Why Should White Guys Have All the Fun?

by Reginald Lewis

  “Reg was concerned about the world in which he lived,” says Cleve Christophe, longtime friend until their falling out during the Beatrice deal. “I knew him for too many years and we discussed it far too many times for me to believe that that was just a facade—it was not. I remember in 1986 he said, ‘Cleve, I have a very deep concern about the direction of our society, particularly as it relates to black males.’ That was long before the theme that is so prevalent today of, ‘What’s happening to black youth, the males in particular?’ He felt we had important roles to play—by example as well as by dint of what our success might enable us to do, in terms of philanthropy and otherwise.”

  “When he gave the $1 million to Howard, I wanted a big press conference and a lot of publicity on it,” says Butch Meily, the spokesman for Beatrice. “He absolutely refused.” Instead, Lewis went to Howard without fanfare, handed over a check and did an interview with Howard’s television station.

  Many people were surprised to learn of the scope of Lewis’s activities, which weren’t fully disclosed until after his death. “As it turned out, I didn’t know half the things he was doing,” says Jill Slattery, a friend from Lewis’s Harvard days. “One thing I remember him saying was that one way he could give back and help was to get to a certain point in life. I learned a whole lot at the funeral of how much he had given back.”

  “No one really knew the true Reginald Lewis, because he was private,” his mother says. “He didn’t brag that he paid this for somebody, or he did that for somebody. His foundation was truly all his money—it did not come from some foundation or from the company, it came from him. A lot of people give a whole lot of money, but it comes through their corporations and they feed it from a profitable corporation into a nonprofit organization, but he didn’t do that. This is Reginald Lewis giving back, and the nicest thing about it is he did it while he was alive.”

  In later years, Lewis made a one-time donation to his wife’s alma mater in the Philippines in memory of her late father. “The gift of $100,000 to the University of the Philippines, my university, was a complete shock,” Loida Lewis says. “He never gave me any inkling that he was going to do that and that he was going to do it in my father’s name and not his.”

  But Lewis’s relatives, including his mother, knew better than to make charitable pledges under the assumption that he would subsidize them. “If you’re talking about saying to Reginald. ‘This is a charity I’d like you to support,’ I didn’t do that,” Carolyn Fugett says. There was one occasion where Fugett had forgotten she’d promised to donate some money to a church group. As luck would have it, Lewis called shortly after she was reminded of her commitment.

  “Mom, is there anything that you want to give something to?” he asked as though clairvoyant.

  She told him about the pledge she’d made to St. Edward’s Catholic Church in Baltimore.

  “Is your name on the line?” Lewis asked.

  “You got it,” his mother replied.

  “Well then, I’ll do it out of discretionary funds,” Lewis said, making $2,000 available to his mother. Lewis was a regular benefactor of St. Edward’s, including a $10,000 donation in 1989 for a new piano and an upgrade to the church’s sound system. St. Edward’s had been looking for $7,500. Carolyn Fugett was able to present the check in front of the congregation to enthusiastic applause.

  After Lewis’s death in 1993, his uncle, James Cooper, insisted that Jean Fugett, Sr. go with Cooper to a Baltimore Lincoln-Mercury dealership. Sitting in the middle of the showroom floor was a new Lincoln Continental with a huge red ribbon wrapped around it. Loida Lewis, knowing that her late husband had wanted to surprise Jean Fugett, Sr. with a new car, carried out her husband’s unfulfilled wish.

  When Lewis lived in Paris, he arranged for the Fugetts to fly to France on the Concorde, then go on an all-expense paid tour of Paris and the surrounding countryside.

  At Christmas, Carolyn Fugett could usually expect a box full of jewelry from Tiffany’s from her son, while Jean Fugett, Sr. usually received Brooks Brothers suits, leather jackets, and the like. During one yuletide gathering, Jean Fugett, Sr. casually mentioned within earshot of Lewis that he’d like to operate a McDonald’s fast food franchise.

  “Do you want one—seriously?” Lewis asked his stepfather. “I backed off, but evidently he was serious,” Jean Fugett, Sr. says. “He would have gotten me a franchise.”

  Every Christmas Eve, Beatrice spokesman Butch Meily would take a check for $10,000 from his boss to the Rev. Calvin Butts, a high-profile civil rights activist and pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. From Lewis’s perspective, it undoubtedly didn’t hurt that Butts was a member of Kappa Alpha Psi, the black fraternity Lewis joined at Virginia State.

  The Kappa Alpha Psi New York Alumni Scholarship Foundation, Inc., is also a beneficiary of Lewis’s. His foundation gives at least $5,000 a year toward a $25,000 scholarship fund for New York City high school and college students. Lewis personally made the first contribution in 1989. After his death, the awards ceremony for handing out the 10 $2,500 individual scholarships was named the Reginald F. Lewis Memorial Scholarship Luncheon.

  In January of 1990, Lewis gave $1 million in grants to predominantly African-American educational, artistic, and arts institutions. Among the institutions that received money from Lewis were the Mother Hale House in New York, which takes care of babies born to drug-addicted mothers. He also supported the Dance Theater of Harlem, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library. “I am encouraged by the support of African-Americans to African-American endeavors, and want to be part of that,” Lewis said. “I share that African-American heritage and these institutions represent the kind of philanthropy I choose to support.”

  TAKING TIME TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE

  Lewis didn’t limit himself to checkbook philanthropy. Appropriating money is easy if one is so inclined: It’s more difficult to carve precious blocks of time out of a schedule already crammed full. Lewis would generally clear the decks without fail to take advantage of an opportunity to address African-American students. The practice paid an unexpected dividend: Lewis had such an inspirational effect on some of these students that they later sought him out in hopes they could work for him.

  Robert Suggs, who would one day work for Lewis & Clarkson at 30 Broad Street, first encountered Lewis during a speech to black law students at Harvard Law School in 1972. Darryl Thompson, who became an executive with TLC Beatrice, met Lewis during a conference for black business students at Stanford University. “Hard work, discipline, being focused, and having your skill knitted together in terms of what’s needed to get the job done are the keys to success,” Lewis told the enthralled Stanford audience. He didn’t mention the subject of race until a student asked what it was like to be the pre-eminent African-American businessman in the country.

  “Colors and labels have a way of categorizing people and creating artificial constraints around people and the way they think about themselves,” he gently informed his questioner.

  A $3 MILLION EXPRESSION OF GRATITUDE

  An institution Lewis had a big soft spot for was Harvard. He never forgot that Harvard had accepted him to the law school even though his application circumvented the traditional process, or that Harvard made money available for his expenses so he could concentrate exclusively on his studies. Also, Lewis appreciated the fact that at Harvard Law School he found that the professors and administrators were not patronizing or prejudiced.

  One of his first charitable contributions was a $10 check Lewis wrote to Harvard in 1969 while he was a junior associate with Paul, Weiss in Manhattan.

  During the late 1980s, Lewis came to Harvard Law School’s Ames Courtroom to give a talk on corporate takeovers. One of those taking in Lewis’s remarks was corporate law professor Robert Clark. “It was jam-packed,” Clark remembers. “I think it probably had the largest turnout
of African-American students of any event that year. He loved it.”

  A few years later, after Clark was made dean of the law school, he put the touch on Lewis for what was Lewis’s most impressive contribution: A $3-million commitment to Harvard Law School.

  Lewis belonged to the Harvard Law School visiting committee tasked with planning the facility’s long-term future. “What I remembered most about him in those settings was that he kept urging us to take the big picture into account,” Clark says. “Take a global perspective, don’t neglect international studies, train your students to learn about international law, international business and tax. That’s where the future’s going to be,” Lewis used to tell the council constantly.

  Three years later, The Reginald F. Lewis International Law Center would grace the law school’s campus following Lewis’s gift to the law school, but not before a lot of groundwork had been laid by Clark. One never gets a gift unless you ask, and usually more than once, laughs Clark, who, together with Dean for Development Scott Nichols, approached Lewis several times before finally succeeding in their quest. Their first talk took place in Manhattan at the Harvard Club in early 1991. “It went on for a few hours,” Clark recalls. “We went to some part of the Harvard Club and had a few drinks and just talked. Basically, he was trying to size me up. It went pretty well.”

  So well, in fact, that Clark decided to make his pitch. He casually asked Lewis for a $5 million gift for Harvard’s law school. Lewis inhaled sharply, his eyes widened and he gave Clark a look reserved for fools and madmen. Then Lewis let loose a huge belly laugh at the sheer audacity of Clark’s request. “Boy, you’ve got a lot of nerve!” Lewis told Clark. Things were left at that, because Lewis wasn’t about to make a snap commitment for that kind of money. But by the time they met for the second time to discuss the donation, the size of Lewis’s gift was slowly starting to crystalize in his head.

  “You know, I’m going to do something and it’s going to be big,” Lewis told Clark. “But I’ve got to figure it out.” Whatever he would decide on, Lewis was determined to get his money’s worth. He shared some opinions with Clark regarding what the law school should be emphasizing. He wanted to know what the school was doing in terms of international law and business law. He also asked a lot of questions about minority students. He wanted to know how many were applying, how many Harvard was accepting and how minority students were performing academically once admitted.

  Lewis was also very curious about a well-publicized flap involving African-American law professor Derrick Bell, who was protesting Harvard Law School’s lack of minority professors. Lewis made it a point to call other black Harvard professors including Christopher Edley and see what their take on the situation was.

  Clark and Lewis met next in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on June 14, 1991, during Harvard Law School’s campaign kickoff. A dinner was held in the massive law school reading room, which is larger than a football field. After dinner, speeches were made by some of those in attendance, including Lewis, who introduced Clark.

  “This guy Clark, you meet him and you think: ‘Well, this is a bookish guy,” Lewis said, smiling. “He’s calm and scholarly and so forth, but then he can look you in the eye and ask you for more money than you’d ever think was possible,” Lewis said, pausing a second for the laughter to subside. “And he got to me,” Lewis said, to even louder laughs.

  After a good deal of deliberation, in late 1991 Lewis arrived at a minimum financial figure he would feel comfortable donating. He was quite pleased to be able to tell Clark and he looked as though a load had been lifted from his shoulders. “It will be at least $1 million,” Lewis said. “I don’t know if I can get up to $5 million, but you can absolutely count on me for $1 million.” Lewis eventually decided on $3 million, to be paid in annual installments of $500,000. At the time, Lewis’s donation represented the largest gift ever made to Harvard by an individual donor.

  Most of the money had been earmarked for international studies, with at least $500,000 to be dispensed in consultation with a committee chaired by Professor Edley, an African-American. In his letter bestowing the grant, Lewis wrote, “I am particularly hopeful that this gift will help the school continue to expand and accelerate its efforts in faculty diversity and other areas.” Lewis’s contribution was announced in July, 1992.

  A good friend of Lewis’s from his Virginia State days, Carolyn Powell, was curious why Lewis would give a significant gift to already richly endowed Harvard, rather than a black college. “I mean, I was upset a couple of times,” Powell says. “Why did you give Harvard so much?” Lewis made her understand over time how much it meant to be able not only to give money to one of the nation’s premier institutions, but to give more than any man—black or white. Plus, Lewis felt that having a major campus building named after an African-American would have incalculable inspirational and motivational value on black students at Harvard.

  Plus, in Lewis’s mind, Harvard was simply the best. Period.

  Virginia State, Lewis undergraduate alma mater, received some money from him, too. Lewis had contributed roughly $80,000 to Virginia State, not including the $5,000 annual scholarship for the graduating math major with the highest grade point average.

  In the last full year of Lewis’s life, his philanthropic work was becoming increasingly important to Lewis. Phyllis Schless, who was on his acquisition team for McCall and Beatrice, had a lunch with him in the summer of 1992 that lasted about four and a half hours. The subject of philanthropy came up several times. “You know, I am really thinking about taking a year off and really getting involved with volunteerism,” Lewis told Schless. The business world, while still attractive and tremendously gratifying, had begun to lose a little of its luster for Lewis.

  In the summer of 1992, he helped Harvard pin down another substantial gift. Several fundraisers for Harvard Law School were in Europe talking up alumni viewed as potential donors. The team stopped by to see Lewis at his office in Paris. Dean Robert Clark mentioned that it looked as though he and his colleagues were going to miss a flight to London, where a dinner with 10 ambassadors from Arab countries had been scheduled.

  “What’s the meeting about?” Lewis asked. Told that the law school had plans for an Islamic legal studies center, he said, “Well, why don’t you ride in my corporate jet? I’d like to go to this dinner, too.” The Islamic ambassadors, who were from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, among other countries, were quite impressed that Lewis had accompanied the law school’s fund-raising team to the dinner. Harvard wound up receiving a seven-figure gift from King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, which was earmarked for the Islamic legal studies center.

  In the last months of 1992, it looked as though a dear old friend of Lewis’s, Ben Chavis, might have a shot at becoming the executive director of the NAACP. Ever since their flight from New York to North Carolina to battle school desegregation, Chavis had an enthusiastic supporter in Reginald Lewis. He told Chavis he would do whatever he could to help.

  According to Chavis, Lewis “made an unlimited commitment to help the NAACP” if Chavis were elected executive director. In January 1993, a few days before his death, Lewis dictated some thoughts on the matter to his wife. Lewis asked that a portion of his fortune go to charity, including $2 million for the NAACP. That pledge of $2 million was used to establish The Reginald F. Lewis Memorial Endowment, created with an objective of raising $100 million for the NAACP.

  Lewis’s $2 million gift to the NAACP was announced in July 1993, and prompted a young black entrepreneur who had befriended Lewis to make a $1 million pledge to The Reginald F. Lewis Memorial Endowment a few weeks later. Alphonse Fletcher, Jr., the 27-year-old CEO of Fletcher Capital Markets, viewed Lewis as a role model and mentor. Lewis first contacted Fletcher after he read in The Wall Street Journal that Fletcher had filed a discrimination lawsuit against Kidder Peabody. Fletcher charged that racial bias had affected his pay while he was managing an investment group for Kidder Peabody, and was awarded $1.26 million in a
rbitration. A Harvard graduate like Lewis, Fletcher met with Lewis a number of times.

  When Ben Chavis announced Lewis’s $2 million gift during the NAACP’s annual convention, which was held in Indianapolis in 1993, Fletcher was in the audience. “I was sitting there thinking about what I could do to help others,” Fletcher told the New York Times after his $1 million pledge was announced. “This was an appropriate way to honor Reginald Lewis.”

  Another organization Lewis donated money to was WNET-TV, Channel 13 in New York City. Lewis was on the board of the Public Broadcasting System station, after being invited to serve by the board chairman Henry Kravis, from whom Lewis bought TLC Beatrice. Lewis made a commitment of $250,000 to WNET.

  “When he made that commitment, he called me up and we talked about it,” says George Miles, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of WNET. “We talked back and forth about what he should do, and what the other board members were averaging in their contributions. He wanted to make sure the gift was significant, but he also didn’t want to over-give.”

  WNET sought out Lewis in hopes of getting him involved with the station. Lewis told Miles that the media—television in particular—have tremendous potential to make a positive difference in peoples’ lives. At WNET, Lewis espoused several issues near and dear to him: Health care, the state of the African-American community and entrepreneurship.

  Miles recalls that Lewis’s first check for $50,000 arrived on January 20, 1993—the day after his death.

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  “I Am Not Afraid of Death”

  The incredible demands of doing business and social activities on an international scale typically left Reginald Lewis feeling fatigued, but toward the middle of 1992 he felt more enervated than usual. As early as 1990, he had begun to tell close business associates like Kevin Wright, “You guys don’t know how tired I am.”