Arnold A. Saltzman

Arnold Asa Saltzman (October 1, 1916 – January 2, 2014) was an American businessman, diplomat, art collector, and philanthropist, based in New York.

Biography

Saltzman was born on October 1, 1916, in Brooklyn, New York, to a Russian immigrant father, Isidore, and his wife Dora.^[1][2] It was a Jewish family and he had two sisters.^[1] He attended Samuel J. Tilden High School.^[1]

He graduated from Columbia University in 1936, at the age of 19 or 20, majoring in economics and government.^[3][2] While there he earned a top-level award for his performance on the Debate Council.^[4] He married his wife, the former Joan Roth, in a Jewish ceremony on November 21, 1942.^[1] They raised three children, born between 1945 and 1951.^[1] They went on to live in Sands Point, New York.^[2]

His first job was taken in 1936 with the Premiere Knitting Company,^[3] the family sweater business.^[1] He then entered government service, working for the Roosevelt administration as a member of the National Industrial Mobilization Committee.^[3] He was in charge of the Military Price Control Section of the Office of Price Administration, with $8 billion of defense and Lend-Lease spending under his purview.^[3] He was on the Procurement Policy Board, which had representatives from each large government agency.^[3] By 1944 he was an ensign in the United States Coast Guard.^[5][6] During the Korean War, he served in the Office of Price Stabilization.^[3]

Saltzman returned to business, becoming vice president and then president of Premiere Knitting.^[3] He became vice president and a director of Botany Industries (an outgrowth of Botany Mills) from 1959 to 1962.^[3] Saltzman was president of the Seagrave Corporation starting in 1961.^[3] He took a company that mostly made fire-fighting equipment and diversified it via acquisition and other changes into one that did leather processing, made paint and industrial finishes, constructed low-cost houses, and sold mortgages.^[3] He remained president of Seagrave into the 1970s.^[7]

A lifelong Democrat, Saltzman served five U.S. presidents as envoys on diplomatic missions.^[2] He was a trouble-shooter for the U.S. Department of State during the Kennedy administration and Johnson administration years.^[8] He helped negotiate the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in the mid-late 1960s.^[2] He was a hopeful for the Democratic nomination in the United States Senate election in New York, 1974.^[9] But he had little support in the New York State Democratic Committee,^[9] and instead he was chosen as an unsalaried advisor to New York State's Congressional delegation as it tried to heal internal divisions.^[7] In 1976, he served as chair of the federal Advisory Committee on National Growth Policy Processes; it published a report entitled Forging America's Future: Strategies for National Growth and Development.^[10]

He was co-author of the 1990 book Bending with the Winds: Kurt Waldheim and the United Nations.^[11] In its review, Foreign Affairs magazine said that the book's examination of Kurt Waldheim's career was "meticulously undertaken" and that its recommendations for how the Secretary-General of the United Nations could better be chosen "[make] the book important today".^[12]

Still in business, Saltzman headed Vista Resources (which Seagrave had become), a diversified public company, until selling majority interest in it in 1989.^[13] He became chair of the Windsor Production Corporation, a privately held oil, real estate, and investment firm.^[13] In 1992, he was named by Kyrgyzstan, newly independent of the Soviet Union, as its representative in negotiations for natural-resource arrangements with American companies.^[8]

In 1993, Saltzman pleaded guilty in United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York to charges of insurance fraud related to a $610,000 claim before Chubb Insurance on behalf of a leather products company.^[8][14] By 2001, there had still been no sentencing hearing in his case, a delay that legal experts said was extraordinary.^[14] In 2002, having previously made financial restitution, Saltzman attempted to withdraw that felony plea, have it expunged, and substitute a misdemeanor plea instead, but a federal judge denied the request.^[15]

In 2003, Columbia University's Institute of War and Peace Studies was renamed the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies.^[16] Two endowed chairs under the Saltzman name were also added at that time.^[16] Saltzman later said, "Anything that can fight war and promote peace I'm for!"^[2]

As a benefactor, Saltzman and his wife played a part in the creation of the Joan and Arnold Saltzman Community Services Center at Hofstra University, where he was a trustee emeritus.^[2] The center provides health services both to Hofstra and the local community and additionally provides educational and practitioner experience for Hofstra students.^[17] He was founding president of the Nassau County Museum of Art^[18] and the couple are reflected in the name of the Arnold and Joan Saltzman Fine Arts Building there, where he became chairman emeritus.^[2] It was given this name following a large-scale renovation of the central building on the museum.^[19] In 2012, Saltzman was the originating force behind bringing a world-class Marc Chagall exhibit to the museum.^[18] Saltzman also served as a trustee of the Baltimore Museum of Art and was involved with acquisitions for the Museum of Modern Art in New York.^[8] In 2012, the library in Port Washington, New York, named its reading room after the couple following a large gift from the Saltzman Foundation.^[20]

Saltzman died on January 2, 2014, at his home in Sands Point, New York.^[1]

Awards and honors

Saltzman was given honorary degrees by Adelphi University in 1985^[21] and Hofstra University in 1986.^[22]

In 2002, Saltzman was presented with the Order of Honor from the Republic of Georgia, "in recognition of his notable personal contribution to the implementation of international aid programs [and] his active support of Georgia's interest and generous charity work".^[23]

References

External links

• Arnold & Joan Saltzman Fine Art Building at Nassau County Museum of Art
• Joan and Arnold Saltzman Community Services Center at Hofstra University
• Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies