Why Should White Guys Have All the Fun? (56 page)

Reginald Lewis being presented with an award in October 1987 by then Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley (right) with financier Michael Milken (left) looking on. Lewis had just finished addressing a minority youth conference in Los Angeles at which Milken was also a speaker.

Reginald Lewis receives an award from the New York Urban Coalition, a socially active, high profile group of New York City business, labor, and community leaders, on December 8, 1992. The event was the last time Lewis appeared in public prior to his death in January 1993. Among the recipients and participants shown in the photo are (from left to right): former New York City Mayor John Lindsay, Lewis, David Rockefeller, Andrew Heiskell, former Chairman & CEO of Time, Inc., then New York City Mayor David Dinkins, Walter Shipley, president of Chemical Bank, Robert Allen, chairman of AT&T, and Arthur H. Barnes, then President of The Urban Coalition.

A beaming Reginald Lewis presents his French partners Jean (center-left) and Jacques (center-right) Baud with a red Corvette ZR1 in early 1990 at the front of Paris’s famed Crillon Hotel in the Place de la Concorde as a reward for exceeding the plan for the year. The Corvette ZR1 was so rare that Lewis’s staff had to search out New York area dealerships for the car and then bid for it to ensure delivery to France, which in itself turned out to be no easy task. Jacque Baud got the Corvette while his brother, Jean Baud, received a Cadillac convertible from Lewis. Looking on (left) is Daniel Jux, president of TLC Beatrice France.

Reginald F. Lewis exits his first corporate jet, a Challenger, to meet with Vincent P. O’Sullivan (right), Chairman of Tayto, Ltd., and TLC Holdings, Inc. Tayto products dominate the snack food industry in Ireland (1990).
Photo credit
: Foto Estudio Angel, S.E.L.

CEOs of the top 400 businesses in the United States were invited to the White House in 1991 for a luncheon meeting. Reginald F. Lewis, shown here with President George Bush, was the only African American present.
Photo credit
: White House Photo.

During Jesse Jackson’s run for U.S. president, Lewis (left) held a fund-raiser at the Harvard Club in 1988, raising over six figures for the Jackson campaign.

On April 23, 1993, The Reginald F. Lewis International Law Center became the first building named in honor of an African American by Harvard. Lewis made a three-million-dollar gift to the Law School in 1992, the largest from a single individual in Harvard’s 175-year history.
Photo credit
: Bradford Herzog & Martha Stewart. Pictured left to right: Dean Robert C. Clark, Christina S. N. Lewis, Loida Nicolas Lewis, Leslie N. Lewis.

Loida N. Lewis and Reginald F. Lewis on the grounds of the summer home in Amagansett, New York during their 20th Wedding Anniversary celebration, August 16, 1989. Loida surprised him by hiring an airplane to circle overhead with a banner that read: “Reg! Loving you always. Loida.”
Photo credit
: Chong Monalac-Capati.

Reginald F. Lewis, in 1987, reviewing the operations of Savoy, the largest chocolate maker in Venezuela. Lewis wound up selling Savoy, a part of his strategy to reduce debt from the Beatrice purchase.
Photo credit
: Foto Estudio Angel, S.E.L.

(Left): William Mowry, President of Beatrice International when Lewis made the Beatrice acquisition. Others in the photo are employees at Savoy.