SALEM, Ohio — Orland Bethel knows the meaning of a hard day’s work. The founder of Hillandale Farms grew up on a dairy farm in Belmont County, Ohio.
He borrowed $4,000 from his parents and in-laws to get his egg company off the ground and frequently put in 18-hour days to keep it going. In the early days, he collected eggs from local farmers’ basements throughout southeast Ohio and hand-graded them at his plant before reselling them.
Now the company is one of the largest egg producers in the country, employing nearly 2,000 people across several states and raising nearly 20 million chickens. But if you ask him about his success, he quickly deflects any credit back onto his employees.
“Good people impress me,” Bethel said.
Another one of these good people is Dr. Joon Yung Lee, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, who Bethel says “transformed his life.”
Nearly a decade ago, Lee and his team at Pitt and UPMC helped relieve Bethel of incapacitating back and hip pain caused by spinal stenosis. Bethel had consulted with six other orthopedic surgeons before ending up with Lee, who found a less invasive option to try. The surgery and treatment restored Bethel’s function and movement.
Bethel was so impressed with Lee that he has now given more than $45 million through the Orland Bethel Family Foundation to support musculoskeletal care and research at the University of Pittsburgh.
“I think he’s on the way to make a tremendous difference,” Bethel said of Lee.
The latest donation is $18.5 million to create a biological specimen repository that will be housed within the Orland Bethel Musculoskeletal Research Center.
The center was created last year with a $25 million gift from the Bethel family and matching funds from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Bethel also donated $2 million in 2018 to create the Orland Bethel Professorship in Spine Surgery, a seat occupied by Lee. Combined, this is one of the largest cash gifts given to the university.
The repository, also known as a biobank, will be a first-of-its-kind facility in the U.S. It will collect, house and store surgical specimens from orthopedic-related surgeries that otherwise would have been discarded. The only other such biobanks are in the UK and Europe.
The purpose is to collect data on these specimens to eventually gather thousands of data points to be able to create better treatment options and new therapies for diseases that currently have no treatment, like arthritis or osteoporosis, Lee said.
“Mr. Bethel asked me for a vision of what I’d like to do and what I’d like to see happen,” Lee said. “I’m very touched by that generosity. There’s a huge obligation for me and my team to use that generosity for good. I take that obligation really really seriously.”
The gift builds on last year’s gift that created the Orland Bethel Family Musculoskeletal Research Center, which made musculoskeletal medicine a major focus alongside cancer and neuroscience at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
The Bethel Musculoskeletal Research Center recently announced its first class of fellows. The program drew 100 applicants from all over the country, and five were selected.
At 88, Bethel isn’t grading eggs by hand anymore, but the life without pain that Lee gave him has enabled him to enjoy his golden years. The business Bethel built is still run by his family, with corporate offices in Greensburg, Pennsylvania and headquarters in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
The vertically integrated egg company is one of the top five egg producers in the country. It has farms throughout the Northeast and Midwest, including Pennsylvania and Ohio.
