[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 155 (Tuesday, December 6, 2005)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E2457-E2458]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  PRESTON ROBERT TISCH: GREAT CIVIC LEADER AND PHILANTHROPIST HAS DIED

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. CHARLES B. RANGEL

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, December 6, 2005

  Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to introduce into the record 
the obituary of Preston Robert Tisch written by Douglas Martin which 
appeared in The New York Times Wednesday, November 16, 2005. Mr. Tisch 
died at his home in Manhattan yesterday. He will be greatly missed by 
the people of New York City.
  New Yorkers called Mr. Tisch ``Bob.'' Bob Tisch was generous to New 
York City. He made his fortune in New York in real estate and other 
enterprises, but he shared his money, his impressive business talents 
and generous spirit by with thousands of people who would never meet 
him personally. Many New Yorkers, young and old were touched by his 
civic leadership and continue to be touched by his generosity even 
though he is gone from us physically.
  In May 2005, Mr. Tisch was interviewed by Joan Baum, Ph.D. for the 
online edition of Education Update magazine. Dr. Baum extolled Bob 
Tisch ``extraordinary life of public service and philanthropy'' 
mentioning his service as Postmaster general of the United States, his 
service in the '90s, at the request of then Mayor David Dinkins, as New 
York City's Ambassador to Washington, chairing NYC Public Private 
Initiatives, a partnership program to fund community programs, sitting 
on the board as a founding member of Citymeals-on-wheels, and as a 
driving force behind the new Giants Stadium.
  Ms. Baum pointed out, that Bob Tisch cited among his proudest 
achievements ``programs that have benefited public schools, 
particularly among them ``Take the Field.'' This program is one that 
Bob Tisch founded in 2000 and has already restored 41 of 43 athletic 
fields for New York public schools. By May 2005, Bob Tisch's efforts 
had raised $135 million in private and public funds for Take the Field. 
His goal was to rebuild athletic facilities in order to promote health, 
academic performance and pride.
  In his interview, Bob Tisch acknowledged that Take The Field was as 
much about investment in youth and communities as it was about sports. 
When the schools' updated facilities are not being used by the schools 
they are used by the communities in which they are located. Ms. Baum 
wrote about her interview in May 2005: ``Bob Tisch chuckles when he 
recalls how the owners of the two-story homes surrounding Forest Hills 
High School went out of their way to assure him they were going to 
`watch over their field.' Other communities with new athletic 
facilities also watch over their fields.
  Bob Tisch's interest in education is present in the Tisch School of 
the Arts at New York University and the Preston Robert Tisch Center for 
Hospitality, Tourism and Sports at NYU, which has recently added a 
Master's program.
  I believe what was so special about Bob Tisch was the passion and 
love he brought to each of his projects. His ideas were brilliant, his 
projects successful and his profits in business high. But his 
distinguishing characteristics that were the true foundation of all his 
successes were his passion and his compassion.
  Bob Tisch was one of-a-kind. I will miss him. New York City will miss 
him. What is wonderful to know is the students of New York City will 
continue to benefit from his ideas and his passion for education for a 
long, long time. Because of this I am positive his spirit is still with 
us and his soul is with God.

                [From the New York Times, Nov. 16, 2005]

      Preston Robert Tisch, Owner of Loews Hotels and Giants, Dies

                          (By Douglas Martin)

       Preston Robert Tisch, who with his older brother built a 
     multibillion-dollar business empire and who himself was 
     postmaster general, half-owner of the New York Giants 
     football team and leader of many of the city's top business 
     groups, died yesterday at his home in Manhattan. He was 79 
     and also had a home in Harrison, N.Y.
       The cause was a brain tumor, said Jeffrey Stewart, 
     spokesman for the family.
       Wellington Mara, the co-owner of the Giants with Mr. Tisch, 
     died on Oct. 25.
       Mr. Tisch was sometimes called ``the other Tisch'' to 
     differentiate him from his older brother, Laurence, who was 
     known as a no-nonsense financial strategist, partly from 
     being the fiercely cost-conscious chairman of CBS from 1986 
     to 1995. He died in 2003.
       But it was more often Preston Robert Tisch, universally 
     known as Bob, who seized the public view, first as a 
     persuasive marketer for hotels and other companies owned by 
     the Loews Corporation. As operations chief, his attention to 
     detail once included personally hiring all bellmen for Loews 
     hotels. He saw them as his best salesmen.
       Mr. Tisch freely gave his talents to New York City. He 
     served as Mayor David N. Dinkins ``ambassador'' to 
     Washington; was chairman of host committees for the 1976 and 
     1980 Democratic National Conventions; and led the way in 
     building a new convention center on Manhattan's West Side.
       His last campaign, Take the Field, to revitalize the ragged 
     athletic fields of the city's public high schools, raised 
     $140 million in donations. He said he could have written a 
     check himself, but wanted a broad base of continuing support.
       Mr. Tisch's enthusiasm for convening the city's movers and 
     shakers began during the city's fiscal crisis in the 1970's 
     with breakfasts at his Park Avenue hotel, the Regency. Major 
     players in that municipal drama--the labor leader Victor 
     Gotbaum, the real estate mogul Lewis Rudin and the investment 
     banker Felix G. Rohatyn--were the first regulars.
       ``Stop over for breakfast, and you'll meet a lot of 
     people,'' Mr. Tisch was famous for saying.
       Many credit Mr. Tisch with coining the term ``power 
     breakfast,'' and the Regency continued to attract the likes 
     of Beverly Sills, Henry Kissinger and Mr. Dinkins who said in 
     an interview, ``When you think of Bob Tisch, you smile.''
       In recent months, Mr. Tisch continued attending power 
     breakfasts, as well as meetings at Giants Stadium and sports 
     events there and elsewhere.
       Among the city organizations he headed were the New York 
     City Convention and Visitors Bureau, the New York City 
     Partnership and the New York City Chamber of Commerce and 
     Industry. When he joined with Mr. Rudin and other executives 
     to form the Association for a Better New York in 1971, he and 
     other soon-to-be billionaires posed delightedly with brooms.
       His speaking schedule was so full that when President 
     Ronald Reagan named him postmaster general in 1986, friends 
     wondered if the job might really be ``toastmaster general.''
       Larry and Bob Tisch were known for their generosity, not 
     least their gifts to New York University where the medical 
     center and arts school both bear the family name. So does a 
     gallery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the children's 
     zoo in Central Park, not to mention namesake institutions at 
     the University of Michigan, Tufts University and elsewhere.
       The Tisch brothers add up to a quintessential Big Apple 
     success story, beginning with playing stickball on the 
     streets of Brooklyn and building to a financial conglomerate 
     with annual sales of more than $15.2 billion and assets of 
     $73.7 billion.
       Their holding company, the Loews Corporation, ranks 127th 
     on the Fortune 500, and has subsidiaries engaged in various 
     kinds of insurance, the production and sale of cigarettes and 
     watches, and the operation of hotels and oil and gas drilling 
     rigs.
       Preston Robert Tisch was born in the Bensonhurst section of 
     Brooklyn on April 29, 1926, to parents who came from Russia. 
     His father, Abraham Solomon, known as Al, owned a garment-
     manufacturing business and bought two summer camps in New 
     Jersey, Laurel and Lincoln, which his wife, the former Sayde 
     Brenner, helped him operate. As teenagers, Larry and Bob 
     worked at the camps.
       ``My parents were middle class and like everybody else in 
     Brooklyn at the time, they

[[Page E2458]]

     worked hard and tried to move up the scale,'' Mr. Tisch said 
     in an interview with Newsday in 1991.
       The family moved every three years to get three months of 
     free rent, a common practice even among the middle class. 
     This meant Mr. Tisch attended DeWitt Clinton High School in 
     the Bronx for one year and Erasmus Hall High School in 
     Brooklyn for three.
       Mr. Tisch joined the Army after briefly attending Bucknell, 
     and enrolled at the University of Michigan after his 
     discharge in 1944, earning a bachelor's degree in economics.
       His wife, the former Joan Hyman, recalled him selling 
     keychains for a dime, or two for 15 cents, in front of the 
     university's football stadium. They married in 1948.
       Besides his wife of 57 years, he is survived by two sons, 
     Steven and Jonathan; and a daughter, Laurie.
       In 1946, Larry, then a student at Harvard Law School, saw 
     an advertisement for a sleepy resort in Lakewood, N.J., 
     called Laurel-in-the-Pines, and persuaded his parents to put 
     up $125,000 to buy it. A family friend threw in another 
     $50,000 and took a one-fourth interest.
       The Tisches refurnished the hotel, added amenities like a 
     swimming pool and dreamed up promotional schemes that 
     included importing three reindeer from Finland to pull 
     sleighs in the snow. By the time Mr. Tisch joined the 
     business in 1948, the hotel was prospering.
       The family began investing profits in small hotel 
     operations in Atlantic City, almost literally playing 
     Monopoly on the boardwalk. They then took positions in 
     Manhattan hotels. They typically found unprofitable 
     properties, made improvements and raised rates.
       The brothers, personally and in business, could not have 
     been closer. Their families socialized together, they went to 
     temple together, played tennis together and even commuted to 
     work together. In business, Larry made deals, Bob ran 
     companies.
       Bill Rudin, comparing the Tisches to his father Lewis and 
     uncle Jack, the New York real estate magnates, said in an 
     interview ``They both sketched out a role that each of them 
     wanted to play, and each ran with the ball.''
       In 1956, the brothers were ready to build their own hotel, 
     the Americana at Bal Harbour, Fla. They did not borrow a cent 
     to build the $17 million hotel. It did $12 million in 
     business the first year, in large part because of Mr. Tisch's 
     success in getting convention business.
       With $65 million from their thriving hotels, the brothers 
     started buying into the Loews Corporation. An antitrust 
     decree had separated the company's theaters from its 
     filmmaking unit, and the brothers recognized that many of the 
     theaters occupied prime real estate. By January 1961, they 
     gained total control of Loews.
       They knocked down the old Loews Lexington theater and used 
     the site to build the 800-room Summit, the first hotel built 
     in Manhattan in 30 years. They built the Americana, which at 
     50 stories was the world's tallest hotel upon completion in 
     1962. Other hotels followed, and Loews became a leading 
     chain.
       The Tisches decided to recast the company as a 
     conglomerate. In 1968, they acquired Lorillard, then the 
     nation's fifth-largest cigarette company. In 1974, they 
     bought the CNA Financial Corporation, a nearly bankrupt 
     Chicago-based insurance company. Within a few years, it had 
     assets of $16.5 billion and an A+ credit rating. In 1979, 
     they purchased the troubled Bulova Watch and turned a profit.
       By 1980, Loews had revenue of $4.5 billion and earnings of 
     $206 million, and all its segments were doing well.
       Luck mixed nicely with strategy. When the brothers sold the 
     Traymore Hotel in Atlantic City in 1956, they retained a 
     parcel of its land. They were able to take advantage of the 
     casino boom that began in 1978.
       In the early 1980's, the Tisches bought five supertankers 
     for $25 million when the oil market was depressed. The deal 
     had no risk because even if oil prices did not rise, the 
     scrap value of each tanker was $5 million.
       Mr. Tisch was postmaster general for almost two years, 
     beginning in 1986. He used his marketing skill to come up 
     with the idea of selling stamps by phone, and stressing sales 
     of commemorative stamps, which are financially advantageous 
     for the Postal Service because collectors seldom use them as 
     postage.
       Mr. Tisch, whose net worth was $3.9 billion in 2003, 
     according to Forbes, relished such hands-on personal 
     involvement. Not only did he help found Meals-on-Wheels and 
     serve as its president for 20 years, he many times personally 
     delivered meals to elderly patrons.
       His habit of working Sundays prevented him from seeing a 
     professional football game until 1961, but he made up for it. 
     After buying the Giants in 1991, he loved to attend practices 
     and confer with coaches.
       Mr. Tisch improved the Giants' business by sharpening 
     marketing strategies, and, just as he had raised hotel rates, 
     increasing ticket prices. He remarked that for all his 
     business success and his oversight of the world's largest 
     civilian work force at the Postal Service--and even his 
     considerable civic and philanthropic contributions--he found 
     people most admired his ownership of the Giants. That made 
     sense to him.
       ``I want to be part of the fraternity and live out my life 
     as a Giants owner,'' he said in 1991, shortly after acquiring 
     a share of the team.

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