Eugene M. Lang, an investor whose spur-of-the-moment promise to an East Harlem sixth-grade graduating class that he would pay for their college education inspired a foundation, led to the support of more than 16,000 children nationwide and made him something of an American folk hero, died on Saturday at his home in Manhattan. He was 98.
His daughter, Jane Lang, confirmed his death.
Mr. Lang, a self-made businessman who flew coach class and traveled on subways and buses, contributed more than $150 million to charities and institutions during his lifetime, including a single $50 million gift in 2012 to Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, his alma mater, and $20 million to Eugene Lang College, part of the New School in Manhattan.
But he will be best remembered for his impulsive gesture in June 1981, when he was invited to deliver the commencement address to 61 sixth graders at Public School 121 on East 103rd Street.
“I looked out at that audience of almost entirely black and Hispanic students, wondering what to say to them,” he recalled. He had intended to tell them, their families and their teachers that he had attended P.S. 121 more than a half-century earlier, that he had worked hard and made a lot of money and that if they worked hard, maybe they could be successful, too.
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But, he said, “it dawned on me that the commencement banalities I planned were completely irrelevant.”
“So I began by telling them that one of my most memorable experiences was Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, and that everyone should have a dream,” he said. “Then I decided to tell them I’d give a scholarship to every member of the class admitted to a four-year college.”
There was stunned silence, peppered with a few audible gasps. Then students, parents and teachers cheered and mobbed him. He told them that he would earmark $2,000 for each of them toward college tuition and that he would add more money each year that they stayed in school.
The gesture received national publicity, and he was invited to the White House by President Ronald Reagan. But he was aware, he said, that simply providing students from poor or troubled homes with a scholarship would not ensure success; many would drop out along the way, unable to elude the traps of drugs, jail and untimely pregnancy.
“When I made the original promise, the principal told me that maybe one or two students would take advantage of my offer,” he said.
He “adopted” the class, treating them to trips and restaurant meals, counseling them through crisis after crisis, and intervening with school officials. Soon, Mr. Lang founded the I Have a Dream Foundation, setting up its office in Manhattan. He hired a project coordinator, established a year-round program of academic support with a mentor and tutoring for each student, and sponsored cultural and recreational outings.
“If this were my natural child, and my child were to do this, would I say, ‘The hell with this kid’? You can’t do that,” Mr. Lang said. “The chances are the child will be derailed, and you have to be there and be sensitive and reach out and try to bring the child back on track.”
At least half of the original 61 sixth graders — they called themselves Dreamers — enrolled in public and private colleges, although The Daily News later reported that some students had misunderstood the offer as a promise to pay tuition even at expensive colleges and were bitter. Of those who passed up college, Mr. Lang often found them jobs.
“I know I’m going to make it,” Aristides Alvarado, then a 20-year-old junior at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, told an interviewer in 1989. “And someday I’ll be big — real big — and pay the tuition for my own class of Dreamers.”
Albert Shanker, the president of the American Federation of Teachers at the time, observed: “Lang put up a lot more than money. He put himself on the line, too.”
Mr. Lang persuaded a roster of high-profile New Yorkers — among them the financier Felix G. Rohatyn; James Bush, a nephew of President George Bush; and Reuben Mark, the president of the Colgate-Palmolive Company — to sponsor public-school classes by depositing $300,000 into foundation-operated annuities and personally shepherding the students, just as vigilant parents might do.
Wealthy patrons found themselves trooping through seedy housing projects, and impoverished children found themselves sailing on boats in the Hamptons.
One sponsoring couple, the investment banker Joseph H. Reich and his wife, Carol F. Reich, started an elementary school in 1992 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to ensure that the children got the education necessary to fulfill their promise. It became a pioneer in the charter school movement.
Some years into the program, Mr. Lang said that he, too, had realized that by the sixth grade it was “too late” to begin trying to interest poor children in college, so he shifted its emphasis to third and fourth graders. Roughly 200 I Have a Dream programs have operated around the country and in New Zealand, serving more than 16,000 students.
Eugene Michael Lang was born on March 16, 1919, and grew up in a $12-a-month railroad apartment on East 83rd Street in Manhattan. His father, Daniel Lang, having been found guilty of distributing subversive literature as a socialist in Hungary, escaped in 1911 to the United States and took a job at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
He taught Eugene how to use tools to make his own toys and urged him to read widely. Tolstoy became a favorite, as did the economist Thorstein Veblen, whose vision of the “masterless man,” Mr. Lang told a student interviewer at Swarthmore, inspired his fascination with enterprise and innovation.
After P.S. 121, Mr. Lang went to Townsend Harris High School, from which he graduated at 14. While working part time at a restaurant in Midtown Manhattan, he fell into a conversation with a regular customer, who persuaded him to consider Swarthmore instead of City College and arranged an interview for him at the Harvard Club in Manhattan. Mr. Lang was accepted on scholarship.
“I remember getting this letter was an experience in itself because I never got mail,” he said. “This was the first letter I remember getting from anyone.”
Entering Swarthmore at 15, he majored in economics and, while attending classes, showed his entrepreneurial spirit by starting a business that manufactured pennants. He graduated in 1938 and, in 1940, went on to receive a Master of Business and Science degree from Columbia while also taking courses in mechanical engineering at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute.
When World War II broke out, Mr. Lang was rejected for military service because of his flat feet. He took a job at Heli-Coil, an aircraft parts factory in Long Island City, Queens, rose to a managerial position and later became a part-owner. In 1949, he expanded Heli-Coil to make precision wire inserts, industrial fastenings and tools. It later became a division of Stanley Black & Decker.
Much of his fortune stemmed from the Refac Technology Development Corporation, a public company he founded in 1952 that specialized in the licensing of patents and financing high-tech ventures.
In 1990, The New York Times reported that Refac — the name stands for resources and facilities — had made much of its money by aggressively filing patent infringement suits against companies like IBM and Eastman Kodak and retailers like R.H. Macy and Radio Shack on behalf of inventors of a wide range of products: liquid crystal displays, automated teller machines, bar-code warning systems and spreadsheet software.
In a letter to The Times, Mr. Lang called the article “grossly distorted” and pointed out that most of the clients represented in lawsuits had sought out Refac after offering licenses to the corporations for their inventions and being turned down. He illustrated his argument by citing the inventor of the laser, who had tried from 1959 to 1975 to get industry to recognize his role and succeeded only after Refac won validation of his patents in the courts.
Mr. Lang married Theresa Volmar in 1946. In 1997, he was the commencement speaker when, at age 79, she graduated from Marymount Manhattan College. She died in 2008.
In addition to his daughter, Mr. Lang is survived by two sons, David and the film and stage actor Stephen Lang; a sister, Barbara Lang; eight grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren.
In 1996, President Bill Clinton awarded Mr. Lang the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Among other positions, he served as chairman of Swarthmore’s governing board, managing director of the Metropolitan Opera Association and chairman of the Circle in the Square Theater. He also gave substantial gifts to New York Hospital, Columbia Business School and many other organizations. His philanthropy reflected his personal philosophy.
“Giving should not be mechanical,” he said. “It should be the fruit of one’s feeling, love and sense of responsibility. Giving is not giving back. There is no quid pro quo. Giving is self-fulfillment.”
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