[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 53 (Wednesday, May 3, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3322-S3324]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
DAVID MAHONEY
Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, our Nation has lost one of the great and
modest men of our time, David Mahoney. A man who will receive
posthumously one of the highest awards the medical community can bestow
on a layman--the first Mary Woodard Lasker leadership in Philanthropy
Award for ``visionary leadership'' from the Albert and Mary Lasker
Foundation on May 9.
David, through his generosity, with both his time and his money,
greatly expanded knowledge about the human brain, neuroscience, and the
connection between body and brain which is helping people lead longer,
healthier lives.
He led us through the ``Decade of the Brain'' and used his
extraordinary marketing and public relations skills to foster awareness
in Congress and our people of the importance of medical research and
brain research in particular.
From his humble beginnings in the Bronx, my friend served as an
infantry captain in World War II and then attended the Wharton School
at the University of Pennsylvania while working full time in the mail
room of an advertising agency.
David's talents did not stay hidden for long; by the time he was 25,
he had become the youngest vice president of an advertising agency on
Madison Avenue.
He went on from there to form his own agency in New York and then
[[Page S3323]]
began his climb through the corporate world, first running the good
Human Ice Cream Co., and rising to chief operating officer of Norton
Simon's various corporate holdings.
It was during his stewardship of Norton Simon, Inc., that I first met
David. My friend Norton Simon retired as president and CEO of Norton
Simon, Inc., in 1969 and selected David Mahoney to be the new leader of
his company.
He chose David because ``David was inspirational, tough, visionary,
and dangerous.'' David expanded the company and helped Norton Simon
build the world famous Norton Simon art collection, the greatest
personal art collection west of the Mississippi.
David wrote a book about his own life in business called Confessions
of a Street Smart Manager. David was a wonderful combination of street
smarts garnered from growing up in the Bronx, an education from the
Wharton School, and the Irish charm that could convince people to share
a dream and work to realize its value.
Just 2 years ago David authored another book, along with Dr. Richard
Restak, ``The Longevity Strategy--How To Live To 100 Using the Brain-
Body Connection.''
David once said that ``God gave you intelligence so you could build
your intuition about what lies ahead.''
David Mahoney's second career and perhaps most lasting legacy was
with the Charles A. Dana Foundation where he served as its chairman
since 1977.
After leaving Norton Simon, he focused the attention of the Dana
Foundation on neuroscience research and helped the world's top
neuroscientists and researchers explain the importance of their
research to the general public and to funding agencies in the executive
branch and the Congress.
In 1992, he and Nobel Laureate Dr. James Watson launched the ``Decade
of the Brain'' with 10 specific objectives they believed might be
achievable by the end of the decade. That effort focused attention
better than ever before on understanding the basis for diseases of the
brain like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's and generated an unprecedented
level of support for neuroscience research.
David has become widely and justifiably credited as our foremost lay
advocate for neuroscience. While David had recently expressed some
frustration to me that those 10 ambitious goals had not yet been fully
achieved, through his efforts remarkable progress has been made in
understanding the human brain and the diseases that afflict it. I know
those goals will ultimately be met, and David Mahoney will be forever
remembered as the driving force behind this effort.
My friend David Mahoney and his wife Hillie have been close friends
of ours for many years. David and I celebrated our 75th birthdays,
which fell in the same year, and shared many memorable times. Catherine
and I will miss his wit and his wisdom and his leadership, but I will
continue to enjoy personal memories of our friendship and to be
grateful for his legacy of exploration into the workings of the human
brain.
Mr. President, the May 2, 2000, New York Times contained an excellent
obituary of David Mahoney, and I ask unanimous consent that it be
printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the New York Times, May 2, 2000]
David Mahoney, a Business Executive and Neuroscience Advocate, Dies at
76
(By Eric Nagourney)
David Mahoney, a business leader who left behind the world
of Good Humor, Canada Dry and Avis and threw himself behind a
decidedly less conventional marketing campaign, promoting
research into the brain, died yesterday at his home in Palm
Beach, Fla. He was 76.
The cause was heart disease, friends said.
Mr. Mahoney, who believed that the study of the brain and
its diseases had been shortchanged for far too long, was
sometimes described as the foremost lay advocate of
neuroscience. As chief executive of the Charles A. Dana
Foundation, a medical philanthropic organization based in
Manhattan, he prodded brain researchers to join forces, shed
their traditional caution and reclusivity and engage the
public imagination.
To achieve his goals, he brought to bear the power of
philanthropy, personal persuasion and the connections he had
made at the top of the corporate world.
Using his skills as a marketing executive, he worked
closely with some of the world's top neuroscientists to teach
them how to sell government officials holding the purse
strings, as well as the average voter, on the value of their
research. He pressed them to make specific public commitments
to find treatments for diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's
and depression, rather than conduct just ``pure'' research.
``People don't buy science solely,'' Mr. Mahoney said this
year. ``They buy the results of, and the hope of, science.''
In 1992, aided by Dr. James D. Watson, who won the Nobel
Prize as a co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, Mr. Mahoney
founded the Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives, a foundation
organization of about 190 neuroscientists, including Dr.
Watson and six other Nobel laureates, that works to educate
the public about their field.
The same year, after taking over the 50-year-old Dana
Foundation as chief executive, Mr. Mahoney began shifting it
away from its traditional mission of supporting broader
health and educational programs, and focused its grants
almost exclusively on neuroscience. Since then, the
foundation has given some $34 million to scientists working
on brain research at more than 45 institutions.
Mr. Mahoney also dipped into his own fortune, giving
millions of dollars to endow programs in neuroscience at
Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania. Later this month,
the Albert and Mary Lassker Foundation, which traditionally
honors the most accomplished researchers, was to give him a
newly created award for philanthropy.
``He put his money where his mouth was,'' said Dr. Kay
Redfield Jamison, a professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins
University.
Mr. Mahoney's journey from businessman to devotee of one of
the most esoteric fields of health was as unusual as it was
unexpected.
David Joseph Mahoney Jr. was born in the Bronx on May 17,
1923, the son of David J. Mahoney, a construction worker, and
the former Loretta Cahill.
After serving as an infantry captain in the Pacific during
World War II, he enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania's
Wharton School. He studied at night, and during the day he
worked 90 miles away in the mail room of a Manhattan
advertising agency, Ruthrauff & Ryan. By the time he was 25,
he had become a vice president of the agency--by some
accounts, the youngest vice president on Madison Avenue at
the time.
Then in 1951, in a move in keeping with the restlessness
that characterized his business career, he left Ruthrauff &
Ryan to form his own agency. Four years later, when his
business was worth $2 million, he moved on again, selling it
to run Good Humor, the ice-cream company that his small
agency had managed to snare as a client.
Five years later, when Good Humor was sold, Mr. Mahoney
became executive vice president of Colgate-Palmolive, then
president of Canada Dry, and then, in 1969, president and
chief operating officer of Norton Simon, formed from Canada
Dry, Hunt Food and McCall's. Under Mr. Mahoney, Norton Simon
grew into a $3 billion conglomerate that included Avis Rent A
Car, Halston, Max Factor and the United Can Company.
Despite his charm, associates said, he had a short temper
and an impatient manner that often sent subordinates packing.
``I burn people out,'' he once said in an interview, ``I'm
intense, and I think that intensity is sometimes taken for
anger.''
The public knew him as one of the first chief executives to
go in front of the camera to promote his product, in this
case, in the early 1980's for Avis rental cars, which Norton
Simon had acquired under his tenure.
By all accounts, including his own, Mr. Mahoney was living
on top of the world. He was one of the nation's top paid
executives, receiving $1.85 million in compensation in 1982--
a fact that did not always endear him to some Norton Simon
shareholders, who filed lawsuits charging excessive
compensation, given that his company's performance did not
always keep pace with his raises.
Tall and trim, he moved among society's elite and was
friends with Henry A. Kissinger, Vernon E. Jordon, Jr. and
Barbara Walters. He was reported to have advised Presidents
Richard M. Nixon, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, and to have
met with Mr. Carter at Camp David.
But his fortunes changed late in 1983. True to form, the
restless Mr. Mahoney was seeking change, putting into motion
a plan to take Norton Simon private. But this time, he
stumbled; a rival suitor, the Esmark Corporation, bettered
his offer and walked away with his company.
Mr. Mahoney was left a lot richer--as much as $40 million
or so, by some accounts--but, for the first time in his life,
he was out of a job and at loose ends. He described the
period as a low point.
``You stop being on the `A' list,'' he said some years
later, ``Your calls don't get returned. It's not just less
fawning; people could care less about you in some cases. The
king is dead. Long live the king.''
It look some years for Mr. Mahoney to regain his focus.
Gradually, he turned his attention to public health, in which
he had already shown some interest. In the 1970's, he had
been chairman of the board of Phoenix House, the residential
drug-treatment program. By 1977, while still at Norton, he
became chairman of the Dana Foundation, a largely advisory
position.
Mr. Mahoney increasingly devoted his time to the
foundation. In 1982, he also because its chief executive, and
soon began shifting the
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organization's focus to the brain. In part, the reason came
from his own experience. In an acceptance speech that he has
prepared for the Lasker Award, he wrote of having seen first-
hand the effects of stress and the mental health needs of
people in the business world.
But associates recalled, and Mr. Mahoney seemed to say as
much in his speech, that he appeared to have arrived at the
brain much the way a marketing executive would think up a new
product. ``Some of the great minds in the world told me that
this generation's greater action would be in brain science--
if only the public would invest the needed resources,'' he
wrote.
In 1992, Mr. Mahoney and Dr. Watson gathered a group of
neuroscientsts at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long
Island. There, encouraged by Mr. Mahoney, the scientists
agreed on 10 research objectives that might be reached by the
end of the decade, among them finding the genetic basis for
manic-depression and identifying chemicals that can block the
action of cocaine and other addictive substances.
``We've gotten somewhere on about four of them--but what's
life,'' Dr. Watson said recently.
In recent years, Mr. Mahoney became convinced that a true
understanding of the brain-body connection might also lead to
cures for diseases in other parts of the body, like cancer
and heart disease.
He believed that it would soon be commonplace for people to
live to 100. For the quality of life to be high at that age,
he believed, people would have to learn to take better care
of their brains.
In 1998, along with Dr. Richard Restak, a
neuropsychiatrist, Mr. Mahoney wrote ``The Longevity
Strategy: How to Live to 100: Using the Brain-Body
Connection'' (John Wiley & Sons).
Mr. Mahoney's first wife, Barbara Ann Moore, died in 1975.
He is survived by his wife, the former Hildegarde Merrill,
with whom he also had a home in Lausanne, Switzerland; a son,
David, of Royal Palm Beach, Fla.; two stepsons, Arthur
Merrill of Muttontown, N.Y., and Robert Merrill of Locust
Valley, N.Y., and a brother, Robert, of Bridgehampton, N.Y.
Associates said Mr. Mahoney's temperament in his second
career was not all that different from what it had been in
his first. It was not uncommon, said Edward Rover, vice
chairman of the Dana Foundation's board of trustees, for his
phone to ring late at night, and for Mr. Mahoney to sail into
a pointed critique of their latest endeavors.
One researcher spoke of his ``kind of charge-up-San-Juan-
Hill style.'' Dr. Jamison, of Johns Hopkins, called him
``impatient in the best possible sense of the word.''
As in his first career, Mr. Mahoney never lost the good
salesman's unwavering belief in this product, ``If you can't
sell the brain,'' he told friends, ``then you've got a real
problem.''
Mr. DODD. If my colleague will yield, I thank our colleague from
Alaska for his comments about David Mahoney. I didn't know him as well
as my good friend from Alaska but had the opportunity to be with him on
numerous occasions. All the things the Senator from Alaska said about
David Mahoney are true, and even more so. It is a great loss to the
country.
In fact, I point out our good friend from Alaska has lost a couple of
good friends in the last few months.
A man of significant contributions, a man who appreciated the arts,
had a great love of this country and history--David Mahoney was all of
those.
Suffice it to say, I want to be associated with the comments of the
distinguished Senator from Alaska on his comments about David Mahoney.
____________________