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| Affiliation | Republican |
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| Name | Lewis E. Lehrman |
| Address |
New York, New York , United States |
| Email | None |
| Website | http://www.lew82.com |
| Born |
August 15, 1938
(85 years)
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| Contributor | nystate63 |
| Last Modifed | nystate63
Oct 13, 2004 12:23am |
| Tags |
Jewish - Judaism -
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| Info | Prepared by Lewis Lehrman in late 1981 for his 1982 campaign for Governor of New York State.
I was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on August 15, 1938, ten minutes before my twin brother, Gil. Ours was the third birth of Rose Lehrman. I have two sisters: Lois, the oldest of the four of us, and a younger sister, Barbara. My father, Benjamin, and grandfather, Louis, started the family grocery business.
I graduated from Yale College in 1960 with my primary interest being history. Even though he died when I was seven, Franklin D. Roosevelt had a strong influence on me. My social attitudes were influenced by the effect Roosevelt had upon my family. We were Republicans, but were much impressed by him as a leader.
But the most striking President for my generation was Jack Kennedy. You had to be 21 years old, as I was, to know the effect JFK had on the whole country in 1960, especially on the younger people.
Jack Kennedy gave us a sense of excellence and honor about public service. Though I did not agree with some of his views, and have been disappointed to learn some facts about his life and career, he inspired us. I was not then as partisan as I am now. My attitude toward politics was much determined by my study of history. I preferred men and women who intended to do great things. I was not as certain about ideas as I was of the character of the statesmen who interested me.
Without being particularly self-conscious about it, competitive capitalism and traditional American values appealed to me. Because my family was a commercial family, I had grown up with and respected commercial values: hard work, thrift, competition and success. But my historical imagination also caused me to identify with the tradition of Lincoln, civil liberties, and equal opportunity.
"I studied some economics at Yale, but it was uninspiring. In contrast to history, it seemed arid. In my senior year at Yale, I wound up near the top of those majoring in history. As a result I qualified in competition for the Carnegie Teaching Fellowship. Because I won the fellowship, I was appointed to the Yale Faculty after graduation, as an assistant instructor in history.
Though I did not know him well, Professor George Wilson Pierson, the great de Tocqueville scholar, persuaded me to teach at Yale rather than go on to something like law school, or business school, or right away into the family business. After I finished my Carnegie Teaching Fellowship, I competed for and won a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship to Harvard. There, I earned my master's degree in history, but it was also at Harvard that I began to question my desire to enter the world of teaching and scholarship.
Until my 22nd year, my most interesting job was as a substitute grocery salesman for my brother-in-law, Alex Grass, who later opened the first Rite Aid store for the family business. Work was something I was taught to respect, and I did. Ever since I was twelve, I had worked many holidays for my Dad and my Grandpa in the family business. I started out by working Christmas vacations and summers. I worked several summers, even through my college years. After graduation I struggled to decide between a career of scholarship and teaching on the one hand, and business on the other.
Mother believed I was made for both business and scholarship. But she sensed and encouraged my move toward business. I spent a term at Princeton during the spring of '63. During the summer of that year, I worked for the family business, looking for Rite Aid store sites. Then I joined the Army. They had a six-year program - six months active duty, the rest in the reserves. I went to boot camp at Fort Knox in the fall of '63. For five and a half years thereafter, I went almost every month to a weekend of ready reserve duty, and then two weeks to Army camp during the summer.
In the spring of 1964, I was in the family business full time. At that time, Dad was the formal head of the family business, but my brother-in-law, Alex Grass, played the key operational role. Alex was about 11 years older than I, and I'd worked with him since I was a kid. He married my sister when I was about twelve. When I got my license to drive at 16, I substituted on Alex's grocery route. I used to take great pride when I could sell more corn and peas than he could, which was not very often.
"The family business had been a grocery business until the late 1950's. At that point we took on some non-food lines like health and beauty aids. That was Alex's decision. Diversification had already begun before I joined the company full time. In '61 and '62 we noticed discount drug stores opening up on Main Streets. We didn't invent the idea for discount drug stores; we observed that other people were doing it, and we studied them. Alex believed it was a natural road of expansion for us. In September 1962, Alex and Dave Sommer pushed ahead and opened the first Rite Aid.
"By the end of 1964, we had opened about twelve Rite Aid stores. By that time, these little stores were doing more business and making more money than the original grocery business. As a result we decided to go all out.
"We located our first store site in New York State during the summer of 1963. I was looking for locations with Alex; he and I used to drive around together. He had started our first store in Scranton, Pennsylvania; and Binghamton is only about an hour north of there. So, one day Alex sent me up to Binghamton, and there I found a real estate man by the name of George Ealy. We walked around the streets, and he showed me a storefront at 37 Court Street, the United Shirt Shop. I thought it was a good location, and we leased it. It became our sixth Rite Aid Store. At that time, New York was the biggest state and the richest state. We knew if we were really going to build a big business, we had to go to New York State. Because of the economic climate today New York State does not loom so large and impressive as it did then. But in 1963, New York was almost as big as Canada. Why bother with Canada when New York State was just as big?
It was at this time in Rite Aid's history, 1964, that I met my wife, Louise. I was in New York City for a visit, and stopped to see Louise's brothers, both of whom were friends of mine at Yale. Louise had grown up in New York City. I stopped by for a meal, and two years later Louise and I were married. It was in 1969 that we decided we wanted to raise our family in New York. Today, we have five children, four boys and a girl.
In 1972 I founded the Lehrman Institute. I had developed the idea when I was in graduate school. I felt that universities were less and less related to the workaday world. I felt that universities did not draw into them working menand women. They were apart and separated. The 'ivory tower' metaphor was in fact correct. I felt that we should have an institution for learning and for the study of public policy firmly planted in the commercial world - where lawyers and doctors and journalists and businessmen could continue to study.
By 1972, I'd made some money. I took a lot of it and created the Institute I had in mind 10 years before. That is how the Lehrman Institute came to be. I put it together with my friend Nick Rizopoulos who had been an assistant professor of diplomatic history at Yale.
In 1977, I resigned as President of Rite Aid in September and became Chairman of the Executive Committee. I resigned all my Rite-Aid positions in January of 1982 so I could devote full time to running for Governor.
I'm running for Governor because over the years I've watched public life deteriorate. Honor and excellence and hope for a better future should be the hallmark of government institutions. I see that our public institutions no longer work effectively. I don't believe it has to be that way. My goal is to get New York State moving again. And I believe the time is now. I think I've equipped myself to do this.
I also have a burning desire to show that our courts can work, our streets can be safe, that the fundamental equation of justice can be restored. I believe our neighborhoods do not have to be terrorized by crime, and that economic growth in New York is not an idea of the past but a vision of the future. Pessimism really pervades all of New York's public policies; fear and trembling characterize many neighborhoods in New York City.
And that's not what the American Dream is all about.
I intend to be Governor of all New Yorkers. My goal is to help rebuild the economy of the State, to get New York State growing again, and to restore its institutions of public safety.
New York State is the greatest of the fifty states. It is time to restore New York to preeminence.
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