Stuart Straus Sheftel

Stuart Straus Sheftel (Scheftel)

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/167080849/stuart_scheftel

Stuart Scheftel, a Manhattan businessman who was a politically active civic leader, died January 20, 1994, in New York Hospital. He was 83.

His brother, Herbert Scheftel, said he had apparently suffered a heart attack while they were having lunch.

Over the years Mr Scheftel engaged in a wide variety of occupations and avocations. He was a political candidate, television producer, real-estate developer, championship golfer and newspaper reporter.

He was a grandson of Isidor Straus, a co-owner of RH Macy & Company (now known as Macy's), who went down on the Titanic. At one time he also was a director of The New York Post. He was a founder of Young America magazine, a newsweekly for classrooms, in 1935 and he was Chairman of the Youth America board.

He and other investors were the financial backers of the construction of New York City's PanAm Building, now the MetLife Building.

In 1977, Mr Scheftel was appointed by New York Governor Hugh L Carey to be one of the 15 members of his administrations' Board of Higher Education, then the policy-making body for the City University system. He also was a past president of the Police Athletic League.

Mr Scheftel graduated from Oxford University, and on returning to the United States in 1931, worked as a subscription salesman, office clerk and, finally, reporter at The New York Times before he left to found Young America.

In politics, Mr Scheftel ran in 1942 as a Republican candidate for Congress in the old 14th Congressional District in Manhattan, and was an announced Liberal Party candidate for mayor in 1961. He lost the first race and withdrew from the second. In 1980, he resigned as a Liberal Party vice chairman in protest at the party's decision to endorse John B Anderson for President instead of President Jimmy Carter.

He is survived by his wife of 47 years, Geraldine Fitzgerald, the actress, of Manhattan; his brother Herbert, of Manhattan; a daughter, Susie Finkelstein of Manhattan; a stepson, Michael Lindsay-Hogg of London, and two grandchildren.