[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 1]
[Senate]
[Page 817]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       REMEMBERING EVELYN LAUDER

 Mr. LAUTENBERG. Madam President, late last year we lost Evelyn 
H. Lauder, a business leader, women's health advocate, refugee of 
nazism--and a friend.
  Evelyn was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1936, the only daughter of 
Ernest and Mimi Hausner. Two years later, after Nazi troops invaded 
Austria, the Hausners fled to England, where Evelyn's mother was sent 
to an internment camp on the Isle of Man.
  In 1940, after Mrs. Hausner's release, the family sailed to the 
United States. They settled in New York, where Evelyn attended public 
schools and Hunter College. She then married Leonard Lauder; had two 
sons, William and Gary; and for a while worked as a schoolteacher in 
New York.
  When Evelyn's mother-in-law Estee Lauder invited her to join the 
family's cosmetics company in 1959, it was a small business with a 
handful of employees. Evelyn helped build it into an empire. She 
created the Clinique brand and held a number of positions at the 
company, including senior corporate vice president. Today, the Estee 
Lauder Companies employ more than 32,000 people around the world.
  Although Evelyn was a talented businesswoman, she arguably made her 
biggest impact outside the business world. In 1989, Evelyn was 
diagnosed with breast cancer. Instead of allowing her illness to be a 
setback, Evelyn made it a cause. She helped create the pink ribbon 
campaign to raise awareness of breast cancer and also founded the 
Breast Cancer Research Foundation, which has raised more than $350 
million and supports more than 180 scientists based in 13 countries. 
The Breast Center at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center bears 
her name.
  In a New York Times profile in 1995, Evelyn stated, ``I feel it's 
important to make a mark somewhere.''
  Madam President, I believe Evelyn achieved this goal. Her leadership 
in business and philanthropy, along with her passionate advocacy for 
women's health issues, is virtually unmatched. We are thankful for her 
and the enduring legacy she left us.
  I ask to have printed in the Record a copy of the obituary the New 
York Times published at the time of her passing.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From The New York Times, Nov. 12, 2011]

    Evelyn H. Lauder, Champion of Breast Cancer Research, Dies at 75

                            (By Cathy Horyn)

       Evelyn H. Lauder, a refugee of Nazi-occupied Europe who 
     married into an illustrious family in the beauty business and 
     became an ardent advocate for breast cancer awareness, 
     raising millions for research, died on Saturday at her home 
     in Manhattan. She was 75.
       The cause was nongenetic ovarian cancer said Alexandra 
     Trower, a spokeswoman for the Estee Lauder Companies.
       As the wife of Leonard A. Lauder, the chairman emeritus of 
     the Estee Lauder Companies, and as the daughter-in-law of the 
     company's formidable matriarch, Estee Lauder, Evelyn Lauder 
     had to establish her own place in a family as complex as it 
     was competitive.
       Mrs. Lauder frequently told the story of how, early in her 
     marriage, she returned to the couple's apartment to find that 
     Estee had rearranged the furniture more to her liking. When 
     Evelyn and Leonard were dating--it was only their second 
     date--Estee implored her to stay and be the hostess for a 
     birthday party she was giving her son.
       ``So I stayed,'' Mrs. Lauder said in an interview in 2008. 
     ``What could I do? She was like a steamroller.''
       Yet it was clear that Estee was crazy about the young 
     woman, and soon after Evelyn's marriage, in 1959, she joined 
     the family cosmetics company, then a small enterprise, 
     pitching in wherever she was needed.
       ``I was very strong,'' she said. ``Having had a childhood 
     like the one I had, I was much more tough than a lot of 
     people. I was one of the few people who spoke my mind to 
     Estee.''
       Mrs. Lauder learned she had breast cancer in 1989 and soon 
     became a strong voice on behalf of women's health, though she 
     was always reluctant to discuss her own condition. ``My 
     situation doesn't really matter,'' she told a reporter in 
     1995.
       She was a creator of the Pink Ribbon campaign, a worldwide 
     symbol of breast health, and in 1993 she founded the Breast 
     Cancer Research Foundation, which has raised more than $350 
     million.
       In 2007 she received a diagnosis of ovarian cancer, which 
     developed independently of her breast cancer, Ms. Trower 
     said.
       Evelyn Hausner was born on Aug. 12, 1936, in Vienna, the 
     only child of Ernest and Mimi Hausner. Her father, a dapper 
     man who lived in Poland and Berlin before marrying the 
     daughter of a Viennese lumber supplier, owned a lingerie 
     shop. In 1938, with Hitler's annexation of Austria, the 
     family left Vienna, taking a few belongings, including 
     household silver, which Ernest Hausner used to obtain visas 
     to Belgium.
       The family eventually reached England, where Evelyn's 
     mother was immediately sent to an internment camp on the Isle 
     of Man. ``The separation was very traumatic for me,'' Mrs. 
     Lauder said. Her father placed her in a nursery until her 
     mother could be released and he could raise money. In 1940, 
     the family set sail for New York, where her father worked as 
     a diamond cutter during the war.
       In 1947, he and his wife bought a dress shop in Manhattan 
     called Lamay. Over time they expanded it to a chain of five 
     shops.
       Mrs. Lauder grew up on West 86th Street and attended Public 
     School 9. During her freshman year at Hunter College, she met 
     Leonard Lauder on a blind date. Already graduated from 
     college and training to be a naval officer, Mr. Lauder had 
     grown up on West 76th Street, though in a sense it was a 
     world apart. ``He was the first person who took me out to 
     dinner in a restaurant,'' she recalled. They married four 
     years later at the Plaza Hotel.
       Though always at home by 4 p.m. when her two children were 
     little, Mrs. Lauder said she never considered being a stay-
     at-home mom, in spite of the family's growing wealth. ``I 
     couldn't bear it,'' she said. ``I grew up with a working 
     mother.'' Mrs. Lauder was also a public school teacher for 
     several years.
       She held many roles at Estee Lauder, including creator of 
     training programs and director of new products and marketing. 
     In 1989, the year of her breast cancer diagnosis, she became 
     the senior corporate vice president and head of fragrance 
     development worldwide.
       Mrs. Lauder is survived by her husband; her sons, William 
     and Gary; and five grandchildren.
       Though Mrs. Lauder, an avid photographer, had a home in 
     Colorado and a penthouse on Fifth Avenue lined with modern 
     art, she and her husband liked to retreat to a plain cabin in 
     Putnam County, N.Y., where Mrs. Lauder might serve guests 
     German food she had prepared.
       Asked once how she felt about working with her husband in 
     the early days, she replied, ``Working with Leonard was a 
     riot.'' Indeed, she joked that he had such a sense of 
     business, without family favoritism, that getting an 
     appointment with him was sometimes tough. ``It would take me 
     much longer to get a date with him,'' she said, ``than 
     someone who didn't have his name.''

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