The Butcher, the Embezzler, and the Fall Guy

In 1922, George A. Hormel—founder of the multibillion-dollar company Hormel Foods—fired Gretchen Cherington’s grandfather, Alpha LaRue Eberhart, after a decade-long embezzlement scandal. Was he, as rumors suggested, complicit? Cherington digs deep to understand what really happened one hundred years ago—and to make sense of her complicated legacy.