H. F. « Gerry » Lenfest has died at 88. A philanthropist and civic leader, he was a major force shaping Philadelphia’s educational, cultural and media landscapes – Peter Dobrin, Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News
H. F. “Gerry” Lenfest, 88, who substantially remade the educational, cultural, and media sectors of the city and well beyond to become one of Philadelphia’s most dynamic civic leaders of the last century, was taken from his home on Rittenhouse Square to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead Sunday morning, a spokesperson for the family said.
Mr. Lenfest, who had been in declining health in recent months, parlayed the sale of the family cable business into a second act as the area’s leading philanthropist for nearly two decades, giving away more than $1.3 billion.
The dimming of the Lenfest era leaves no obvious successor of similar ambition on behalf of the city and region.
“Gerry has had a huge impact on the renaissance and renewal of Philadelphia and all of its institutions,” said Philadelphia Museum of Art president and chief operating officer Gail Harrity. “I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that he has shaped Philadelphia for the future.”
Said David McCullough, the author and historian: “I think he was one of the most memorable and lovable men I’ve ever known. A devoted Philadelphian if ever there was one. His love of that city and its history, and his willingness to be not only generous with his philanthropy but to work hard to attain a worthy objective, is something we could all take a lesson from on how to go about life. He was a terrific man.”
“We’ve lost our greatest citizen, there’s no doubt about that,” said Ed Rendell, former Philadelphia mayor and Pennsylvania governor. “He impacted the lives of Philadelphians at every level, in the city, in the neighborhoods.” Rendell said that whether he was appealing to him to assist a growing arts group or to fund a program for a vulnerable population, “he almost never said no.”
Mr. Lenfest was born neither to wealth nor the social status enjoyed by some of his fellow philanthropists. A lawyer by training, Mr. Lenfest and wife Marguerite built up their cable business over several decades, selling Lenfest Communications Inc. in 2000 and undertaking a philanthropic spree that put the Lenfest name alongside those of Girard, Widener, Curtis, Annenberg, Pew, and Haas – the city’s historically most generous families.
He was “one of the greatest philanthropists the city has ever seen,” said Comcast Corp. chairman and CEO Brian L. Roberts, who had several close dealings with the businessman before Comcast ended up taking over Lenfest Communications. “He has changed our city and so many institutions.”
He was soft-spoken, except when facing resistance; generous, unless negotiating across the table from a balky union official; and prone to taking a hard-nosed business approach to giving – though he could be a soft touch if you knew just where to scratch. He raised considerable dismay in the cultural community by donating $5.8 million to the SS United States as it sat idle and rusting on the Delaware River, but explained himself by saying he believed that his father had once worked on the once-luxurious ocean liner, and calling it “an icon of American pride.”
And he willed new ones into existence. He established the Lenfest Ocean Program, and believed in the new Museum of the American Revolution to the tune of more than $63 million in cash donations, becoming its largest donor. He lived to see it become a reality, greeting guests from a wheelchair when the museum opened its doors in April 2017.
Even late in life, he was taking on projects as risky as they were critical. Mr. Lenfest became a newspaper owner as the industry was contracting, buying the company that publishes the Inquirer, the Daily News, and Philly.com. In January 2016, at age 85, he blended his business acumen and civic heart to launch an experiment in journalism, donating Philadelphia Media Network to a new nonprofit, the Institute for Journalism in New Media, now called the Lenfest Institute for Journalism, to allow it to stump for donations.
A portion of the additional revenue thrown off by a new endowment – on top of traditional sources like advertising and circulation revenue – is being spent on enhancing the journalism and speeding the transition to full digital integration for the newspapers. The goal is to develop a business model that can preserve for the city its prime newsgathering operation.
“What would the city be without the Inquirer and the Daily News? » asked Mr. Lenfest at the time of his gift. “Of all the things I’ve done, this is the most important. Because of the journalism.”
It also was among his most generous gestures. The estimated total worth of the donation (including the original purchase price of the property and subsequent donations to the endowment) exceeds $129 million. Said PMN publisher and CEO Terrance C. Z. Egger: “His mantra was that as important as the Art Museum is, as worthy as the orchestra is in the community, journalism is easily as important or more. He said all the time, ‘There is nothing I could think of as important as keeping journalism alive in the city I love.’”
Love it he did. Mr. Lenfest relished his public role, bringing a frisson of quiet cheer and warm wit to parties, art openings, and concerts. “When you saw him at whatever it was, there was a gleam in his eye,” said lawyer Richard A. Sprague, who represented Mr. Lenfest in matters relating to the purchase of the media company, “and there was a sort of bearing that he had, that he was enjoying what he was doing, and you felt it.”
But unlike some other philanthropists who drove a hard bargain for being recognized with naming rights on buildings in exchange for relatively modest sums, he and his wife gave freely and worried less about getting the credit than finding ways to encourage others to follow his example.
“There is a great amount of satisfaction involved in this,” Lenfest told the Inquirer in 2004 about the couple’s decision to dispense with all of their wealth. “There is a lot of pleasure in life just to have your funds go the way you feel it will provide the most good.”
The important thing in life “is not how much money you’ve made, how many cars you have, how many yachts you have, but how you feel about yourself. And I feel pretty good,” said Lenfest in a video produced for the Museum of the American Revolution.
Just as he and his wife of more than six decades were partners in building their business, plotting its path at the kitchen table of their suburban home, so it was with philanthropy. He was the more public face – sociable, eager and open – while she waved away publicity and provided much of the thought and questioning behind the scenes. They were jointly given the Philadelphia Award in 2009.
“Often in a partnership, there’s one person who puts on the brakes and another who puts on the gas. They complement each other extremely well,” Pew Charitable Trusts president and CEO Rebecca W. Rimel once said.
“I don’t think any of it would have happened without Marguerite’s blessing. She is a force,” said Curtis’ Díaz. “Some of the most consequential conversations we had about the needs of the students actually were with Marguerite as much as with Gerry, and sometimes with her first.”
The way they structured their generosity heightened its impact. Other philanthropists placed their billions in foundations to exist in perpetuity, giving out grants each year paid essentially out of investment income. The Lenfests, however, chose to spend down the entire endowment, and the effect on the nourishment and growth of hundreds of recipient institutions over a dozen and a half years was exhilarating.
The Lenfests gave away more than $1.3 billion to 1,100 organizations – providing scholarships to high school students in rural Pennsylvania, contributing to pay off the Kimmel Center’s construction debt and keep Curtis tuition-free, supporting career assistance for youth, underwriting new buildings at Columbia University and Abington Hospital-Jefferson Health, giving free billboard and TV advertising to arts groups, helping to save the Temple University rowing program, and on and on.
“His decision to not create a permanent foundation but instead to give away his wealth in his own lifetime – the impact of that decision is just unbelievable,” said Michael C. Quinn, president emeritus of the Museum of the American Revolution, which owes its existence to Mr. Lenfest. “And of course, from Gerry’s point of view, that means he is there to enjoy that impact, to see the results, and that I think has really made his giving have a leveraged impact both for the institutions and for the city as a whole.”
His arrival on the philanthropic scene was unusually well-timed. The decision to start awarding hundreds of millions of dollars in grants was soon followed by the recession and a fading from the local scene of the Annenberg and Pew foundations.
“It was a life-saver,” said Rendell. “Talk about the right place at the right time. Gerry became everyone’s go-to. I’ll never forget, the Barnes project was about $25 million short, and they asked Gerry to finish the project. He came in with $25 million, and I gave $10 million more from the state.”
In addition to Lenfest being the single-largest donor to the Museum of the American Revolution, he was responsible for raising at least $20 million from others, Rendell said, “so he’s responsible for at least half the money.” For a comparable philanthropic force, Rendell said, you’d have to go back to Inquirer and Daily News publisher Walter H. Annenberg and his wife, Leonore.
The Lenfests’ giving interests extended far beyond Center City and its cultural core. According to its 2015 tax returns, the Lenfest Foundation awarded $250,000 to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation; $2 million to Drexel University for children’s programs in Mantua and Powelton Village; $300,000 to Franklin and Marshall College for the Pennsylvania College Advising Corps; $2.5 million to the Fund for the Philadelphia School District for after-school programs; and dozens of other grants to programs for youth and under-served communities. In October 2017, the Lenfests accepted the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy.
Mr. Lenfest was decidedly not the sort of philanthropist to write a check and then not show up again until ribbon-cutting time for the opening of a new dorm or arts center. If supporting a project meant having to make big changes, he made them happen.
At the same time, he had an unusual quality, said Columbia University president Lee Bollinger. “It was much more a kind of partnership with the institution than is often true with philanthropists,” he said. “They have their own views, and the organization is almost an instrument of their beliefs. That was not Gerry. It was, ‘What can I do to support you?’ In that sense, there was no better person to be part of your institution. That is why everyone wanted him to be part of their institution.”
At Columbia, Mr. Lenfest’s giving started at the law school, of which he was a graduate. “But there again,” said Bollinger, “he was willing to follow the lead of the institution as to what was important. When we wanted to build the center for the arts in West Harlem, he was right there with that gift. When we wanted to build out the Earth Institute and worked with improving conditions for impoverished people, he was right there.”
Not that he hesitated to exercise his influence when he wanted to do so. He was deeply involved in the controversial campaign to move the Barnes Foundation’s priceless collection of impressionist, post-impressionist and early modern works to central Philadelphia so a new museum building could become a star on the cultural tourism map. When plans to build the Museum of the American Revolution in Valley Forge National Historical Park hit legal headwinds, Mr. Lenfest agreed to a land swap that brought the project instead to Third and Chestnut Streets, though he credited the idea to others. All the while he kept the project going with money of his own matched with funds from the state.
Chairman and CEO of Comcast Corp., which took over Lenfest Communications in 2000
Former executive vice president and chief operating officer of the Curtis Institute of Music at the time when the school was expanding under Mr. Lenfest’s guidance.
President and chief operating officer, Philadelphia Museum of Art, where Mr. Lenfest was chairman of the board.
President Emeritus, Museum of the American Revolution, which Mr. Lenfest guided from its early development to completion.
President and CEO, Curtis Institute of Music, where Mr. Lenfest was chairman of the board.
Publisher, Philadelphia Media Network, which Mr. Lenfest owned and donated.
Chair, the Lenfest Foundation
Often, he provided broad strokes for his vision of how a new project should look or feel, while imbuing others with a sense of trust and authority.
This kind of generosity made a big impression on Roberts when he was a young businessman. He got to know Mr. Lenfest first when the two cable companies were competitors, when “Comcast was trying to grow and Suburban Cable was trying to grow, and he and my dad [Comcast founder Ralph J. Roberts] were doing battle over every acquisition.”
But when Comcast and Mr. Lenfest got together to purchase the New York Times Co.’s cable systems, Roberts recalled, he felt the shine of the elder businessman’s confidence. Talks to finalize the transaction were going late at the Times office in New York. “It was 1 o’clock in the morning, and he said, ‘OK, your dad and I are going to go home. You stay with the lawyers, Brian,’ and he handed me his signature and said, ‘You have my proxy.’
“Now, that’s one thing for my own dad to do that to me and say I trust you with hundreds of millions of dollars, the biggest deal his company had ever done, one of the biggest deals we had done at the time with a major company like the New York Times.
