Johns Hopkins Gazette: October 3, 1994


              HOPKINS CAMPAIGN UNDER WAY

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Sheridans enjoy sharing success
By Dennis O'Shea
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In 1967, Champ Sheridan scraped together $1,000--"all the
cash I had," he says--to buy the small Everybody's Poultry
Magazine Publishing Co. of Hanover, Pa.
    Now, less than 30 years later, Mr. Sheridan has built
that tiny publisher into The Sheridan Group, one of the
nation's leading scientific and medical printers. He has
repaid his initial $1,000 investment many thousand times
over, to the point where he and his wife, Debbie, can
contribute $20 million in the company's stock to The Johns
Hopkins Initiative.
    That kind of success, Mr. Sheridan says, was not
necessarily the goal when the Baltimore-born printer and son
of a printer set out to purchase his own company.
    "Success really is a path; it's not a destination," said
Mr. Sheridan, 64. "It was not a case of dreaming where it
would ultimately go. It's been my  continual focus that if
you get up each morning and put one foot in front of the
other and make your best effort, you'll find at the end of
the day that you've made a little progress.
    "If you do that every day, you'll keep making progress,"
he said. "I really hadn't dreamed or sensed where we would be
or what we would be able to do."
    Mr. Sheridan graduated from Johns Hopkins in 1952,
served in the military during the Korean War and returned to
Baltimore to join Schneidereith and Sons, a printing business
where his father was president and part-owner.
    In 1961, wanting to move ahead in the industry but not
to compete directly with his father, Mr. Sheridan moved to
Hanover as production manager, then general manager, of the
Everybody's Poultry Magazine business, a small publisher and
commercial printer. In 1967, he bought the business from his
two retiring bosses, then set about making it grow.
    By 1987, he was ready for a new challenge and purchased
a competitor, Braun-Brumfield Inc. of Ann Arbor, Mich.,
combining it with what was, by then, The Sheridan Press to
form The Sheridan Group.
    Mr. Sheridan said he believes his father would approve
of his and his wife's $20 million contribution to the
Eisenhower Library at Hopkins.
    "Although he was successful in business, my father never
finished high school and regretted not completing his formal
education," Mr. Sheridan said. "All of his life, he
encouraged me to understand, 'Your education is never
finished. Always keep an inquisitive mind and always keep
learning.' I hope this gift Debbie and I are making will help
many continue to learn."

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