Eugene Lang Dead @ 98

[Perknose]

I know, I know, almost all, if not all of you bothering to read this far are saying, "Who?"

Let this article tell you. I am proud to say that we shared an alma mater:

Eugene Michael Lang was born March 16, 1919, and grew up in a $12-a-month railroad apartment on East 83d Street in Manhattan. His father, Daniel Lang, having been found guilty of distributing subversive literature as a socialist in Hungary, escaped in 1911 to the United States and took a job at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

He taught Eugene how to use tools to make to make his own toys and urged him to read widely. Tolstoy became a favorite, as did the economist Thorstein Veblen, whose vision of the “masterless man,” Mr. Lang told a student interviewer at Swarthmore, inspired his fascination with enterprise and innovation.

After P.S. 121, Mr. Lang went to Townsend Harris High School, from which he graduated at 14. While working part time at a restaurant in Midtown Manhattan, he fell into a conversation with a regular customer, who persuaded him to consider Swarthmore instead of City College and arranged an interview for him at the Harvard Club in Manhattan. Mr. Lang was accepted on scholarship.

Eugene M. Lang, an investor whose spur-of-the-moment promise to an East Harlem sixth-grade graduating class that he would pay for their college education inspired a foundation, led to the support of more than 16,000 children nationwide and made him something of an American folk hero, died Saturday at his home in New York City. He was 98.

Mr. Lang, a self-made businessman who flew coach class and traveled on subways and buses, contributed more than $150 million to charities and institutions during his lifetime, including a single $50 million gift in 2012 to Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, his alma mater, and $20 million to Eugene Lang College, part of the New School in Manhattan.

But he will be best remembered for his impulsive gesture in June 1981, when he was invited to deliver the commencement address to 61 sixth graders at Public School 121 on East 103rd Street.

“I looked out at that audience of almost entirely black and Hispanic students, wondering what to say to them,” he recalled. He had intended to tell them, their families and their teachers that he had attended P.S. 121 more than a half-century earlier, that he had worked hard and made a lot of money and that if they worked hard, maybe they could be successful, too.


But, he said, “it dawned on me that the commencement banalities I planned were completely irrelevant.”

“So I began by telling them that one of my most memorable experiences was Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, and that everyone should have a dream,” he said. “Then I decided to tell them I’d give a scholarship to every member of the class admitted to a four-year college.”

In 1996, President Bill Clinton awarded Mr. Lang the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Among other positions, he served as chairman of Swarthmore’s governing board, managing director of the Metropolitan Opera Association and chairman of the Circle in the Square Theater. He also gave substantial gifts to New York Hospital, Columbia Business School and many other organizations. His philanthropy reflected his personal philosophy.

Swarthmore has a need blind admissions policy, and has had this probably longer than most any other college. If they accept you, you get to go, money be damned, no question. When I went there, there were only about 900 students in the whole school. I think there are about 1,200 now. But we regularly punch WAY above our weight in stuff like the number of Rhodes scholars and such.

Eugene Lang's personal story simply shows how well this works in the real world . . . rising from near poverty to riches, based on his own hard work. I am, I have always been, extremely proud of the heart and wisdom of my alma mater.

Mr. Lang's personal philosophy, which he backed up with his own damn money, is one of the finest exemplars of this Quaker-based philosophy, to wit:

“Giving should not be mechanical,” he said. “It should be the fruit of one’s feeling, love and sense of responsibility. Giving is not giving back. There is no quid pro quo. Giving is self-fulfillment.”

We lost a great, great man today.

 

[pcgeek11]

One hell of a guy! He should be remembered well.