Preston Robert Tisch

Preston Robert "Bob" Tisch (April 29, 1926 – November 15, 2005) was an American businessman^[1] who was the chairman and—along with his brother Laurence Tisch—was part owner of the Loews Corporation. From 1991 until his death, Tisch owned 50% of the New York Giants football team and shared ownership of the team with Wellington Mara.

Biography

Tisch was born in 1926 in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn, the son of Sadye and Al Tisch. Tisch received a BA degree in economics from the University of Michigan in 1948, and his wife Joan Tisch and his daughter also received degrees at the university. While in college Tisch was a member of Sigma Alpha Mu, a Jewish fraternity.^[2]

On August 16, 1986, he was appointed Postmaster General of the United States Postal Service, serving until March 1988. In 1991, Tisch bought a half-stake in the New York Football Giants from Wellington Mara's nephew Tim, who had inherited the share from his father and Wellington's brother Jack upon his death and who was suffering from Hodgkin's lymphoma, which would eventually claim his life. Tisch held the share until he died on November 15, 2005 from brain cancer; Tisch's death followed Mara's death by three weeks. His share of the Giants passed to his son Steve, who co-owns the team with Mara's son John.

Philanthropy

Tisch Hall at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor)

Tisch made substantial donations to his alma maters, leading to these institutions naming buildings and a school after him. Tisch Hall, on the University of Michigan central campus, houses that university's history department. New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and NYU Medical Center's Tisch Hospital are named after Laurence A. and Preston Robert Tisch. NYU's Preston Robert Tisch Center for Hospitality, Tourism, and Sports Management was founded in 1995 and expanded in 1999^[3] to meet the needs of a growing student population. In 1997, the Central Park Zoo opened the Tisch Children's Zoo. Given two months to live by his New York doctors, Tisch lived for 14 more months under care at Duke University's Medical Center. In recognition of their efforts, the Tisch family donated $10 million to the Duke Brain Tumor Center which was renamed the Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center in October 2005. The Tisch Building in New York City which is the headquarters of the Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC) is named for him and his wife, who is on the GMHC Board of Directors, after they donated $3.5 million for it in March 1997.^[4]

Personal life

In 1948, he married Joan Hyman. They had three children:

• Steve Tisch is a producer who lives in Beverly Hills. He is the only Tisch child to leave the New York area and serves as the family’s point man in their shared ownership of the New York Giants.
• Jonathan Tisch is the public face of the hotel division of Loews Corporation. In 1988, he married Laura Steinberg, the daughter of financier and insurance executive Saul Steinberg, at the Central Synagogue in Manhattan.^[5] They later divorced. In 2007, he married Lizzie Rudnick.^[6] Jonathan is also an active Democratic Party fund-raiser.
• Laurie Tisch sits on the board of the Whitney and the Children's Museum of Manhattan and is chairwoman of the Center for Arts Education, a nonprofit group that works to improve arts education in the public schools. She is divorced from Donald Sussman, the founder of Paloma Partners, a hedge fund in Greenwich, Connecticut with $1.5B under management.^[7][8][9] She founded the not-for-profit foundation, the Illumination Fund, dedicated to serving the children of New York City with an emphasis on arts education.^[10]

References

External links

• Preston Robert Tisch at Find a Grave

United States Postmasters General Confederal Franklin Bache Hazard Federal Osgood Pickering Habersham G. Granger Meigs McLean Cabinet level Post Office Department Barry Kendall Niles F. Granger Wickliffe Johnson Collamer Hall Hubbard Campbell A. Brown Holt King Blair Dennison Randall Creswell Marshall Jewell Tyner Key Maynard James Howe Gresham Hatton Vilas Dickinson Wanamaker Bissell Wilson Gary Smith Payne Wynne Cortelyou Meyer Hitchcock Burleson Hays Work New W. Brown Farley Walker Hannegan Donaldson Summerfield Day Gronouski O'Brien Watson Blount U.S. Postal Service Blount Klassen Bailar Bolger Carlin Casey Tisch Frank Runyon Henderson Potter Donahoe Brennan