10 philanthropists in CT (Dec. 1987)

Each yr, as the vacations close to, we’re bombarded with reminders that that is the “season of giving. Lots of the appeals, sadly, wind up within the wastebasket; in spite of everything, we are saying in self-defense, there may be simply a lot one cạn do to assist. But for numerous our extra beneficiant neighbors, the season of giving by no means ends.

Philanthropy (actually, the love of mankind) takes types as diverse, and as heartwarming, because the packages below a Christmas tree. Within the sampling of Connecticut philanthropists that follows, there are women and men who give 1000’s, even hundreds of thousands, to assist kids struck down by crippling illness; to retarded individuals struggling to search out helpful roles of their communities; to younger playwrights, actors, artists, singers who must be heard; to teen-agers who couldn’t in any other case go to varsity; to applications that may advance scientific understanding; to organizations that work towards the elusive aim of peace in our time.

One good citizen, a Hartford developer, makes a few of his contributions on a private, face-to-face foundation: He hires and trains ex-convicts for his development crews. Why? As a result of he believes he might help develop human beings, too. 

A few of these benefactors acknowledge their responsibility as group leaders, in addition to the duty of inherited wealth. Many have made it on their very own, the laborious means; having tasted poverty or despair, they rejoice of their success, and keep in mind effectively these much less lucky. St. Francis of Assisi mentioned, “It’s in giving that we obtain.” One Connecticut donor counts his blessings in another way.

“Sometime, who is aware of?” he says. “I would want a bit of assist myself.”

While many individuals give their money and time to worthy native causes, Paul Aicher of Pomfret takes the worldwide view. His aim is nothing lower than world peace. 

Aicher, 60, first grew to become involved concerning the prospects for peace years in the past when he was working within the metals enterprise in Chicago, the place he led a Overseas Coverage Affiliation “Nice Selections” dialogue group. When he moved to Studying, Pa., he discovered time to turn out to be concerned in refugee resettlement and to discovered a World Affairs Council group there. Till 5 years in the past, Aicher was president and principal proprietor of Technical Supplies Inc., a agency in Lincoln, R.I, that produces particular metals for the semiconductor business. The corporate was doing $35 million in enterprise yearly when he offered it to the Brush Wellman Corp. Relieved of day-to-day enterprise choices, he was then free to commit himself full-time to his dream.

Alongside together with his spouse Joyce and their 4 kids, now grown, he established the Topsfield Basis, named after their outdated farmhouse within the northeastern Connecticut hills. With a paid govt director, Susan Graseck, and a price range of some $400,000, Topsfield tries to advertise, in Achier’s phrases, “a greater understanding of tips on how to stop battle.”

Amongst his initiatives, Aicher has arrange an info and useful resource heart in Washington, D.C. referred to as “Entry”; it research peace points and arms management, making its findings out there to the academic group and the media. In Pomfret, the inspiration runs a biweekly clipping service of nationwide and worldwide newspapers for researchers, lecturers and Audio system, and maintains an up-to-date “Grass Roots Peace Listing,” a database describing 8,000 organizations concerned in a method or one other with worldwide safety. A program referred to as “Choices,” developed along side Brown College, allows college members to talk to group teams on peace-related subjects.

Whereas Aicher is “very constructive” about progress in elevating and debating the problems of peace, he’s now in search of one other involvement which may produce extra quick, concrete outcomes. “Housing is an space that has turn out to be important, and that may turn out to be extra so within the Nineteen Nineties,” he says. “It’s associated to all the opposite issues like homelessness, drug abuse, teenage being pregnant, psychological sickness, which have advanced out of, or have been exacerbated by, the truth that inexpensive, respectable low- and moderate-income housing is just not out there in ample provide. In upscale cities in Connecticut, you usually hear that the city’s personal policemen or lecturers cannot afford to stay there. I am serving to to arrange a day-long convention on the topic right here in Pomfret, and I hope the governor and different leaders will be capable to come. We’re simply getting began, however it might be an space the place we are able to have some impact.”

David Chase is Jewish and a Holocaust survivor, however that does not stop the 58-year-old Hartford entrepreneur from donating to church buildings, parochial faculties, even a neighborhood Buddhist temple, along with synagogues and a variety of different charities. His contributions, together with these of his quick relations, run into seven figures a yr. 

“Something non secular is vital to me, as a result of I imagine strongly in God and worship,” says Chase. “The Bible says we’re all our brothers’ keepers, and that we’re solely the custodians of wealth on earth. We will both hoard that wealth, or we are able to share it with others; we won’t take it with us once we go. You may’t take a look at somebody’s religion, or the colour of their pores and skin, and say they’re deserving or not deserving of assist. Everybody deserves some assist.”

Chase serves on the board of Hartford’s Catholic Diocese. He offers to a Catholic orphanage and to a number of hospitals within the capital metropolis space, together with St. Francis and Mount Sinai. He has donated a house that he owns to the Buddhist temple in West Hartford on the token lease of $1 a yr. Different favourite initiatives embrace the Home of Bread, a meals challenge for the needy; a shelter for battered girls; a job-training program; and the John Dempsey Hospital, to which he and his household have endoweda chair for the research and remedy of diabetes.

An orphaned survivor of a Nazi focus camp, Chase arrived in the US from Poland in 1946 on the age of 16. After working his means via highschool and faculty in Hartford, he grew to become a door-to-door salesman, then a small constructing contractor. He progressed to creating buying facilities and workplace buildings within the Sixties and 70s, and, via Chase Enterprises, has since diversified into radio, tv, banking and different fields.

Chase credit his giving to a way of responsibility instilled by his dad and mom way back. In flip, he entails his relations in many selections, they usually have adopted his philanthropic lead. “We sit down and focus on issues,” he says. His spouse Rhoda is now serving to to arrange a Hartford YMCA camp. His daughter Cheryl and her husband Roger Freedman, each govt vice presidents of Chase Enterprises, are significantly eager about Hartford Hospital, and Cheryl is on the board of the Wadsworth Atheneum. His son Arnold, president of Arch Communications (Channel 61), and Arnold’s spouse Sandra have gotten the household concerned within the Juvenile Diabetes Basis and the Particular Olympics.

“I hope the custom will prolong not solely to my kids, however to their kids as effectively,” says David Chase. His want might effectively come true. Not way back, Cheryl and Roger’s 6-year-old daughter was watching a TV information report of hungry kids and requested her mom how she may assist. Coincidentally, her title is Dara, which in Hebrew means “compassion.”

Two years in the past Ben Sisti’s daughter, now 14, contracted leukemia. That surprising growth did not change the 45-year-old Hartford businessman’s sample of giving; it solely intensified his dedication.

Sisti, the proprietor of Colonial Realty, had all the time been eager about organizations that served children. When his enterprise turned the nook a number of years in the past, he elevated his private charitable contributions to 6 figures. (Colonial Realty additionally makes substantial enterprise donations by itself.)

His daughter’s sickness grew to become an “unlucky alternative” for Sisti to study firsthand concerning the plight of significantly unwell kids and their dad and mom. He directed his consideration to the John Dempsey Hospital on the College of Connecticut Medical Heart in Farmington, which is now the recipient of about 80 p.c of his annual philanthropy.

A current reward of $100,000 was earmarked particularly for a analysis laboratory, however Sisti’s contributions don’t go solely to medical ends or buy of the newest tools. Every now and then, the hospital is presented with objects of a extra private nature: 100 tickets to a Hartford Whalers hockey sport, colour tv units, pizzas for the nursing employees. As well as, Sisti donates his time as a fundraiser, and is at present engaged on the hospital’s $2.5 million marketing campaign.

Due to his popularity, Sisti says he’s “inundated” with requests from youth-oriented organizations. He tries to satisfy weekly with Invoice Candelori, Colonial’s director of operations, to kind them out. They’re not solely in what every group truly does, however which teams commit a big sufficient proportion of their budgets to precise applications, and a sufficiently small proportion to administration, to be worthy of assist.

“I really feel very lucky,” says Sisti, who like many beneficiant givers credit his dad and mom with imbuing in him a powerful sense of charity. “I identical to serving to individuals, and I’ve an particularly tender spot in my coronary heart for youths.”

Another Hartford-area businessman who has turn out to be carefully recognized with the College of Connecticut Well being Heart’s kids’s applications is Hill Colbert, an Avon actual property developer. Sadly, Colbert’s daughter Jean Marie died of most cancers 9 years in the past on the age of three.

“I wished to see different kids cured of the illness that took her,’ says Colbert, who has three different daughters, ages 10, 7 and 4. He helped discovered the UConn Youngsters’s Most cancers Fund, and inspired the Hartford Whalers hockey staff (he’s a season ticket-holder and constant fan) to undertake the fund as its main charity. Along with devoting appreciable time to fund-raising, he and his accomplice in Colbert & Pariseleti Builders, Thomas Pariseleti, co-founder of the fund,-have given a complete of $100,000 of their very own cash to assist the Whaler Chair in Pediatric Oncology.

Colbert is now turning his consideration to a brand new and much more private challenge: the Jean Marie Colbert Pediatric Bone Marrow Transplant Heart at Hartford’s John Dempsey Hospital. He and Pariseleti have donated $250,000 to the unit, and are heartened that the possibilities for restoration from neuroblastoma, which had been lower than 10 p.c on the time of Jean Marie’s demise, have improved to 40 p.c.

As a part of his fund-raising actions, Colbert is coordinating adviser for the Whalers’ Waltz for Youngsters, a black-tie affair held each winter at Hartford’s Parkview Hilton Lodge. The dance, which he organizes along side Whaler hockey gamers’ wives and which has turn out to be one of many metropolis’s premier social occasions, has thus far earned half 1,000,000 {dollars} for the Youngsters’s Most cancers Fund. Colbert donated to 55 different charities final yr, however the campaign in opposition to most cancers is closest to his coronary heart. Each time the Whalers rating a shutout in opposition to one other Nationwide Hockey League staff, he and his accomplice contribute $1,000 to the Youngsters’s Fund.

And if the shutout comes in opposition to an opponent within the Whalers’ personal Adams Division, the fund is $2,000 richer.

Some philanthropists pop up in surprising methods.

A.E. Hotchner is a best-selling creator, and Paul Newman—effectively, everybody is aware of who he is. About 5 years in the past, these two longtime Westport buddies determined, on an impulse, to bottle the actor’s home made salad dressing below the label “Newman’s Personal.”

Like Hotchner’s books and Newman’s films, the dressing was an on the spot success, and was quickly adopted by issues like popcorn and spaghetti sauce. “What started as a lark, with a number of merchandise in native shops, all of a sudden took off and have become a severe enterprise,” Hotchner recollects. “We had been pressured to be a enterprise, however we agreed we actually weren’t meals entrepreneurs, and so we determined to offer all our income away.

“With few exceptions, we prefer to funnel our funds to organizations dedicated to the welfare of the younger and the outdated, somewhat than to mainstream charities that get a whole lot of consideration,” Hotchner says. “We choose to offer to much less well-known, however equally deserving, teams.”

Since their first donation in 1983, grants have ranged from $500 to $300,000. Many have shared of their generosity, from the Alzheimer’s Illness Basis to a nun in Florida who wanted a bus for her faculty for migrant staff. As much as 150 requests per week pour into the Westport workplace of Newman’s Personal, the place they’re screened first for legitimacy, then organized by topic (drug abuse, crippled kids, the setting). On the finish of every fiscal yr, Newman and Hotchner sit down and choose these they really feel are most deserving of the out there funds. Their main guideline has been the breakdown of a bunch’s price range: If administrative bills come to greater than 15 p.c of a company’s price range, its request is denied.

Till final yr Newman, 62, and Hotchner, 67, donated cash to all kinds of causes—a complete of some $12 million amongst 300 or 400 organizations. However then they determined to place most of their effort into a brand new concept: a camp for youngsters affected by most cancers and different life-threatening illnesses. Their Gap within the Wall Gang Camp (named for the gang in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Child) will open subsequent summer season on 300 wooded acres within the northeastern Connecticut cities of Ashford and Eastford. Constructed with the assistance of $4 million in Newman’s Personal income, it’ll resemble a country Western city with all of the trimmings, and might be partly staffed by volunteer physicians from Yale College Medical College and by nurses from Yale-New Haven Hospital.

“We’ll nonetheless give to different charities in decreased quantities, however the camp is our foremost focus now,” says Hotchner. The one factor that takes away from the enjoyment of giving is having to cross up so many worthwhile endeavors. However you possibly can’t give just a bit bit to all people. You must give sufficient to make it significant.”

Dorothy Larson’s father, Rudolph F. Bannow, was the president of Bridgeport Machine Inc., a significant producer of milling machines, and he instilled in his daughter the behavior of giving one thing again to the group that made their household profitable.

Accordingly, Larson, 60, and her husband Gilbert, a retired Bridgeport Machine govt, focus their energies on the Bridgeport space, the place they’ve been lively in varied causes for the final 27 years. Amongst their favorites are charities that stand to learn staff of the corporate and their households, together with St. Vincent’s Hospital Medical Heart, Fairfield College, the Fairfield Basis of the Diocese of Bridgeport, and the Kennedy Heart, an establishment that gives residences and workshops for the retarded and helps them turn out to be working, self-sufficient members of the group.

Apart from these, Dorothy Larson has a particular feeling for the Worldwide Institute of Connecticut, a company devoted to serving to foreign-born residents. “It isn’t a widely known or well-liked trigger, she explains, “however my father bought concerned in it once I was younger. He helped some Swedish sailors who had been caught in New York Metropolis. I’ve saved up carefully with the institute ever since. We have helped Hungarians who had been right here following the Hungarian rebellion, and displaced Poles who labored for us following World Conflict II. I suppose you would say it is an outdated household curiosity.”

The Larsons’ contributions range from yr to yr, relying on wants and particular initiatives, however they attempt to preserve a rule of thumb they agreed on after they had been first married: They might give 10 p.c of their pretax earnings to charitable causes. In keeping with one nationwide survey, that is greater than 4 instances the nationwide common of two.4 p.c for all adults, and significantly better than the 1.7 p.c for adults below the age of 35. The Larsons are clearly above common of their giving patterns. In actual fact, a 3rd era of Bannows is constant the household’s philanthropic actions. “Our daughter Denise is turning into very concerned in the neighborhood,” says Dorothy Larson, “and amongst different issues, is chairing the annual 4 Seasons Ball for the Kennedy Heart this yr. She is married to State Sen. Fred H. (Ted) Lovegrove Jr., who serves as supervisor of our Bannow-Larson Basis. Between them, they need to be capable to discover out loads about who actually wants what on this space of the state, about when and the place particular wants come up.

“I am glad that they are carrying on the household custom,” provides Dorothy Larson. “Giving is usually a very thrilling factor.”

In simply six years, Thomas Ok. Standish, 47, has constructed Hartford’s Standish-American Capital Corp. into a significant actual property, development, motel and restaurant firm. His concern for others manifests itself in numerous methods, from hiring ex-convicts for his development crews to sponsoring inspirational artworks. In October, the College of Connecticut Well being Heart devoted his reward of Karl Stirner’s epic sculpture “Victory, ” a gilded, 15-by-30-foot piece that needed to be lifted into place by a helicopter. Valued at greater than $100,000, it’s by far the most expensive single paintings ever given to the middle. 

“I gave Victory’ for a complete sequence of causes,” Standish explains. “I’ve recognized Jim Mulvihill [the center’s director] for years, and I respect him vastly. For a very long time the middle did not get a lot backing from the state, however Jim has helped get the assist to make it a world-class establishment.

“Jim additionally put an artwork program in place. And my overriding philosophy is to assist issues that elevate the human spirit, issues that carry magnificence into the world. I wished one thing that speaks of the triumph of the spirit, one thing for individuals who come to a hospital in instances of want. ‘Victory’ does.”

Standish can also be a powerful supporter of the Connecticut Opera, and he serves on the board of Hartford’s Wadsworth Atheneum; each establishments, he feels, are vital not solely to the Hartford area however to your entire state. Much more outstanding, nonetheless, are his efforts to enhance the lot of his fellows of their on a regular basis, working lives.

His agency is the primary developer to agree with the town to construct new housing to assist substitute housing it has torn down in the midst of redevelopment. Greater than half his workforce of 300 is drawn from minority teams within the central Hartford space, and to assist them he has arrange job-training applications for machine operators, masons, carpenters and different tradespeople.

Most uncommon of all, he hires graduates of an establishment that few employers contemplate definitely worth the threat: the Hartford Correctional Facility, the town’s main jail.

“We interview the ex-prisoners, in fact,” says Standish, “and we’re cautious who we tackle. We allow them to know that that is their likelihood at a brand new begin, however that we’ll be actual laborious on them, that they will should be twice nearly as good as everybody else—fairly powerful discuss. We practice them, combine them into our workforce, ask them how they’re doing every now and then. The phrase will get round amongst their relations and buddies, and we rent a few of them, too. Individuals ceaselessly say you possibly can’t make this sort of factor work, however we have seen that it might work, and that it may be performed via free enterprise with out a whole lot of involvement from the general public sector. Like all fashions, this system has had its ups and downs, however by and huge what occurs is terrific.”

Aren’t these pursuits considerably uncommon for a developer? “I am unsure builders must be concerned solely in creating buildings,” Tom Standish replies. “I believe they are often concerned in creating human beings, too.”

Ben Dibner, a local of the Ukraine who emigrated to this nation in 1904, is the founding father of Norwalk’s Burndy Corp., a number one producer {of electrical} and digital connectors, and remains to be an lively philantrhopist on the age of 90. He likes to explain himself as “a scholar and industrialist,” and his generosity affirms that description: His donations go solely towards schooling and science.

Amongst Dibner’s favourite recipients are the bodily and organic science departments of universities and polytechnic institutes, together with the College of Bridgeport and his personal alma mater, the Brookly n Polytechnic Institute. Brandeis College now homes each his Leonardo da Vinci Colleciton (1,000 books and drawings referring to the grasp artist and scientist) and the 25,000-volume Volterra Assortment in arithmetic. He’s additionally a number one contributor to the Smithsonian Establishment in Washington, the place his reward of 10,000 volumes established the Dibner Library in Bodily and Organic Sciences.

Dibner bases his philanthropy on a given group’s “mission,” and he examines carefully not solely its intent however the way it proposes to make use of his funds towards that finish. He makes most of his giving choices on his personal, although some presents are dealt with by a household basis, the Dibner Group fund. Although Barbara, his spouse of 64 years, handed away earlier this yr, his son David, 60, Burndy’s chairman, helps stick with it the household’s philanthropic pursuits.

Like different main philanthropists, Bern Dibner is extra eager about what his cash does than in how a lot he has given, which has amounted to hundreds of thousands. “You may’t put a financial worth on it,” he insists. “Tm an immigrant, and I imagine strongly in serving to others, significantly in schooling.”

MURRAY AND MARVIN LENDER

I‘m capable of give excess of I may have guessed years in the past I might have as earnings, not to mention give to charity,” says Murray Lender of New Haven. “However that is the beauty of America. It truly is a land of alternative.”

His dad and mom, Harry and Rose Lender, began a bagel bakery in New Haven in 1927, and the household subsequently branched out into promoting frozen bagels below the H. Lender model. When alternative knocked three years in the past, Murray, now 57, and his brother Marvin, 46, answered the door; they offered H. Lender to the Kraft Co., and in consequence grew to become rich males. Not content material to stay idle, they’ve expanded the unique household enterprise into a series of bagel bakery-restaurants within the New Haven space below the title S. Kinder (a play on “Ess, Kinder” or “Youngsters, come eat!”). A brand new one has simply opened in Manhattan and eight or 9 others are deliberate for subsequent yr in West Hartford and different cities.

Busy as they’re, the Lender brothers are additionally capable of commit a great deal of time to giving cash away. Though every has sure initiatives he feels significantly near, for probably the most half they donate collectively. “We attempt to profit areas of our group and society which have influenced our household in a method or one other, which have made us what we’re,” Murray says.

The Lenders’ curiosity in schooling, for instance, is intertwined with their want to offer one thing again to the meals business. “We created scholarships in our mom’s and pop’s names via organizations just like the nationwide frozen-food affiliation,” says Murray. “And once we offered our firm, we established a scholarship for the employees’ kids.”

The Lenders additionally give to so many area people teams that, as Murray says, “I do not know the place to begin. The New Haven space has been so good to us over time that we simply really feel in each means attainable we should always give one thing again. And as our capabilities have expanded, so has our giving.”

Like many individuals who give generously, the Lenders communicate of spiritual dedication, and of traditions handed down by their dad and mom—and sometimes, of the relative unimportance of greenback quantities.

“You do not have to place any figures down,” concludes Murray Lender. That is not what giving is all about. It isn’t a determine. It is a feeling, and a really rewarding one at that.”

MORTIMER LEVITT

Each summer season the Levitt Pavilion for the Performing Arts, a bandshell that sits on a former rubbish dump overlooking the Saugatuck River in Westport, is the location of greater than 60 glowing events-theater and dance performances, classical and rock live shows, kids’s applications and comedy exhibits. And so they’re all free.

The angel behind this public boon is an 80-year-old manufacturing govt named Mortimer Levitt, a highschool dropout who grew to become the founder and proprietor of Customized Shirt Makers in New York Metropolis. He is additionally the creator of 4 books, together with the just lately revealed Find out how to Begin Your Personal Enterprise With out Shedding Your Shirt.

Levitt, who divides his time between houses in Westport and New York, has thus far contributed greater than 1 / 4 of 1,000,000 {dollars} to the pavilion that bears his title. He underwrites one third of its price range annually, although he admits, “They know I will be there to make up the shortfall any time they cannot gather the mandatory fünds.” Whereas he doesn’t ask his personal buddies for cash, he’s miffed that some rich residents within the space “do not contribute one penny'” to the pavilion, which he describes as “a improbable group useful resource.”

In distinction, Levitt’s door and checkbook are typically open to buddies who come knocking after they have their very own causes to advertise. Through the years, he has donated one other quarter-million to the Younger Live performance Artists group in New York and virtually as a lot to Lincoln Heart, in addition to $100,000 to the Levitt Scholar program at Westchester’s Mercy Faculty and a six-figure quantity to Daytop Village, a Manhattan drug rehabilitation clinic the place he’s board chairman.

Levitt is particularly happy with his Mercy Faculty endowment, which makes it attainable for one girl pupil annually to review overseas. “I requested the varsity if I may take part within the choice course of, they usually agreed,” he says. “I like that form of private involvement with my initiatives.”