William Sperry Beinecke

In memoriam: William S. Beinecke ’36, supported life and learning at Yale

April 9, 2018

William Sperry Beinecke ’36, ’71 M.A.H., ’86 LL.D.H., one of Yale’s most passionate and loyal benefactors, passed away peacefully on April 8. He was 103 years old.

“Today we mourn the loss of Bill Beinecke, a phenomenal individual and a Yalie of magnificent vision and insight,” said President Peter Salovey. “An exemplar of the Yale tradition of learning, integrity, and service, Bill was a joy to know. With unflagging curiosity and keen wit, he believed in the power of knowledge and understanding to improve the world — and to make life meaningful, fun, and worth living. That was the basis of his deep and abiding commitment to this university. While we celebrate Bill’s wonderful life, we know Yale has a lost an incomparable friend.”

Beinecke’s outstanding generosity touched nearly every aspect of life and learning at Yale. Following a bequest from the estate of his father, Frederick W. Beinecke, Sheffield Class of 1909, William Beinecke helped spearhead efforts to establish a business school at Yale. Thanks to his vision and efforts, the School of Organization and Management (now the School of Management) welcomed its first class in 1976. The William and Elizabeth Beinecke Terrace Room in the new Evans Hall reflects the family’s continuing support of SOM. Inspired by an interest in the civil rights movement, Beinecke created scholarships at the Yale Law School to support diverse students in the 1960s. With nine endowed professorships, the Beinecke family supports eminent faculty and their research and teaching across several disciplines. An avid golfer from childhood, Beinecke was the principal benefactor of Yale’s golf course.

As a leader and volunteer, Beinecke served the university for many decades. He served as a successor trustee of the Yale Corporation, Yale’s board of trustees, from 1971 to 1982. He also served as founding chairman of the Sterling Fellows, as a member of the School of Management Advisory Board, and as a member of the Association of Yale Alumni Board of Governors. In 2000, he was awarded the Yale Medal for his exemplary service to the university.

One of many Yale alumni in his family, Beinecke continued a legacy of giving back to the university. His father and two uncles — all Yale graduates — created the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale, which opened to the public in 1963 and remains the most visible manifestation of the family’s extraordinary philanthropy.

After receiving his law degree from Columbia University, Beinecke enlisted in the U.S. Navy during World War II, earning a Bronze Star with Combat V. He left the service with the rank of lieutenant commander. From 1952 to 1960, he served as general counsel, vice-president, and president of the Sperry & Hutchinson Company, and as chairman and chief executive officer from 1962 until his retirement in 1980. The company, founded by his great-uncle, was best known for its famed S&H Green Stamps, one of the first consumer loyalty programs.

In addition to Yale, Beinecke supported numerous educational, environmental, and other philanthropic causes during his lifetime. After his retirement in 1980, he helped found the Central Park Conservancy and served as its inaugural chairman. He also served on the boards of the Hudson River Foundation for Science and Environmental Research, the New York Botanical Gardens, and the American Museum of Natural History.

Beinecke’s wife Elizabeth (Betty) passed away in 2009 after nearly 70 years of marriage. He is survived by his children, Rick Beinecke ’66, John Beinecke ’69, Frances Beinecke ’71, ’74 FES, and Sarah Beinecke Richardson (a graduate of Brown University), as well as grandchildren, nieces, and nephews, many of whom are Yale graduates.

When William S. Beinecke and his wife, Betty, moved to the Upper East Side of Manhattan in 1979, they were shocked by the dilapidated state of Central Park. Far from the emerald jewel that Mr. Beinecke recalled from childhood visits to his grandparents’ New York apartment, the park had become strewn with litter, its buildings covered with graffiti, its gardens full of weeds and its benches broken and rusting.

“It bothered us to see the park in such a state of disrepair and decay,” Mr. Beinecke wrote in a memoir years later, “but we weren’t sure what to do about it.”

They didn’t wait long to find out. In the spring of 1980, the Beineckes stopped by the city’s Parks Department to ask how they could help. Unbeknown to them, the parks commissioner at the time, Gordon J. Davis, and a colleague were establishing a partnership to support the park. They had the support of Mayor Edward I. Koch but had struck out recruiting a chairman who could tap into the city’s business community. Mr. Beinecke, newly retired from a successful corporate career, was the ideal candidate.

“He literally just walked in the door,” Mr. Davis recalled.

Mr. Beinecke (pronounced BUY-neh-key) agreed to serve as the first chairman of what became the Central Park Conservancy, and quickly recruited to the board many of the same corporate leaders who had previously turned Mr. Davis down. The conservancy is widely credited with helping to revitalize the park, and has served as a model for similar public-private partnerships across the country.

Mr. Beinecke lived in New Jersey for much of his life — he grew up in Cranford and raised his family in Summit — but he had a lifelong connection to New York. His paternal grandfather, Bernhard Beinecke, was a German immigrant and entrepreneur who built the Plaza Hotel, at the southeast corner of Central Park. Mr. Beinecke wrote that one of his earliest memories was of watching from his family’s 12th-floor suite at the Plaza as returning veterans from World War I paraded up Fifth Avenue.

His professional life likewise had a family connection. Mr. Beinecke spent his career at the Sperry & Hutchinson Company, which his maternal grandfather, William Sperry Miller, founded with a partner in 1896. The company became well-known for its Green Stamps, which customers earned by shopping at participating gasoline stations and grocery stores and could trade in for rewards.

S & H, as the company was known, benefited greatly from the rise of the suburban middle class after World War II. Mr. Beinecke, who served as the company’s chairman and chief executive in the 1960s and ′70s, took the company public in 1966 and diversified its holdings into furniture and other businesses.

Mr. Beinecke saw his business and philanthropic endeavors as sharing a common purpose, and embraced the idea of corporate social responsibility long before that phrase became fashionable. That impulse led him to wage a decades-long campaign to persuade Yale University to create a business school, which he saw as a way for the university to engage with — and help shape — the rise of corporations as a force in American civic life.

The proposal initially faced opposition from some at the university, who saw it as a distraction from Yale’s core liberal arts mission. But Mr. Beinecke and his allies eventually prevailed, and the Yale School of Management opened in 1976, with the Beineckes as major benefactors.

“In my 30-odd years in business, few things have surprised and disappointed me more than the attitude many businessmen have about the world beyond their business and their careers,” Mr. Beinecke said in a speech in 1983 commemorating the founding of the school. “Even men of the highest capacity will, without regret, limit themselves to a two-course curriculum — they major in bottom-line and minor in golf.”

William Sperry Beinecke was born on May 22, 1914, in New York City, to Frederick W. Beinecke and the former Carrie Sperry.

After earning his bachelor’s degree, in economics, from Yale and a law degree from Columbia University, he joined the Navy as the United States was preparing to enter World War II. He went on to serve on destroyers in the Atlantic and Pacific, and left the Navy as a lieutenant commander.

Weeks before he was called to active duty in 1941, Mr. Beinecke married the former Elizabeth Gillespie. She died in 2009. Mr. Beinecke is survived by two sons, Frederick and John; two daughters, Frances Beinecke and Sarah Beinecke Richardson; seven grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.

When he returned from the war, Mr. Beinecke briefly practiced law before joining Sperry & Hutchinson as general counsel in 1951. At S & H, he helped fight efforts in several states to restrict or ban Green Stamps and similar rewards programs as anticompetitive.

He retired in 1980 and embarked on what amounted to a second career in philanthropy. Besides his work for Central Park and Yale, where Mr. Beinecke was a trustee, he was the founding chairman of the Hudson River Foundation and served on the boards of the New York Botanical Garden and the American Museum of Natural History. The Prospect Hill Foundation, which Mr. and Mrs. Beinecke created in 1959, has supported programs in the environment and nuclear nonproliferation, among other causes.

Active until the end of his life, Mr. Beinecke had lunch the week before his death with recipients of a scholarship he endowed at Columbia Law School; he had a series of social engagements planned for the following week. His daughter Frances said that on the day he died, Mr. Beinecke had a bow tie selected for his weekly bridge game at the Yale Club.

• Reference: Ancestry Genealogy - SmartCopy: Jul 22 2022, 12:25:11 UTC

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• Reference: Ancestry Genealogy - SmartCopy: Jul 22 2022, 12:25:11 UTC

Son of William Sperry Beinecke, Jr,

National Gallery of Art Trustees Elect Frederick W. Beinecke as President, Succeeding Victoria P. Sant, Who Remains as Trustee through June 2015

Frederick W. Beinecke President (effective July 19, 2014), National Gallery of Art Photo courtesy of National Gallery of Art, Washington, 2014 Frederick W. Beinecke
President (effective July 19, 2014), National Gallery of Art
Photo courtesy of National Gallery of Art, Washington, 2014

Washington, DC―At the May meeting of the National Gallery of Art board of trustees, New York investor and philanthropist Frederick W. Beinecke was elected as president of the National Gallery of Art effective July 19, 2014. He succeeds Victoria P. Sant, who has served as president since 2003 and will remain on the board until July 1, 2015.

Frederick W. Beinecke

Beinecke is president and director of Antaeus Enterprises, Inc., a private investment company in New York. He is a member of the board of advisors of Venture Investment Associates. He was formerly a director and president of The Sperry and Hutchinson Company in New York and former chairman of the board of the Catalina Marketing Corporation, both companies traded on the New York Stock Exchange.

Beinecke became a member of the Trustees’ Council of the National Gallery of Art in 2004, and in 2007 was elected a trustee. He is chairman of the board of trustees of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, a director and president of The Sperry Fund, and a director of The Prospect Hill Foundation. He serves as a director of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, where he chairs its Research and Academic Program Committee. He is director, emeritus of the New York City Ballet, where he first served as director in 1978 and as president from 2003 to 2008. Since 1981, he has been a trustee of the Wildlife Conservation Society, where he is a member of the executive committee. He also currently serves as a member of the International Council of the Preservation Society of Newport County.

The Gallery’s new president is trustee emeritus of both Phillips Academy and the Trudeau Institute and director emeritus of Close Encounters with Music. He is a member of the board of visitors, Yale University School of Music, and also serves on the steering committee for One Percent for Culture in New York City.

Beinecke attended Yale University, earning a BA. in 1966; in 1972 he earned a JD from the University of Virginia Law School and is a member of the Bar of the State of New York. He served as an officer in the United States Marine Corps from 1966 to 1969, attaining the rank of captain. He was decorated with the Bronze Star for service in Vietnam during 1968.

Beinecke and his wife, Candace, reside in New York City. They have two sons, Jacob and Benjamin.

Board of Trustees

As of July 19, 2014, the National Gallery of Art board of trustees will include the following: (public members) Chief Justice of the United States John G. Roberts Jr, Secretary of State John F. Kerry, Secretary of the Treasury Jacob J. Lew, and Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution G. Wayne Clough.; (private members) Frederick W. Beinecke, president of the National Gallery of Art; Sharon Percy Rockefeller, chairman; Mitchell P. Rales; Victoria P. Sant; and Andrew M. Saul.