June 26, 2013

FINEST HOUR 132, AUTUMN 2006

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In 1940 Winston Churchill said of Neville Chamberlain: “He had a physical and moral toughness of fibre which enabled him all through his varied career to endure disappointment without being unduly discouraged or wearied. He had a precision of mind and an aptitude for business which raised him far above the ordinary levels of our generation. He had a firmness of spirit which was not often elated by success, seldom downcast by failure, and never swayed by panic.”

The same can be said of Richard Fisher, an avid Churchillian, a passionate Churchilliana collector, a generous friend of The Churchill Centre and the Churchill Museum in London.

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One of New York’s most avid boosters and contributors, Richard led the strategic growth of Fisher Brothers for almost two decades. The firm created by his father and uncles is synonymous with New York City real estate. They, together with Richard, his cousin and brother, shaped the midtown landscape, and today the family owns approximately six million square feet of office space in New York and Washington.

With an adventurous spirit and a keen mind,Richard led the family’s expansion into the hotel business, corporate acquisitions, the creation of a New York City real estate fund, and with his brother Tony, and the formation of a private equity investment partnership, FdG Associates. He named many of his business entities “Chartwell,” including his own Churchill-based bookshop in Manhattan.

New York was left the better from his extensive philanthropic activities. He was a trustee of Lincoln Center, chairman of its Real Estate and Construction Council’s Journal, and a board member of Strategic Hotels & Resorts. He taught at NYU, was a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania, sat on Penn’s Board of Overseers for Arts and Sciences, and was responsible for locating the New York Penn Club to its own building on 44th Street.

Carrying on the extraordinary tradition of the Fisher family, Richard was on the boards of the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, Fisher House Foundation and the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund—a series of efforts committed to assisting the families of America’s armed forces.

He and his wife Kristen joined the first mission of Americans to Iraq in June 2003 to support the young men and women who had volunteered to serve.

Richard’s other philanthropic interests included the UJA Federation, New York State Troopers PBA, and the boards of the Animal Medical Center in New York City.

Richard is survived by his wife Kristen; his children Hadley, Winston and his wife Jessica, and Alexandra; his mother, Emily Fisher Landau and her husband Sheldon; and his brother Lester and sisters Candia and Irma.

This recitation of his myriad accomplishments speaks of an incredibly accomplished and a very good man, one who was generous financially but even more generous intellectually and in spirit. But it was the past two plus years which defined Richard as a great man.

When told of his terminal illness, he determined to live every day large. With passion and commitment he developed and executed plans for his death, and his family and his business with zest, verve, optimism, energy, and a joy that lifted the spirits and souls of all those around him. In his own typical fashion, his numbered days by far exceeded those after which even the most optimistic members of the medical profession had speculated.

Richard was a mentor and a colleague. He was my friend and I shall mourn his death but celebrate his life. No words of mine can be as eloquent as those of Winston Churchill, writing in Great Contemporaries of his friend and colleague Arthur Balfour:

“I saw with grief the approaching departure, and—for all human purposes—extinction, of a being high uplifted above the common run. As I observed him regarding with calm, firm and cheerful gaze the approach of Death, I felt how foolish the Stoics were to make such a fuss about an event so natural and indispensable to mankind. But I felt also the tragedy which robs the world of all the wisdom and treasure gathered in a great man’s life and experience and hands the lamp to some impetuous and untutored stripling or lets its fall shivered into fragments upon the ground.”

Richard L. Fisher was, and will remain forever, a great Churchillian. —Laurence S. Geller, Co-chairman, Churchill Centre Board of Trustees