[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 9 (Monday, January 23, 2012)]
[Senate]
[Pages S34-S35]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       REMEMBERING WARREN HELLMAN

 Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, today I ask my colleagues to join 
me in honoring the life and legacy of Warren Hellman, a San Francisco 
financier, philanthropist, and community leader who died last month at 
age 77 from complications of leukemia.
  In addition to its spectacular beauty, the City of San Francisco is 
known around the world for its great heart and free spirit, its 
celebration of diversity, and its charm. In recent years, perhaps no 
San Franciscan has embodied his beloved city more than Warren Hellman. 
He was a fantastically successful businessman and investor who liked to 
dress casually, ride horses, run 100-mile races, and play bluegrass 
banjo.
  Here is how Warren was remembered by the Bay Citizen, the free 
newspaper he founded when he felt that local news coverage was in 
decline:

       A rugged iconoclast whose views on life rarely failed to 
     surprise, Hellman was a lifelong Republican who supported 
     labor unions, an investment banker whose greatest joy was 
     playing songs of the working class in a bluegrass band, and a 
     billionaire who wanted to pay more taxes and preferred the 
     company of crooners and horsemen who shared his love of music 
     and cross-country `ride and tie' racing.

  Warren Hellman was born in New York and raised in San Francisco. He 
graduated from the University of California, Berkeley and earned an MBA 
at Harvard Business School. After becoming the youngest director in the 
history of Lehman Brothers, Warren moved home to California and co-
founded the private equity firm of Hellman & Friedman. Though he made a 
lot of money, he much preferred giving it away. Warren said that money 
was ``like manure: If you spread it around, good things will grow--and 
if you pile it up, it just smells bad.''

[[Page S35]]

  Among the many institutions Warren helped grow were the San Francisco 
Free Clinic, the Hellman Fellows Program at UC Berkeley, and his Hardly 
Strictly Bluegrass festival, where more than half a million people come 
each year to hear free concerts from top entertainers and from Warren's 
band, the Wronglers.
  He served as chairman and trustee emeritus of The San Francisco 
Foundation; advisory board member of the Walter A. Haas School of 
Business at UC Berkeley; trustee of the UC Berkeley Foundation; trustee 
emeritus of The Brookings Institution; board member of the Committee on 
JOBS; member of the Board of Directors and Executive Committee of the 
Jewish Community Federation; chairman of the Jewish Community Endowment 
Fund; board member of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and the Bay 
Area Council; and chairman of Voice of Dance.
  Warren also led many efforts to support civic initiatives in San 
Francisco, from the underground parking garage that saved two major 
museums in Golden Gate Park to the broad-based campaign to reform San 
Francisco's city employee pension system.
  On behalf of the people of California, who have benefitted so much 
from Warren Hellman's great generosity and public sprit, I send my 
deepest gratitude and condolences to his wife, Patricia Christina 
``Chris'' Hellman; son Marco ``Mick'' Hellman; daughters Frances 
Hellman, Judith Hellman, and Patricia Hellman Gibbs; his sister, Nancy 
Hellman Bechtle; and his 12 grandchildren. Warren's passing is a great 
loss to his family, his friends, and the city he loved and served so 
well.

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