On the back of the business section of today's New York Times, a full-page age ad from Brown Brothers Harriman with a clever headline – "Should you talk with your children about your wealth before they Google you?"
Inside, Robert D. Hershey Jr.'s obituary for one of Brown Brothers most celebrated former employees: Richard Jenrette.
After Harvard Business School, Jenrette "joined Brown Brothers Harriman, the very model of an old-time Wall Street firm, whose oak-paneled ambience included roll-top desks, a large coal-burning fireplace and oil paintings of the founders. He spent two years there as a portfolio manager — one client was Greta Garbo — before leaving at 30 to start his own firm…."
Jenrette's partners were two Yalies he met at B school – Bill Donaldson and Dan Lufkin. Their firm, Donaldson, Lufkin and Jenrette, was "the first Wall Street securities firm started from scratch since the early 1930s." DLJ specialized in smaller growth stocks and in the 1960s that was a road to riches.
Donaldson and Lufkin eventually left the firm. Jenrette sold to Equitable Life and devoted his extremely high net worth to his passion for historic preservation. Several remarkable houses he restored and refurnished are held in a non-profit he founded, Classical American Homes Preservation Trust.
"Gone With the Wind" inspired Jenrette's love of antebellum houses. He must have purchased and preserved more white columns than any other American. Some may be seen on the Roper House in Charleston, South Carolina, where he died.
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| Roper House |
Jenrette never married. His remarkable collection of houses, he said, were like his children.
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