Why Should White Guys Have All the Fun? (47 page)

Lewis didn’t limit himself to checkbook philanthropy. Appropriating money is easy if one is so inclined: It’s more difficult to carve precious blocks of time out of a schedule already crammed full. Lewis would generally clear the decks without fail to take advantage of an opportunity to address African-American students. The practice paid an unexpected dividend: Lewis had such an inspirational effect on some of these students that they later sought him out in hopes they could work for him.

Robert Suggs, who would one day work for Lewis & Clarkson at 30 Broad Street, first encountered Lewis during a speech to black law students at Harvard Law School in 1972. Darryl Thompson, who became an executive with TLC Beatrice, met Lewis during a conference for black business students at Stanford University. “Hard work, discipline, being focused, and having your skill knitted together in terms of
what’s needed to get the job done are the keys to success,” Lewis told the enthralled Stanford audience. He didn’t mention the subject of race until a student asked what it was like to be the pre-eminent African-American businessman in the country.

“Colors and labels have a way of categorizing people and creating artificial constraints around people and the way they think about themselves,” he gently informed his questioner.

An institution Lewis had a big soft spot for was Harvard. He never forgot that Harvard had accepted him to the law school even though his application circumvented the traditional process, or that Harvard made money available for his expenses so he could concentrate exclusively on his studies. Also, Lewis appreciated the fact that at Harvard Law School he found that the professors and administrators were not patronizing or prejudiced.

One of his first charitable contributions was a $10 check Lewis wrote to Harvard in 1969 while he was a junior associate with Paul, Weiss in Manhattan.

During the late 1980s, Lewis came to Harvard Law School’s Ames Courtroom to give a talk on corporate takeovers. One of those taking in Lewis’s remarks was corporate law professor Robert Clark. “It was jam-packed,” Clark remembers. “I think it probably had the largest turnout of African-American students of any event that year. He loved it.”

A few years later, after Clark was made dean of the law school, he put the touch on Lewis for what was Lewis’s most impressive contribution: A $3-million commitment to Harvard Law School.

Lewis belonged to the Harvard Law School visiting committee tasked with planning the facility’s long-term future. “What I remembered most about him in those settings was that he kept urging us to take the big picture into account,” Clark says. “Take a global perspective, don’t neglect international studies, train your students to learn about international law, international business and tax. That’s where the future’s going to be,” Lewis used to tell the council constantly.

Three years later, The Reginald F. Lewis International Law Center would grace the law school’s campus following Lewis’s gift to the law school, but not before a lot of groundwork had been laid by Clark. One never gets a gift unless you ask, and usually more than once, laughs Clark, who, together with Dean for Development Scott Nichols, approached Lewis several times before finally succeeding in their quest. Their first talk took place in Manhattan at the Harvard Club in early 1991. “It went on for a few hours,” Clark recalls. “We went to some part of the Harvard Club and had a few drinks and just talked. Basically, he was trying to size me up. It went pretty well.”

So well, in fact, that Clark decided to make his pitch. He casually asked Lewis for a $5 million gift for Harvard’s law school. Lewis inhaled sharply, his eyes widened and he gave Clark a look reserved for fools and madmen. Then Lewis let loose a huge belly laugh at the sheer audacity of Clark’s request. “Boy, you’ve got a lot of nerve!” Lewis told Clark. Things were left at that, because Lewis wasn’t about to make a snap commitment for that kind of money. But by the time they met for the second time to discuss the donation, the size of Lewis’s gift was slowly starting to crystalize in his head.

“You know, I’m going to do something and it’s going to be big,” Lewis told Clark. “But I’ve got to figure it out.” Whatever he would decide on, Lewis was determined to get his money’s worth. He shared some opinions with Clark regarding what the law school should be emphasizing. He wanted to know what the school was doing in terms of international law and business law. He also asked a lot of questions about minority students. He wanted to know how many were applying, how many Harvard was accepting and how minority students were performing academically once admitted.

Lewis was also very curious about a well-publicized flap involving African-American law professor Derrick Bell, who was protesting Harvard Law School’s lack of minority professors. Lewis made it a point to call other black Harvard professors including Christopher Edley and see what their take on the situation was.

Clark and Lewis met next in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on June 14, 1991, during Harvard Law School’s campaign kickoff. A dinner was held in the massive law school reading room, which is larger than a football field. After dinner, speeches were made by some of those in attendance, including Lewis, who introduced Clark.

“This guy Clark, you meet him and you think: ‘Well, this is a bookish guy,” Lewis said, smiling. “He’s calm and scholarly and so forth, but then he can look you in the eye and ask you for more money than you’d ever think was possible,” Lewis said, pausing a second for the laughter to subside. “And he got to me,” Lewis said, to even louder laughs.

After a good deal of deliberation, in late 1991 Lewis arrived at a minimum financial figure he would feel comfortable donating. He was quite pleased to be able to tell Clark and he looked as though a load had been lifted from his shoulders. “It will be at least $1 million,” Lewis said. “I don’t know if I can get up to $5 million, but you can absolutely count on me for $1 million.” Lewis eventually decided on $3 million, to be paid in annual installments of $500,000. At the time, Lewis’s donation represented the largest gift ever made to Harvard by an individual donor.

Most of the money had been earmarked for international studies, with at least $500,000 to be dispensed in consultation with a committee chaired by Professor Edley, an African-American. In his letter bestowing the grant, Lewis wrote, “I am particularly hopeful that this gift will help the school continue to expand and accelerate its efforts in faculty diversity and other areas.” Lewis’s contribution was announced in July, 1992.

A good friend of Lewis’s from his Virginia State days, Carolyn Powell, was curious why Lewis would give a significant gift to already richly endowed Harvard, rather than a black college. “I mean, I was upset a couple of times,” Powell says. “Why did you give Harvard so much?” Lewis made her understand over time how much it meant to be able not only to give money to one of the nation’s premier institutions, but to give more than any man—black or white. Plus, Lewis felt that having a major campus building named after an African-American would have incalculable inspirational and motivational value on black students at Harvard.

Plus, in Lewis’s mind, Harvard was simply the best. Period.

Virginia State, Lewis undergraduate alma mater, received some money from him, too. Lewis had contributed roughly $80,000 to Virginia State, not including the $5,000 annual scholarship for the graduating math major with the highest grade point average.

In the last full year of Lewis’s life, his philanthropic work was becoming increasingly important to Lewis. Phyllis Schless, who was on
his acquisition team for McCall and Beatrice, had a lunch with him in the summer of 1992 that lasted about four and a half hours. The subject of philanthropy came up several times. “You know, I am really thinking about taking a year off and really getting involved with volunteerism,” Lewis told Schless. The business world, while still attractive and tremendously gratifying, had begun to lose a little of its luster for Lewis.

In the summer of 1992, he helped Harvard pin down another substantial gift. Several fundraisers for Harvard Law School were in Europe talking up alumni viewed as potential donors. The team stopped by to see Lewis at his office in Paris. Dean Robert Clark mentioned that it looked as though he and his colleagues were going to miss a flight to London, where a dinner with 10 ambassadors from Arab countries had been scheduled.

“What’s the meeting about?” Lewis asked. Told that the law school had plans for an Islamic legal studies center, he said, “Well, why don’t you ride in my corporate jet? I’d like to go to this dinner, too.” The Islamic ambassadors, who were from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, among other countries, were quite impressed that Lewis had accompanied the law school’s fund-raising team to the dinner. Harvard wound up receiving a seven-figure gift from King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, which was earmarked for the Islamic legal studies center.

In the last months of 1992, it looked as though a dear old friend of Lewis’s, Ben Chavis, might have a shot at becoming the executive director of the NAACP. Ever since their flight from New York to North Carolina to battle school desegregation, Chavis had an enthusiastic supporter in Reginald Lewis. He told Chavis he would do whatever he could to help.

According to Chavis, Lewis “made an unlimited commitment to help the NAACP” if Chavis were elected executive director. In January 1993, a few days before his death, Lewis dictated some thoughts on the matter to his wife. Lewis asked that a portion of his fortune go to charity, including $2 million for the NAACP. That pledge of $2 million was used to establish The Reginald F. Lewis Memorial Endowment, created with an objective of raising $100 million for the NAACP.

Lewis’s $2 million gift to the NAACP was announced in July 1993, and prompted a young black entrepreneur who had befriended Lewis to make a $1 million pledge to The Reginald F. Lewis Memorial
Endowment a few weeks later. Alphonse Fletcher, Jr., the 27-year-old CEO of Fletcher Capital Markets, viewed Lewis as a role model and mentor. Lewis first contacted Fletcher after he read in
The Wall Street Journal
that Fletcher had filed a discrimination lawsuit against Kidder Peabody. Fletcher charged that racial bias had affected his pay while he was managing an investment group for Kidder Peabody, and was awarded $1.26 million in arbitration. A Harvard graduate like Lewis, Fletcher met with Lewis a number of times.

When Ben Chavis announced Lewis’s $2 million gift during the NAACP’s annual convention, which was held in Indianapolis in 1993, Fletcher was in the audience. “I was sitting there thinking about what I could do to help others,” Fletcher told the
New York Times
after his $1 million pledge was announced. “This was an appropriate way to honor Reginald Lewis.”

Another organization Lewis donated money to was WNET-TV, Channel 13 in New York City. Lewis was on the board of the Public Broadcasting System station, after being invited to serve by the board chairman Henry Kravis, from whom Lewis bought TLC Beatrice. Lewis made a commitment of $250,000 to WNET.

“When he made that commitment, he called me up and we talked about it,” says George Miles, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of WNET. “We talked back and forth about what he should do, and what the other board members were averaging in their contributions. He wanted to make sure the gift was significant, but he also didn’t want to over-give.”

WNET sought out Lewis in hopes of getting him involved with the station. Lewis told Miles that the media—television in particular—have tremendous potential to make a positive difference in peoples’ lives. At WNET, Lewis espoused several issues near and dear to him: Health care, the state of the African-American community and entrepreneurship.

Miles recalls that Lewis’s first check for $50,000 arrived on January 20, 1993—the day after his death.

       
“I Am Not Afraid of Death”

The incredible demands of doing business and social activities on an international scale typically left Reginald Lewis feeling fatigued, but toward the middle of 1992 he felt more enervated than usual. As early as 1990, he had begun to tell close business associates like Kevin Wright, “You guys don’t know how tired I am.”

No wonder: On May 20, 1992, Lewis flew from Boston to London to meet with the Harvard Law School Association of the United Kingdom. On May 22, he flew from London to Paris to attend a VIP dinner. On May 25, he jetted back to London for another dinner. On May 26, Lewis flew back to Paris for a dinner at the French Senate. May 27 saw Lewis taking a train to Brussels for a VIP breakfast. The next day, May 28, Lewis flew to Turin, Italy, for a meeting with Giovanni Agnelli at the headquarters of automaker Fiat. On May 29 there was a flight from Rome to Istanbul, Turkey. Two days later, Lewis was on a plane headed for Boston to visit his daugher, Leslie, a freshman at Harvard.

In addition to his peripatetic lifestyle, Lewis routinely placed calls to the United States at 1 and 2 o’clock in the morning Paris time, in order to catch key U.S. executives at their homes in the evening. It was inevitable that his demon pace would catch up with a man a few months shy of 50.

In the past, Lewis could sit through lengthy meetings with no lapses in his impressive concentration and no need for breaks or interruptions. Now, he needed repeated rests just to get through a meeting an hour or two in length.

“I knew that he hadn’t been feeling well—a lot of us in the family knew that, but we didn’t know what it was,” Jean Fugett, Jr. says. “I had a great concern for his lifestyle and his travel. I asked him to slow down. He was really exhausted and worn down.”