Billie Tisch, influential New York philanthropist, dies at 98

NEW YORK - Billie Tisch, the last of the original four family members whose philanthropic legacy endures in the prominent educational, cultural and medical institutions that bear their surname, as well as in their prodigious fundraising for Jewish social service agencies that have anonymously sustained countless New Yorkers, died on June 7 at her home in New York City. She was 98.

Her death was confirmed by her son Thomas Tisch.

Billie Tisch was the widow of Laurence A. Tisch. He and his brother, Preston Robert Tisch, became self-made billionaires by transforming a kosher hotel in Lakewood, New Jersey, into the bargain-hungry Loews Corp, a conglomerate that began as a movie theatre chain and now has investments in hotels, drilling, natural gas pipelines, insurance and packaging.

Forbes magazine has estimated the family’s fortune at US$10 billion (S$13 billion).

Since the death of her sister-in-law, Joan Tisch, in 2017, Billie Tisch had become, in effect, the matriarch of the family. Laurence Tisch died in 2003; his brother, in 2005.

Billie Tisch would consult her husband regularly about professional matters, but she set her own agenda as a gracious, no-nonsense presence in the world of philanthropy.

She was the first woman to be elected president of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies (now UJA-Federation of New York), an umbrella group that helps the poor and elderly, subsidises childcare agencies and health programmes, and sustains Jewish cultural programmes, mostly in New York and in Israel, through affiliated agencies. She served from 1980 to 1983.

Tisch was also chair of the WNYC Foundation, which supports New York Public Radio, and vice chair of United Way of New York City.

When her husband turned 70, she replaced him on the board of the Carnegie Corporation of New York – the first wife to do so, she said, since the formidable Louise Whitfield Carnegie succeeded Andrew Carnegie, the corporation’s founder.

In 1992, she and Yale professor James Comer issued a Carnegie Corp report on youth development and community organisations.

Billie and Laurence Tisch made major donations to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Wildlife Conservation Society, New York University (where the arts school is named for them) and the New York University Medical Center (now known as NYU Langone Health), and created the Tisch Children’s Zoo in Central Park with a US$4.5 million gift in 1997.

While Laurence Tisch was chair of NYU’s board of trustees and both brothers were intimately involved in the university and the medical centre, it was their wives “who solidified the family’s legacy and had a major influence on NYU Langone philanthropy,” William A. Haseltine wrote in World Class: A Story of Adversity, Transformation and Success at NYU Langone Health (2019).

Wilma Zelda Stein – even her childhood friends called her Billie – was born June 25, 1927, in Long Branch, New Jersey, and raised in Asbury Park.

Her father, Joseph Stein, who descended from Jewish immigrants from Germany, was a graduate of Columbia University’s journalism school.

When he married, he joined his father and brother-in-law in a car dealership in New Jersey.

Her mother, Rose Liebesman Stein, the daughter of Jewish immigrants from Lithuania, became a bookkeeper at the dealership. During the Depression, the family members took in boarders to supplement their income.

Billie attended Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, where she was the first Jewish student to hold the second-highest office in student government. She graduated in 1948 with a bachelor’s degree in economics.

She was working as a business trainee at Time Inc when she met Laurence Tisch on a blind date. After a four-month whirlwind courtship, they married in the fall of 1948; she gave birth to four sons in five years.

“That’s the sort of thing you did in those days,” she told The New York Times in 1981.

Laurence Tisch and his brother formed a personal and professional partnership that endured for decades, with the exception of his solo foray as chief executive of CBS, to help the company fend off hostile takeovers.

The brothers and their wives were so close that they agreed to eliminate any source of disagreement. When they rented a house together early on in their relationship, “our only disagreement was that we liked our leg of lamb rare,” Billie Tisch recalled, “so we never made lamb.”

In addition to her son Thomas, the managing partner of an investment firm and former chancellor of Brown University, she is survived by three other sons: Andrew, the former co-chair of Loews; James, the company’s current chair; and Daniel, the manager of a family investment fund; as well as 14 grandchildren, including Jessica Tisch, commissioner of the New York Police Department; and 15 great-grandchildren. She was predeceased by a sister, Myra Cohn.

In 1962, she became a trustee of Blythedale Children’s Hospital in Valhalla, New York, and later, as a member of the distribution committee of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies, was instrumental in obtaining its support for Blythedale. In 1975, she was named chair of the committee.

Not long after she was elected president of the federation, she lamented the decline in volunteerism, which she attributed to the influence of the women’s movement and its philosophy that women should be paid for any work they do.

“I believe that what one does with one’s free time is an expression of one’s deepest convictions,” she told the Times in 1981, “and I think women make a big mistake when they deny themselves this form of expression.” NYTIMES