 100th anniversary year of C.W. Post's birth. On that day, in the campus’s Tudor revival mansion (which was now Mrs. Post’s former home), Marjorie and her daughters, Adelaide, Eleanor and Nedenia, unveiled an oil painting of Mrs. Post’s father as the college was officially christened before a gathering of 200.

At the dedication, Admiral Richard Lansing Conolly, then president of Long Island University, declared: “I want to express on behalf of the entire university, the deep gratification we feel in having the name of this illustrious American become permanently a part of us. I promise you we shall do all in our power to make the C.W. Post College of Long Island University a permanent reminder of a man who in his lifetime searched endlessly for a better way of life.”

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“There is a power within you that can and will work miracles.”– C.W. Post

“Tackle the work just in front of you. Strive in an honest way to do the best you can, and if, having done your best, there seems to appear the hand of some Overruling Power which hammers you, take it like a good piece of steel and come right off the anvil with a better temper and keener edge.”- C.W. Post

"There's a Reason"
Charles William Post employed this enigmatic phrase to describe his line of breakfast and food products.