Leonard Leveen, Real-Estate Developer, Unconventional Philanthropist, Dies at 91
Len Leveen, a partner in Pyramid Companies of Syracuse, N.Y., and a philanthropist who followed his own guidelines for giving, died on January 26, 2018 at Hospice by the Sea in Boca Raton, Fla. He was 91.
Laughing through hard work
In the late 1960s Leveen was a partner in an accounting firm in Syracuse when he got to know a hard-working young client named Bob Congel. Congel had a talent for developing real estate, and in 1972 invited Leveen to join his firm, Pyramid, to help develop shopping centers in upstate New York. Thus began the most fulfilling episode in Leveen’s professional life, and the formation of friendships that would last a lifetime. To the end of his life, Leveen spoke with warm admiration for his partners, who besides Congel included Mike Shanley, Bruce Kenan, Jim Tuozzolo, Andy VonDeak and Al Dal Pos. “They all are absolutely superb at surmounting obstacles; they would get the job done,” said Leveen. “And they have the gift of laughing. Bob Congel was blessed with that from his mother, Mary. I have a special liking for people like that. No matter how bad things were, they were always able to laugh.”
The admiration was mutual. Bruce Kenan “knew no equal” when it came to Leveen’s good spirits combined with his ability to think things through. “To Len there were no problems, only puzzles to be solved. If every puzzle has a solution, how can one be unhappy? Len realized this long before the rest of us.”
At the company’s meetings, which began at 5:55 a.m., six days a week, Leveen would listen to everyone else speak and only at the end, if asked, would he offer his thoughts. Said Mike Shanley, “For more than three decades the Pyramid daily mantra could easily be summed up as, ‘What does Lenny think?’”
A kid from the Bronx
Born in New York City on September 19, 1926, Leonard was the second son of Murray and Rita Leveen. His older brother, Seymour “Cy” Leveen, died in 2012.
He grew up during the Depression. His father sold insurance and would collect 5 cents per week directly from his clients. His mother worked as a cashier at a cafeteria in Manhattan.
“Money went a long way in those days,” said Leveen. “The trouble was, there wasn’t much money. If you had it, you could do things. If you didn’t, you couldn’t do anything. In the course of my growing up, and going from boy to man, I always had a great respect for money.”
His quick wit emerged early in life. When once their mother sprang for ice cream cones, Lenny came running back with a cone in each hand. He tripped and one of the cones landed upside down on the pavement. He looked up at his brother and said, “I dropped yours!”
In the summer of 1942, the 15-year-old Leveen was too young to get working papers, so he lied about his age. “I was able to get a job as a newsboy working for the New York Sun delivering papers to newsstands in the subway. The pay was six dollars a week,” Leveen recalled at the end of his life. “They took out one percent for Social Security, so my check was for $5.94. My mom took two dollars for the house, put two dollars in a bank account she opened for me, and I got $1.94 in cash. That was the first time I had money to spend.”
Growing up in the ethnic neighborhoods of the Bronx, Leveen also learned about prejudice. He remembered being taunted as “Jewboy” and being forced to fight. He remembered growing up in the shadow of the anti-Semitic radio broadcasts of Father Coughlin, and the specter of the Nazis gaining power in Germany.
Leveen graduated from high school in the Bronx in 1943 and enrolled in the City College of New York until his enlistment in the Navy in 1944. When his enlistment officer asked him for his middle name, Leveen, having none, answered “None.” The officer dutifully wrote down “None,” and Leveen went through the war wearing dog tags stamped “Leonard None Leveen.”
After boot camp, his first duty upon arriving in San Francisco was fire watch aboard a destroyer that was being repaired after being hit by a Japanese kamikaze. Leveen was trained as a signalman and had the job of sending and receiving messages with a signal lamp using Morse code. “If conditions were right, we could get more distance at night by bouncing the light off of the clouds,” said Leveen. The Japanese surrendered while he was shipping over to the Philippines. The Navy seemed to lose track of him once he arrived on the island. Leveen remembered long days of reading in a hammock, going through every book in the base library. When he finally got his orders, he had to scrape barnacles off of landing craft before they were to be junked.
After the war, Leveen returned to CCNY on the GI Bill and graduated in 1949 with a degree in accounting. At graduation, he remembered shaking hands with Bernard Baruch, the American financier and philanthropist.
North to Syracuse and off to the races
Thinking the accounting business would be less competitive in upstate New York, Leveen and a couple of his friends from the Bronx drove to Syracuse, arriving on March 11, 1951, and set up shop.
In Syracuse he met Ada Ellen Knock, who had graduated from Syracuse University the year before. The couple married in 1952 and had two children, a daughter, Karen, and a son, Steve. They divorced in 1961, and Leveen subsequently married Zayne Pease, whose daughter, Joli, he later adopted. Zayne Leveen died in 2004.
In Syracuse, Leveen began pursuing his lifelong passion for horseracing. He bought his first Standardbred, or harness horse, in 1961 and had success early. His horse Royal Gene Pick set a world record for the mile for three-year old geldings and held it for four years, from 1965 to 1969.
In 1991, Leveen switched to thoroughbreds. His business partner Mike Shanley was also his horse partner. “Lenny and I first became involved with a mare named Dana’s Wedding,” remembered Shanley. “Upon her retirement, Lenny asked our trainer what could he expect to receive if he sold her. The trainer responded, ‘You won’t get a ham sandwich.’ So Lenny decided to breed Dana’s Wedding. The first foal he named Ham Sandwich. The second, third and fourth foals were named On Rye, With Mustard, and To Go. They all won races at Saratoga with the great Ham Sandwich being a multiple winner and a huge fan favorite.”
Their horse Turk Passar won the Grade One Belmont Turf Championship and was invited to the Japan Cup, which was one of the highlights of Leveen’s racing career. About his horseracing, Leveen said, “Our racing career was successful, but not financially.”
Giving his own way
Leveen’s childhood exposure to prejudice left him with a lifelong sensitivity to its dangers. And growing up poor in the Bronx during the Depression left a lasting appreciation for working people who struggle financially.
Leveen made friends easily with the cashiers at the racetracks, the staff at casinos, and his drivers, whom he relied on more and more in his final years. He had a reputation for being quick with a joke and unfailingly kind.
A generous tipper, Leveen would sometimes get to know people well enough to appreciate their financial struggles. Although few friends or family members knew he did so, he helped many of these acquaintances buy cars and houses, often paying the entire amount.
“Wherever he went, if he noticed something he could do for the people he encountered, they unexpectedly received the help they needed,” said Gerry Ehrlich, Leveen’s partner for the last decade of his life. “It was always without fanfare. He never wanted thanks; it just gave him real joy to do it.”
His ability to discern prejudice applied to ideas as well. He had a habit of considering alternatives to whatever shared beliefs held sway. It was this ability, often leading to contrarian viewpoints, that made him especially valuable to his business partners.
Later in life, Leveen found joy in traveling the backroads of the United States and Canada, with his son, grandsons and partner Gerry, searching out small public libraries. He would go in and hand the librarian an envelope with a check for $1,000 inside.
Said Leveen, “We had librarians, once they opened the envelope, come running out to our car with tears in their eyes thanking us, saying they could buy children’s books or expand their hours. In some cases the $1,000 was more than the library was getting from their state government. But I got more out of it than any of the recipients. I got that special excitement, because every place I went to was a place I had never been.”
Leveen managed to make more than 160 such stops at small public libraries in North America.
A preference for fast exits
After his retirement, Leveen took pleasure in advising his son and daughter-in-law in their home-office products business called Levenger. At board meetings he followed the same practice he had at Pyramid, listening to everyone else and speaking only at the end. Said fellow board member Robert Wientzen, “Len had this unique property to be able to sit and listen and not feel compelled to impose his point of view, but at the same time he was thinking very strategically. I always looked forward to his insights.”
Some of Leveen’s insights were more lighthearted. At an office party one day after work, employees had gathered in the parking lot to hear a band performing under a tent. Out in front of the band was a good-looking female singer. When his son mentioned that the drummer worked in the company’s accounting department and had organized the band, Leveen responded, “My advice is to fire the drummer and hire the singer.”
Leveen liked to move fast in everything he did, including dining out. His friends and family were used to him asking the server for the check at the same time their food was delivered. That way he could leave as soon as they finished eating. He was also the fastest to pick up the bill.
When saying goodbye to anyone, instead of saying “Take care,” Leveen would characteristically advise, “Drive fast and take chances.”
At the end of his life, he called his friends to say goodbye, making jokes as usual and keeping things light. “Hey, I’m 91. This is what’s supposed to happen!”
When his family gathered at his oceanside apartment in Boca Raton, just days before he passed, it was one of those beautiful winter days in South Florida. His grandsons, Calgary and Corey Leveen, stood out on the balcony overlooking the blue ocean and said in unison what they knew their grandfather would say on such a day: “This might be the greatest day in the history of the world!”
