min Magazine 2008 Playground: Gordon Hughes
Friday, November 7, 2008

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Gordon Hughes
President/CEO, American Business Media

Gordon Hughes was sitting around New York’s tony Four Seasons restaurant with several of his associates, including divisional president and EVP at Scholastic Corp. Hugh Roome and William Hitzig, COO of The Jordan, Edmiston Group, when they realized that they decompressed away from the office in the same rustic way. “We all have tractors, and each of us admitted the jobs that we have are full of pressure,” says Hughes. In 2000, Hughes bought “Terry the Tractor” with his 50-acre Unionville, Pa., farm in historic Chester County. There he raises thoroughbreds, fox hunts (“We don’t hurt the foxes!”) and goes to “escape the New York mind-set.” Hughes grew up on his father’s citrus ranch in California, where he learned how to work the land.

Now he retreats to his own farm where he uses Terry—a 46-horsepower John Deere monster—to plow, mow and unwind. “I can mow a 12-acre field, and at the end of an hour, it looks like velvet,” he says. But with that kind of horsepower even the country gentleman cuts loose from time to time. “I’m from California—I used to really [race] around on that baby in my swimsuit—until I almost bounced out of it onto my head,” he said. “Now I drive a lot more slowly—in a lot more clothes.” A horse lover, Hughes learned to ride Western style back in California, but is all English in the East...why? “Because I don’t want to look like a dork!” he admits matter-of-factly.

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