Reginald Lewis talks about an incident that took place in his early adolescent age:
I remember being in the bathtub, and my grandmother and grandfather were talking about some incident that had been unfair and was racial in nature. They were talking about work and accomplishing things and how racism was getting in the way of that. And they looked at me and said, “Well, maybe it will be different for him.” I couldn’t have been more than about six years old. One of them, I can’t remember whether it was my grandfather or my grandmother, said to me, “Well, is it going to be any different for you?” And as I was climbing out of the tub and they were putting a towel around me, I looked up and said, “Yeah, cause why should white guys have all the fun?”
Reginald F. Lewis was born on December 7, 1942 in a Baltimore, Maryland neighborhood he once described as “semi-tough.” Strongly influenced by his family, he began his career at the age of ten, delivering the local Afro-American newspaper. Fortune Magazine reported that as a child Lewis kept his earnings in a tin can known as “Reggie’s Hidden Treasure.” His grandmother who taught him the importance of saving some of everything you earned had given him the tin can. He set up a delivery route in his neighbourhood for African-American newspapers. Not only was he able to build it to over a hundred customers, he was able to sell it in a few years at a profit. Reginald later sold his newspaper business at a profit. During his years at Dunbar High School, Reginald excelled in both academic studies and sports.
He was quarterback on the football team, a shortstop on the baseball team, and a forward on the basketball team. In all three sports he was named captain. Reginald was also elected vice-president of the student body; his friend and classmate, Robert M. Bell (current Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals for the State of Maryland) was elected president. During his high school years, Reginald worked nights and weekends at jobs with his grandfather, who was a head waiter and maitre d’.
In high school, Lewis demonstrated the potential for a completely different life path. He was quarterback of the football team, a shortstop in varsity baseball, and played forward in basketball – while being captain of all three teams. However, he didn’t neglect his scholarly responsibilities and was also elected vice-president of the student body.
In 1961, Reginald entered Virginia State University on a football scholarship, majoring in economics. He graduated on the dean’s list, despite having a rough first year academically and losing his scholarship due to an injury. In his senior year, the Harvard Law School offered a summer school program to introduce a small, select group of black students to the field of legal study. At the end of the program, Reginald was invited to attend Harvard Law School; at the time, “he was the only person in the 148-year history of Harvard Law School to be admitted before submitting a formal application”. Lewis graduated on the Dean’s List in his senior year. He arrived at Harvard with $50 in his pocket.
It was in his third year at Harvard that he discovered the direction for his career in a course on securities law. Lewis wrote his third year paper on takeovers. Reginald Lewis graduated from Harvard Law School in 1968 and went to work for the prestigious New York law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison. Within two years, he established his own Wall Street law firm. His partner, Charles Clarkson, believed in Lewis’ ambition and potential. “He always had the drive and attitude that nothing could stop him from getting what he wanted,” Clarkson told the New York Times. “And more and more, Reg wanted to establish a vehicle for doing business ventures.” While his focus was corporate law, he also helped minority-owned businesses secure badly-needed capital using Minority Enterprise Small Business Investment Companies (venture capital firms formed by corporation or foundation, operating under the aegis of the Small Business Administration.)
A desire to “do the deals myself” led him to establish the TLC Group L.P. in 1983. His first major deal involved the $22.5 million leverage buyout of the McCall Pattern Company. Reginald nursed the struggling company back to health and despite a declining market, led the company to enjoy the two most profitable years in its 113-year history. In the summer of 1987, he sold it for $90 million, making $50 million in profit. In October 1987, Reginald purchased the international division of Beatrice Foods, an unprecedented global conglomerate of 64 companies, with holdings in 31 countries, which became known as TLC Beatrice International.
“At $985 million, the deal was the largest leveraged buyout at the time of overseas assets by an American company” in the history of LBO’s (Leverage Buy Outs). As Chairman and CEO, he moved quickly to reposition the company, pay down the debt, and vastly increase the company’s worth. By 1992, the company had sales of over $1.6 billion annually, and Reginald was sharing his time between his company’s offices in New York and an office in Paris (most of the company’s businesses were in Europe). With all of his success, Reginald did not forget others; giving back was part of his life. In 1987 he established The Reginald F. Lewis Foundation, which funded grants of approximately $10 million to various non-profit programs and organizations while Reginald was alive. His first major grant was an unsolicited $1 million to Howard University-a school he never attended-in 1988; the federal government matched the grant, making the gift to Howard University $2 million, which was used to fund an endowment.
Interest from the endowment is used for scholarships, fellowships, and faculty sabbaticals. In 1992, Reginald donated $3 million to Harvard Law School-the largest grant in the history of the school at that time. In gratitude, the school renamed its International Law center the Reginald F. Lewis International Law Center. Among other programs, the grant supports a fellowship to teach minority lawyers how to be law professors. In January 1993, Reginald’s remarkable career was cut short by his untimely death at the age of 50 after a short illness.
At his funeral, a letter from his longtime friend, David N. Dinkins, former mayor of New York, was read. In the letter, Dinkins wrote, “Reginald Lewis accomplished more in half a century than most of us could ever deem imaginable. And his brilliant career was matched always by a warm and generous heart.” Dinkins added, “It is said that service to others is the rent we pay on earth. Reg Lewis departed us paid in full.” Even after his death, Reginald’s philanthropic endeavors continue. During his illness, he made known his desire to support a museum of African American culture.
Despite passing away at 50, Lewis’s legacy remains in several forms. The Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African-American History & Culture is the largest black museum on the US East Coast. Other institutions that carry his name include The RFL College of Business at Virginia State University, The Lewis College in the Philippines, RFL High School in Baltimore, and Harvard’s RFL International Law Center. Lewis’s ability to break down barriers and blaze trails is evident in his life story, and detailed in his aptly-titled biography, Why Should White Guys Have All the Fun?: How Reginald Lewis Created a Billion-Dollar Business Empire.
In 2002, the Vice President of the foundation read an article in the Baltimore Sun newspaper describing a museum of Maryland African American History and Culture slated to be built near Baltimore’s inner Harbor. After further research and discussion, especially relative to the partnership between the museum and the Maryland State Department of Education to develop an African American curriculum to be taught in all public schools in the state of Maryland, the foundation made its largest grant to date to the proposed museum; $5 million dollars. The money is in an endowment with the interest to be used for educational purposes. Lawyer, entrepreneur, philanthropist, Chairman, CEO, husband, father, son, brother, nephew, cousin, friend–Reginald F. Lewis lived his life according to the words he often quoted to audiences around the country: “Keep going, no matter what.
