DEVOTED TO EXCELLENCE

Born on September 4, 1971, Eric Papenfuse grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, where his mother taught reading to elementary-school students and his father worked as an archivist for the state government.  Committed to social justice from an early age, he was recruited by his church at age fourteen to enter the Episcopal priesthood but instead found his calling as a junior in high school, when he was awarded the 1988 Younger Scholar Prize by the National Endowment for the Humanities to study the visionary ideals of America’s founding generation.  Always a gifted student, he dedicated himself from that moment onward to a rigorous course of academic study that would one day allow him to implement his own social philosophy – one refined from history and theology and based upon three core principles:  racial equality, grass-roots political activism, and moral education.

Graduating at the top of his high school class with awards in journalism, classics, and history, he chose Yale University over other leading colleges due largely to the urban nature of its campus in New Haven, Connecticut, where poverty and privilege are forced into an uneasy coexistence.  He was the only member of his class to graduate in four years with both Bachelor and Master of Arts degrees and, in 1993, he won prizes for his college’s “most significant piece of research” and for his own “patriotic works,” exemplified through high scholarship, character, and community service.  From 1993-1996, while earning a second Master’s degree at Yale and working toward a doctorate in History, he revised and expanded two of his most important essays.  The first, on the moral implications of human bondage, was published as a book by the American Philosophical Society and praised by a Pulitzer-prize winning historian as a “brilliant analysis” that sheds “wholly new light on some of the central conflicts over slavery” in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.  The second paper, on political radicalism in the decade after the American Revolution, received the 1997 James Madison Prize for that year’s “best published article” about the history of the U.S. government.

Having explored the first two aspects of his social vision as far as possible in academic terms, Papenfuse turned to developing courses that would teach students the importance of both intellectual and moral growth through learning.  His whole-student approach to mentoring and his revolutionary teaching methods won him unprecedented acclaim at Yale.  In recognition of his “extraordinary achievement” and “outstanding skill” as an award-winning teacher, his classes and seminars were fully funded and consistently over-subscribed with future Rhodes Scholars and leading students in all academic fields.

It remained to be seen whether he could have the same effect on younger students, and so, having moved to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in 1999 with his wife Catherine, a Harvard graduate and fellow historian who had recently accepted a tenure-track professorship at Messiah College, Papenfuse volunteered to teach Latin via a one-year emergency teaching certificate at Central Dauphin East and Linglestown Junior High Schools.  For many years in New Haven, he had tutored underprivileged junior-high and high school students in Spanish and math, but nothing had prepared him for the widespread acceptance of mediocrity he found among the district’s students, faculty, and administrators.  By the end of the year, more students were excelling academically and emotionally in their foreign-language studies under his tutelage than ever before.  His innovative teaching methods brought him recognition as Chair of the Language Department and sparked the largest enrollment of Latin students Central Dauphin had seen in decades.  He resigned his position in 2000 to embark upon his life’s next challenge:  creating a socially responsible business that would enable him to help transform his community.

With the finest education but neither personal funds nor outside investors to finance his endeavors, Papenfuse began selling secondhand books from the third floor of his city row-house in the fall of 2000.  Within two years Papenfuse had sold enough titles to purchase and renovate a burned-out, former post office building on Third Street as a retail shop for the “Midtown Scholar Bookstore,” then to rehabilitate an abandoned bar in Allison Hill to use as stockrooms, and later to refurbish a languishing uptown factory into a state-of-the-art warehouse.  Believing that making a positive contribution to the community is as important as creating space for his business’s rapidly growing inventory, Papenfuse hired a workforce of more than thirty skilled minority contractors and craftsmen to undertake these building renovations.  His commitment to the workers included more than simply paying a fair wage.  He took the time to help them establish bank accounts and become properly insured; he served as personal and professional references, bailed one man out of jail, loaned another start-up capital, forgave debts, and even offered one family free housing.  He accomplished all this while simultaneously overseeing the complex renovations of six urban properties, totaling over 100,000 square feet. 

Papenfuse’s hope for the Midtown Scholar was to establish a community center for public inquiry, debate, and civic activism.  Neighborhood groups and non-profits have embraced the bookstore as a unique, intimate gathering space.  Changing art exhibits and an introspective acoustic music series have brought thousands of new visitors to Harrisburg to experience what has become one of the city’s leading cultural centers and places of intellectual inquiry.  In Spring 2009, the bookstore's new location will open at Third and Verbeke Streets, across from the Broad Street Market.  Papenfuse has rehabilitated  one of the district's most prominent mercantile buildings, formerly home to Fissel's Antiques (since the 1980s), Greenberg's Boston Store (from the 1950s), and the historic Broad Theatre (in the 1920s and '30s).  There will be 6 floors housing over 100,000 books, a full-service cafe serving fair-trade coffees and teas, an upstairs lounge, art gallery, meeting spaces, and two performance stages. Through Papenfuse’s careful oversight and perseverance, the Midtown Scholar has become one of the largest internet booksellers in the country, with gross revenues exceeding $2,000,000.00 yearly.  At his insistence, half of the senior managers are women and continuing education is strongly encouraged, with many employees attending classes at HACC.  The loyalty among the staff is tremendous and Harrisburg Magazine recognized this in 2005, naming the bookstore one of the top “5 Great Places to Work” in central Pennsylvania.  

Today, Eric Papenfuse continues to advocate strongly for open government, grass-roots political involvement, and small-business entrepreneurship.  He adamantly believes that all aspects of local government, including municipal authorities, must be open and accountable and that those in public service must actively seek to serve the weakest in the community, not simply the most powerful.

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