An Interview with
Preston Robert Tisch
By Joan Baum, Ph.D.
In an extraordinary
life of public service and philanthropy, including serving
as Postmaster General of The United States, being the city’s Ambassador to Washington in the `90s,
chairing NYC Public Private Initiatives, a partnership program
to fund community programs, sitting on the board as a founding
member of Citymeals-on-Wheels, and now one of the driving forces
behind the new Giants Stadium, corporate giant Preston Robert “Bob” Tisch
cites among his proudest achievements programs that have benefited
the public schools, particular among them Take the Field. Even
those in small communities in the outlying boroughs who don’t
know of Bob Tisch’s reputation for heading up one of
the largest, most diversified financial organizations in America—the
Loews Corporation—or of his amazing generosity to New
York University, know about Take the Field. This fast-track,
five-borough project, which Bob Tisch founded in 2000, has
already restored 41 (of 43) athletic fields for New York City
public schools, raising $135 million in public and private
funds to accomplish this major project. It is a prime example
of Bob Tisch’s vision. Rebuilding athletic facilities
means promoting good health and academic performance. And pride.
The name alone, “Take the Field,” reflects Bob
Tisch’s imaginative way of looking at how to improve
education, for it is an answer to what prompted the initiativeÑa
three-part front-page series in The New York Times which ran
in January 1999. Called “Dropping the Ball,” the
articles focused on the dilapidated conditions of the city’s
school sports facilities, a sad story of wasted money and missed
opportunity, not to mention low esteem—NYC then was
at the “very bottom” of the nation’s largest
cities in team sports. A public school graduate (P.S. 225 in
Brooklyn), who went on first to De Witt Clinton High School
(Bronx) and then to Erasmus Hall (Brooklyn), he regards Take
the Field less as a sports endeavor than—what he knows
wellÑas a solid investment in youngsters and in the
City of New York. The shrewdness of Bob Tisch’s conception
can be seen in its involvement of neighborhoods. When the schools
are not using their athletic facilities, the communities have
access. Needless to say, these fields are guarded by area residents
as carefully as they are by the school principals. Bob Tisch
chuckles when he recalls how the owners of the two-story homes
surrounding Forest Hills High School went out of their way
to assure him that they were going to “watch over their
field.” And they do.
“Take the Field,” may be among Bob Tisch’s
most subtle efforts to enhance the city by using its resources “as
a living laboratory,” but it is consistent with his continuing
interest in education, most prominently seen in the Tisch School
of the Arts at NYU and in the Center for Hospitality and Tourism
now renamed the Preston Robert Tisch Center for Hospitality,
Tourism and Sports Management, a discipline that is now so
successful at NYU that it has recently added a Master’s
program. Tisch has been especially involved in helping the
Center to build the sports management program, involving many
of his colleagues. Tisch has devoted himself to the hospitality
arena, having been Chairman of the city’s Convention
and Visitors Bureau (now NYC & Co) for the longest running
term of 19 years. Other Tisch ventures under the Public Private
Initiatives, although not as well known as, for example, Citymeals-on-Wheels,
have also been educational, such as funding programs for education
books for new mothers, especially those in low-income neighborhoods
and having these distributed in hospitals.
What advice does this
major mogul of success and sharing have to say to today’s
youngsters to inspire them to achieve and to give back? “It’s
no secret,” he says, “find
a project you can do well and stay with it.” He modestly
attributes much of his own success to luck, but then concedes
that perseverance is at the heart of meeting challenge. It’s
more than that, of course, as anyone who has been drawn into
the Tisch orbit knows. Bob Tisch has always insisted that potential
donors see what has excited him. He follows through, one-on-one
and knows everyone’s name. This has been his way, ever
since he started his first hotel in Lakewood, New Jersey many
years ago, with his late brother Larry, who was his business
partner throughout his life. It was a risky venture, then,
doing a winter hotel, including an ice rink—which was
a firstÑbut he made the campaign personal. “Just
don’t give money, send out mass mailings, and walk away.
You have to be in there, a real presence, working at it.” How
appropriate that Giants Stadium—Tisch’s dream
for many years—is being built at last, under the watchful
eyes of a giant whose own life has been a model of how to take
the field.#
