Marguerite Brooks and Gerry Lenfest married in July 1955 and were partners in both business and life. In addition to Marguerite, Gerry is survived by their three children-Diane Lenfest Myer, H. Chase Lenfest, and Brook J. Lenfest-and four grandchildren.
As successful a businessman as Harold FitzGerald Lenfest proved to be, he was even more impressive as a philanthropist and humanitarian. Gerry Lenfest, age 88, passed away in Philadelphia on 5 August 2018.
After receiving $1.2 billion from the sale of the family cable company to Comcast in 2000, Lenfest and his wife, Marguerite, set out to give away their fortune. (It recently was estimated they have distributed more than $1.3 billion to nonprofits.) The focus was their beloved Philadelphia area, where countless youth programs, schools, museums, and environmental, cultural, medical, and journalism projects benefited from their generosity. Fortunately, they also made some notable exceptions beyond Pennsylvania.
A former naval officer who served 24 years in the Naval Reserve, Gerry was introduced to the Naval Institute in 2007 by former Institute director Edward Miller. He became a life member and was a major supporter to the end. In all, the Lenfests contributed more than $1.2 million to the Naval Institute Foundation, most notably for book subventions that enabled the Naval Institute Press to publish worthy scholarly manuscripts that might not otherwise have been possible and for The Proceedings Trust, to sustain and strengthen our flagship journal.
Gerry and his twin sister, Marie, were born in Jacksonville, Florida, in May 1930 and raised in Scarsdale, New York, and Lambertville, New Jersey. His father was a naval architect; his mother, who died when her twins were 13, was a cousin of the actor Jimmy Stewart.
Gerry earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Washington and Lee University in 1953 through the Naval Reserve Officer Candidate program. He spent most of his active-duty service as the combat information center (CIC) officer on the USS Holder (DDE-819) out of Norfolk. In 1955, he transferred to the Naval Reserve and began law school at Columbia University, receiving his degree in 1958.
After working as a trust and estate lawyer, Gerry became associate general counsel of Triangle Publications, then managing director of Triangle’s Seventeen magazine and cable television properties. In 1974, he struck out on his own, forming Lenfest Communications and buying a small cable system from Triangle. He grew Suburban Cable from 7,600 subscribers to 1.3 million by 2000.
In the November 2010 Proceedings, Gerry recounted how his naval service influenced his business pursuits:
It instilled in me the values and the ethic on which I’ve relied all these years. For one thing, the Navy gave me—and many other junior officers—a tremendous amount of responsibility. As OOD during night operations, I had the lives of more than 300 officers and sailors in my hands. If I’d taken a wrong turn, I could have gotten us into a collision. You mature rapidly in such an assignment.
It also showed me the lessons of leadership—something I might not have learned had I started out in a civilian job. And it showed me how to get along with people from widely different backgrounds. Few civilian jobs provide those kinds of opportunities so early in the game.
Following Navy practice, I continually tried during my civilian career to learn enough about each of the challenges my top corporate officers faced that I could ask intelligent questions without looking as though I was trying to micromanage their divisions.
I made clear I valued integrity above all, just as the Navy does. And I rewarded good performance with a public “well done.”
Staying in the Reserve never brought me much monetary return, but it provided some rewarding experiences in other ways. In 1965, I was given command of the USS Coates (DE-685), a destroyer escort based in New Haven, Connecticut, that had been used for training reservists. The Coates was the lowest-ranking ship in the squadron when I reported on board. . . . Two years later, we won the USS England trophy as the highest-rated Naval Reserve destroyer escort in the Atlantic, and our commodore wryly dubbed us “a rising star in the east.”
The reason we did so well was that the crew became highly motivated and felt that the ship belonged to them. I learned to step away and let them do their jobs and to give recognition when it was due. To me, that’s the real link between the military’s way of doing things that works in the civilian world: the common thread is motivation and respect for your shipmates and fellow workers.