[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 37 (Monday, March 5, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2594-S2597]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    TRIBUTE TO WALTER SONDHEIM, JR.

 Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I wish to pay tribute to one of 
Baltimore's great civic leaders, Walter Sondheim, Jr. If ever there was 
a statesman from Baltimore, it was Walter Sondheim. From the time I 
entered public life in 1971, his name was synonymous with integrity, 
public purpose and civic leadership, and he was the most self-effacing 
public figure I ever met.
  Perhaps Walter Sondheim's most unique talent was his ability to 
manage transitions. Whether in business, in the community or in his own 
personal life, Walter knew when to hold them and when to fold them. In 
the late 1950s and early 1960s, Walter recognized the evolution in 
Baltimore's economic base from heavy industry and manufacturing to 
tourism, service and technology. He championed a new vision of public 
land use and architectural excellence when he shepherded the 
Renaissance of Baltimore and the creation of the present day Inner 
Harbor. He challenged the business community to look forward and 
prepare for the service economy and the explosion of technology related 
businesses that was being driven by our major universities and federal 
scientific facilities.
  In the larger community, Walter Sondheim led us from the darkness of

[[Page S2595]]

segregation and into the vision illuminated by the U.S. Supreme Court's 
decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. Where other 
communities hesitated or procrastinated, as president of the Board of 
School Commissioners for Baltimore City, he forged ahead to implement 
this milestone ruling long before other cities around the Nation. The 
result was a speedy, thoughtful, considered integration of the public 
schools.
  In his own personal life, Walter Sondheim transitioned from his early 
life as a businessman with one of Baltimore's premiere department 
stores to the leader of a number of influential civic and business 
organizations. With grace and purpose, he carefully released himself 
from old roles and embraced new opportunities. He never looked 
backward, only forward. He did not fear new ideas. Whatever challenge 
he chose to address, he was always the right man in the right place at 
the right time.
  Finally, Walter Sondheim was never threatened by other talented 
people. Indeed, he encouraged young leadership and new faces in the 
crowd. For this young protestor, who found herself in an elected 
position inside City Hall, he had nothing but words of encouragement 
and offers of assistance. He knew that civic leadership was comprised 
not only of traditional groups, but also of the sweat equity crowd that 
desired change. He always welcomed new energy and new points of view. 
Walter remained unburdened by convention and the status quo his entire 
life long.
  I ask that a Baltimore Sun article on the life and contributions of 
Walter Sondheim be printed in the Record.
  The material follows:

                [From the Baltimore Sun, Feb. 15, 2007]

  Walter Sondheim Jr.: 1908-2007--He Was Sage Adviser, Key Figure in 
                             City's Growth

       Through 6 decades, they called upon Walter Sondheim Jr. 
     When Baltimore mayors, Maryland governors and other civic 
     leaders needed sage advice, inevitably they sought it from a 
     man widely admired for integrity and uncommon warmth and 
     graciousness.
       Mr. Sondheim died at 10 a.m. Thursday of pneumonia at Mercy 
     Medical Center. He was 98, and until last week he worked 
     every day at his office at the Greater Baltimore Committee.
       Mr. Sondheim had a gift for nudging people toward grand 
     accomplishments, often to the surpassing benefit of Baltimore 
     and the state beyond. He earned his livelihood as a 
     department store executive, but his legacy can be found in 
     sweeping civic movements.
       As president of the Baltimore school board in 1954, Mr. 
     Sondheim insisted--though other cities stalled--on the speedy 
     desegregation of Baltimore schools after the U.S. Supreme 
     Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. As a leader of 
     the city's downtown development agency, he coaxed his 
     colleagues into carefully controlled planning of the Inner 
     Harbor. He headed the state panel that promoted regular 
     testing of students. He disdained anything but the highest 
     ethical standards in business and government.
       ``It's hard to imagine God having created a better person 
     than Walter Sondheim,'' said Robert C. Embry Jr., the city's 
     former housing commissioner and now president of the Abell 
     Foundation.
       Accolades poured in from the many leaders Mr. Sondheim 
     counseled throughout the decades.
       Gov. Martin O'Malley, who ordered state flags to be flown 
     at half-staff, said Mr. Sondheim ``wasn't shy about reaching 
     out'' to him with advice when Mr. O'Malley was mayor.
       ``If there was one enduring quality about Walter Sondheim, 
     it was he had an unrelenting optimism about human nature,'' 
     Mr. O'Malley said Thursday night.
       Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin said, ``Whether it was integration 
     of the city schools or the redevelopment of Baltimore, he was 
     certainly well ahead of his time.''
       William Donald Schaefer, the former governor and mayor who 
     worked closely with Mr. Sondheim on many civic improvement 
     efforts, called his death ``a tremendous loss,'' describing 
     Mr. Sondheim as one of the smartest and kindest men he knew.
       ``Integrity. I've never known a man with so much integrity 
     in my life,'' Mr. Schaefer said. ``He would not sanction 
     anything that was not right.''
       During nearly a century of life, Mr. Sondheim crossed paths 
     with many celebrated personages of his day. His favorite 
     portrait of his late wife, Janet, was taken by the famed 
     photographer Dorothea Lange. His children were delivered by 
     Dr. Alan Guttmacher, a Johns Hopkins obstetrician-
     gynecologist who was one of the pioneers in the field of 
     reproductive health. His brother-in-law was Richard Neustadt, 
     a Harvard political scientist and the founder of the 
     university's John F. Kennedy School of Government.


                           Linked to history

       His life was also intimately entwined with the history of 
     Baltimore. He knew H.L. Mencken, who was a friend of Mr. 
     Sondheim's father. His parents were married a week before the 
     Great Baltimore Fire of 1904, which destroyed much of the 
     downtown business district.
       A droll and charming raconteur, Mr. Sondheim would recount 
     for friends that when his parents returned from their 
     honeymoon to the still-smoking Baltimore, his father told his 
     mother that the fire of their love had engulfed the city.
       But beyond the stories was a remarkable record of 
     achievement in reshaping the city. Mr. Schaefer said the 
     Science Center, Harborplace and Charles Center--among other 
     projects--are ``all monuments to Walter.''
       Through it all, Mr. Sondheim was self-effacing, often 
     protesting his aversion to the spotlight. ``I'm not sure how 
     I've gotten involved in the variety of things referred to 
     here today,'' he said in 1975 when the Advertising Club of 
     Baltimore gave him its Man of the Year Award. ``One 
     factor, of course, is just being around for so many years. 
     My good, long-suffering, strangely faithful wife is clear 
     about the fact that I'm just weak-kneed and haven't the 
     courage to say `no.'
       ``Personally, I lean to the theory, expressed by a friend 
     of mine, that there are some jobs only a damned fool will do, 
     and if you're one, you have an obligation to accept such an 
     assignment when it's offered to you.''
       People who knew Mr. Sondheim dismissed such talk.
       He was a man of great affability who, until the end, 
     delighted in juicy gossip and laughter.''
       Everybody wanted him at their parties,'' Mr. Cardin said. 
     ``You don't get many people in their late 90s that everybody 
     wants to be around. He was one of a kind.''
       Freeman A. Hrabowski III, president of the University of 
     Maryland, Baltimore County and a longtime close friend, said 
     he was thinking back Thursday to something Mr. Sondheim told 
     him 20 years ago.
       ``He said, `Freeman , live life seriously, but don't take 
     it seriously. You do your best, and then you laugh,' and that 
     was Walter,'' Mr. Hrabowski said.
       Mr. Sondheim performed a vital role as a link between the 
     region's businessmen and William Donald Schaefer when he was 
     a city councilman, mayor, governor and later state 
     comptroller.
       The two men met when a young Mr. Schaefer chaired a City 
     Council committee on urban renewal.
       ``He would walk into the City Council, and it was like the 
     Lord walked in,'' Mr. Schaefer said. ``You would never think 
     of challenging Walter.''
       State Treasurer Nancy K. Kopp said that while Mr. Sondheim 
     deeply admired Mr. Schaefer, he never hesitated to speak his 
     mind to the mercurial politician.
       ``He was never reluctant to tell Schaefer he was making 
     mistakes,'' Ms. Kopp said.
       C. Fraser Smith, a former Sun reporter who wrote a 
     biography of Mr. Schaefer, described an incident in which the 
     two men were flying to Germany to receive an honor on behalf 
     of the city.
       Mr. Sondheim, the story goes, took advantage of the 
     opportunity to admonish the mayor over his gruff treatment of 
     people. Why are you so mean to people? Mr. Sondheim asked. 
     After stewing a long time, Mr. Schaefer demanded to know whom 
     he had treated badly.
       ``Why don't you look in the phone book?'' Mr. Sondheim 
     replied.
       Once pressed to explain his skills in dealing with people, 
     Mr. Sondheim allowed that he possessed an ability to listen 
     to others, the patience to find a workable compromise when 
     confronted with controversial points of view, and the gift of 
     being able to put himself in someone else's position.
       He then added: ``Liking people is not as important as 
     understanding people. This is a skill that is not born; it's 
     trained. You can't be judgmental about somebody with whom you 
     don't agree.''
       Mr. Sondheim was born in his father's house on Bolton 
     Street on July 25, 1908, an era of gaslights and streetcars. 
     He recalled for a 2003 Sun article that the family passed 
     summers in the cooler climate of a rented home in Pikesville. 
     One summer, his father said he couldn't join the family; when 
     they returned to Bolton Hill, they found that the elder Mr. 
     Sondheim had spent the time having electric power installed.
       Barred from some of the city's elite schools because he was 
     Jewish, Mr. Sondheim attended Park School, becoming a member 
     of one of its first classes. He went on to Haverford College 
     in Pennsylvania, from which he graduated in 1929, and went to 
     work for the Hochschild, Kohn department store, where his 
     father worked. Mr. Sondheim would later chalk up his job to 
     ``nepotism.''
       In 1934, he married Janet Blum of Berkeley, Calif., who had 
     been a dancer with the Denishawn Company. He had proposed to 
     her in a speakeasy. They had two children, John W. Sondheim 
     and Ellen Dankert, both of Baltimore.
       Mrs. Sondheim, who later became a teacher, died in 1992. 
     Mr. Sondheim's death came on what would have been their 73rd 
     wedding anniversary.
       Even at a young age, Mr. Sondheim was interested in race 
     relations at a time when few white Baltimoreans questioned 
     segregation as a bedrock principle. He served on the board of 
     the Baltimore Urban League during the 1930s.
       ``It was really a segregated city,'' Mr. Sondheim recalled 
     in a 1995 interview. ``I

[[Page S2596]]

     worked at Hochschild, Kohn's. We waited on African-Americans 
     but on an all-sales-final basis. People couldn't return 
     things, they couldn't eat in the restaurants, and they were 
     only employed in menial capacities. The fact that blacks were 
     not treated as full citizens as customers was a major issue 
     with both the Urban League and the NAACP.''
       Mr. Sondheim said he worked within the company to change 
     the practice. ``I was terribly unhappy and embarrassed,'' he 
     said during a 2003 trial in which he testified about the 
     history of discrimination in Baltimore.
       Nevertheless, Mr. Sondheim rose to the position of store 
     manager at Hochschild's and held that post for five years 
     until, in 1942, he was appointed director of the United 
     States Employment Service for Maryland, an agency 
     responsible for transferring people from nonessential jobs 
     to war work.
       The following year, he joined the Navy and was commissioned 
     a lieutenant. He was stationed in Cleveland and, when asked 
     about his war service, loved to say he had protected the 
     Great Lakes from Axis invasion. He served until 1946. With 
     the war over, he returned to Hochschild, Kohn.
       Mr. Sondheim's name and reputation came to the attention of 
     Mayor Thomas D'Alesandro Jr. in 1948 when he was looking for 
     someone to fill a vacancy in what was then considered ``the 
     Jewish seat'' on the school board. Mr. Sondheim accepted the 
     job and served on the board for the next nine years.
       Though Mr. Sondheim seldom dwelled on the discrimination he 
     personally encountered, he took the appointment at a time 
     when anti-Semitism was pervasive in the United States in 
     general and Baltimore in particular.
       In the 2003 discrimination trial at which he testified, Mr. 
     Sondheim recounted that his family was once blocked from 
     buying a house in Roland Park when the seller found out the 
     Sondheims were Jewish. He also testified that the elite 
     downtown clubs that served the business establishment also 
     barred Jews--a barrier that led to the formation of the 
     Center Club. But when some organizers of that club proposed 
     that it exclude blacks, Mr. Sondheim and several others 
     withdrew their applications. The rule was dropped.


                            Fateful decision

       It was while Mr. Sondheim was president of the school board 
     that the city decided in May 1954 to desegregate its schools 
     in response to the Supreme Court's decision.
       Baltimore became the first school district south of the 
     Mason-Dixon line to respond to the Supreme Court's unanimous, 
     landmark ruling outlawing ``separate but equal'' education 
     for blacks and whites.
       Integration here was accomplished with relatively little 
     tension compared with events in other cities, and the process 
     was hailed as a signal achievement at the time.
       But it did not come entirely without resistance. On one 
     occasion, an opponent of desegregation burned a cross on Mr. 
     Sondheim's Windsor Hills lawn. But Mr. Sondheim would play 
     down the incident, telling friends that the cross was puny 
     and the fire hardly got started.
       ``He wouldn't back off,'' Mr. Schaefer said. ``He wouldn't 
     step aside. He wouldn't do anything except what was right.''
       In 1958, Morgan State awarded Mr. Sondheim an honorary 
     degree. He accepted his honor alongside the Rev. Martin 
     Luther King Jr., who received the same honor from the school 
     that day, according to state archivist Edward C. Papenfuse 
     Jr.
       Nevertheless, Mr. Sondheim declined to count school 
     desegregation as one of his achievements--noting that 50 
     years later most African-American students attend schools 
     that are almost entirely black. He would tell listeners that 
     while he and others desegregated the schools, they didn't 
     succeed in integrating them.
       Mr. Sondheim's next major task in the life of the city came 
     in 1957 when he was named head of the newly created Baltimore 
     Urban Renewal and Housing Authority, which brought together a 
     number of agencies charged with handling the city's public 
     housing program.
       He said he had no advanced knowledge of public housing--
     other than having lived with Mrs. Sondheim and their children 
     in a Cleveland public housing project when he was in the 
     Navy--but he started to learn.
       The learning process coincided with the city's initial 
     commitment to downtown renewal, spurred by the GBC, an 
     organization of prominent citizens determined to prevent the 
     area from deteriorating. In his role as housing authority 
     chief and as a member of the GBC, he helped launch the first 
     renewal project, Charles Center.
       The year was 1963. His civic responsibilities, added to his 
     work at the department store, overwhelmed him. He resigned as 
     head of the housing authority to devote more time to 
     retailing but remained involved in less demanding civic 
     enterprises.
       In 1970, Mr. Sondheim decided to take early retirement from 
     the department store, where he had risen to the post of 
     senior vice president and treasurer, and started a second 
     career with the quasi-public Charles Center-Inner Harbor 
     Management organization that was transforming the city's 
     skyline and attracting national attention from urban 
     planners.
       The new post became a full-time job, but he also was called 
     upon to serve as director of the Baltimore Urban Coalition, 
     chairman of the board of Goucher College and a member, 
     trustee or director of such organizations as Mercy and Sinai 
     hospitals, the Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. and the 
     Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Co.
       However, Mr. Sondheim decided in May 1989 to shed some of 
     these responsibilities.
       After 15 years as chairman of Charles Center-Inner Harbor 
     Management, where he worked for $1 a year, he announced his 
     resignation. At the same time, he stepped down as president 
     of Charles Street Management Corp. and Market Center 
     Development Corp., two agencies that helped direct 
     development of other parts of downtown.
       ``I think that people can stay too long on some jobs,'' he 
     said when announcing his retirement.
       Soon he settled into an office at the GBC, where he took 
     the title of senior adviser. His work ethic never flagged. 
     When snow prompted other staff members to leave the office 
     early, Mr. Sondheim, who lived nearby in a condominium at 
     Harbor View, would take over the job of answering phones.
       Asked once why he never joined in the white flight out of 
     the city, Mr. Sondheim replied: ``What I learned early on is 
     cutting grass is not as good as walking pavement.''
       Two years after taking senior status at the GBC, Mr. 
     Sondheim was appointed by Mr. Schaefer to chair a 
     gubernatorial panel on school performance--a group that would 
     become known as the Sondheim Commission. The group produced a 
     report that became the blueprint for what would become known 
     as the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program, or 
     MSPAP.
       The controversial test, with its heavy emphasis on writing 
     skills, would be the state's chief educational measurement 
     tool for a decade.


                            A feeling of awe

       While on senior status, Mr. Sondheim would continue to be 
     sought out for advice by aspiring political leaders.
       Former Gov. Parris N. Glendening said Mr. Sondheim was one 
     of the first people he turned to for advice before launching 
     his campaign for the State House. Then the Prince George's 
     County executive, Mr. Glendening said he and Mr. Sondheim 
     spoke for well over an hour about education and the condition 
     of Baltimore. After his election as governor in 1994, Mr. 
     Glendening said he frequently solicited Mr. Sondheim's views 
     on ``big picture'' issues such as the city-state partnership 
     in running Baltimore schools.
       ``I would talk with him and always come away with a feeling 
     of awe,'' Mr. Glendening said.
       In 1997, when he was 89, Mr. Sondheim was the central 
     figure in a Wall Street Journal article about people who 
     delayed retirement far beyond the age of Social Security 
     eligibility.
       The Page 1 article recounted how Mr. Sondheim sent a letter 
     to his closest friends asking them to let him know--by 
     anonymous note if they preferred--if he ever reached the 
     point where it was time to stop coming to work.
       Lainy Lebow-Sachs, former chief of staff to Mr. Schaefer 
     and a longtime friend of Mr. Sondheim's, said none of his 
     friends wrote such a reply. ``Everybody ripped it up,'' she 
     said.
       Mr. O'Malley said Mr. Sondheim played a behind-the-scenes 
     role in his 2004 standoff with Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. and 
     state Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick over the control of 
     the city school system. The governor described Mr. Sondheim 
     as performing ``shuttle diplomacy'' between City Hall and 
     Mrs. Grasmick, a close friend of Mr. Sondheim who had aligned 
     herself with Mr. Ehrlich in favor of increased state control.
       ``He tried very much to be a conciliator on that score and 
     felt that it was very unhealthy for the progress of our kids 
     that the school system wound up as a political football,'' 
     Mr. O'Malley said. He added that Mr. Sondheim privately urged 
     him to stick by his guns on the issue of local control.
       Mr. Sondheim cut back on some activities in his final 
     years. In 2001, he stepped down as president of the state 
     school board, a post he had held since 1998. Two years later, 
     he left the board after serving two terms as a member. Last 
     year, he stepped down from the board of the Abell Foundation.
       But he remained active in business and political activities 
     well into his late 90s. In 2006, he recruited a group of 
     prominent Baltimoreans who were interested in buying The Sun 
     from Tribune Co. Until his death, he served on one board that 
     ensures compliance with the state's open-meetings laws and 
     another that runs the American Visionary Arts Museum.
       As he advanced in years, Mr. Sondheim frequently joked 
     about his age. Once, asked how he was doing, he replied: 
     ``OK, considering my antiquity.''
       Ms. Lebow-Sachs said Mr. Sondheim's longevity and vigor 
     could not be attributed to a health regimen. ``He ate 
     anything he wanted, and he didn't exercise since 1921,'' she 
     said.
       Mr. Sondheim would continue to drive--but only during the 
     day--until the week before his death, when he broke his ankle 
     in an accident. It was after that injury that he would check 
     into Mercy, where his final illness was diagnosed.
       Ms. Lebow-Sachs and Mr. Schaefer recalled that every time 
     Mr. Sondheim received an honor--and there were dozens--he 
     would go on and on about how he didn't deserve it.
       Mr. Schaefer said his friends' reaction was always: ``For 
     God's sake, Walter, cut that out!''
       In 2005, when the University of Maryland, Baltimore County 
     named its social sciences building after Mr. Sondheim and his 
     late wife, he admonished school officials.

[[Page S2597]]

       ``You shouldn't name a building for people who are still 
     alive,'' Mr. Sondheim--then 96--said at the dedication 
     ceremony. ``You never know what they'll do tomorrow.''
       In addition to his son and daughter, Mr. Sondheim is 
     survived by two granddaughters and a great-granddaughter. He 
     is also survived by a sister-in-law, Shirley Williams, a 
     former member of Britain's Parliament and Mr. Neustadt's 
     widow.

                          ____________________