Appreciation

By Norman Pearlstine Sunday, July 13, 2003
    • You couldn't miss Andrew Heiskell. At 6 ft. 5 1/2 in., he was usually the tallest man in the room. His easy bearing almost made you forget it, in the same way he could almost make you forget that he was a towering figure of 20th century journalism. In a career of 43 years at what was then Time Inc., he rose to chairman and CEO of a company that makes a profound and intricate product: journalism. As both a businessman and a journalist, he had an abiding passion that his company should produce to the highest standards.

    Born to American parents in Naples, Italy, and educated in Europe and at Harvard Business School, Heiskell found himself at LIFE in 1937, six months after it had been established by Henry Luce. Heiskell reported on some of the great stories of his day, including the fall of France. When he moved to the publishing side of that magazine and then sprinted to the top at Time Inc., he knew what frontline journalism was. Under him, Luce's company flourished. Heiskell gave the green light for MONEY and pushed for the founding of PEOPLE, one of publishing's great success stories.

    For him the success that mattered most was the kind you returned to the wider world. After he stepped down as CEO in 1980, he dedicated himself to what he called the "nonprofit world": building low-income housing at the Enterprise Foundation; serving on Harvard University's managing council; and, most famously, chairing the New York Public Library, which he helped bring back from financial ruin, along the way restoring Bryant Park, the jewel of greenery behind the library's main building in midtown Manhattan. In his private life, his third marriage, to Marian Sulzberger Dryfoos, of the family that has published the New York Times since 1896, was a true marriage of spirits.

    At this company we have an award in his name for employees who have dedicated themselves to public service. When he died last week at 87, I realized that I was wrong about him. It was not true that you couldn't miss Andrew Heiskell. You could miss him badly.