Kate Metzel Debs answered the soft knocking on the door of the tall, gingerbread-fringed home at 451 N. Eighth St. to the familiar face of Tony Hulman, the boy who lived in the white Italianate home with the sparkling beveled glass at 802 Chestnut St.

If Kate's young nephew, Boydie Baur, was there, he and Tony would chase adventures in and around the wealthy neighborhood, racing their bicycles and tumbling in pursuit of the pigskin.

Growing up, the only child of Anton and Grace Hulman became familiar with wealth and power. Debs' husband, Socialist Eugene V. Debs, ran for president five times in the early 20th century. If Debs, friend to three generations of Hulmans, was home when Tony knocked, he might gather the neighbor children and take them around the corner for nickel sodas at Black's Drug Store; perhaps this prompted Tony's love of ice cream, especially chocolate.

But it wasn't just the Debs home young Tony frequented; he became a familiar face in many of the impressive homes nearby. Neighbors included Max Ehrmann, Harvard graduate and famous poet; Carl Stahl, head of Stahl, Urban & Co., nationwide manufacturer of pants, shirts, overalls and coats; and B.L. Viquesney, senior partner of one of the city's biggest printing companies.

For Tony, who attended St. Benedict's School, days dawned carefree and ended with plans for the next day shouted to pals heading home in deepening twilight. At work, his father talked coffee, a product Hulman & Co. first made in the late 1870s.

``Some of you have requested me to tell you something about coffee yet a number of you, no doubt, know about as much about this subject as I do,'' Anton said once in a speech to employees. ``One thing sure, there is money in it, and that is a good reason why we should all exert ourselves to push the sale of it.

``I remember that our late H. Hulman Sr. used to tell me, `Don't forget why you are in business.' ''

The business was his father's life, and Tony knew it would someday be his, even as he left Terre Haute for preparatory school at Lawrenceville (N.J.) School and Worchester (Mass.) Academy. Though information on Tony's academic record is scarce, there's no doubt of his success in sports. In 1919, officials chose him for the All-American Scholastic Team in high hurdles, and in 1920, the pole vault.

But school and sports paled in importance after World War I. Tony had joined the American Red Cross Ambulance Corps in 1918. The ambulance job showed him pain and agony, but none touched him like wartime commerce burdened his father. The constant price fluctuation forced Hulman & Co. to sell at a dangerously close profit margin, say A.R. Markle and Gloria Collins in the history they wrote for the company as it marked 100 years in business.

Anton's health reached the point doctors ordered him -- just like they had his workaholic father -- to lighten his load. In 1918, Anton resigned as Vigo County's administrator of wartime food laws, placed company leadership in his brother's hands and left for rest at his palatial waterfront home in Miami. The war would also force Hulman & Co. to close its Brazil, Evansville and Paris, Ill., branches; wartime regulations restricted a business to one base in any state. The Paris and Brazil branches would never reopen, though the Evansville branch would resume once war ended.

In the midst of the changes, adult responsibility loomed near Tony, who left Terre Haute again, in 1920, for Yale University. There, he joined Tau Beta Pi and the Torch Honor Society, defeated Oxford and Cambridge challengers in the hurdles in London in 1923, played on the freshman and varsity football teams, earned seven letters, and, in his spare time, golfed.

He told his classmates upon graduation, he would go into the coal mining industry.

Upon graduating in 1924 with an administrative engineering degree, Tony came home, rejoining the family business; he'd already spent summers driving company trucks, calling on customers and putting up signs.

``Don't give Tony a place in the business. Let him work for it,'' his father had decreed, according to the company history.

By now, the Yalie was ready to take his place in the company, slowly but steadily recovering from the lean war years.

And by the time of his marriage, in 1926, he was sales manager.