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| He died Tuesday, April 8, 2003, after a long illness, at the age of 84. | He died Tuesday, April 8, 2003, after a long illness, at the age of 84. | ||
| While on Wall Street, Frank was known as a true gentleman. He spoke to the men in the parking garage as he did the captains of industry that he worked with. He endured several years of Supranuclear Palsy, familiar to most people as the variation of Parkinson's Disease that afflicted entertainer Dudley Moore. Throughout his illness and the frustration of not being able to express himeself with words, Frank never ever complained. In fact, he put the comfort of his caregivers first, never wanting to put anyone out. | |||
| Friends celebrated his birthday at Windows on the World, at the top of New York's World Trade Center. Weeks later, he watched in horror as the towers fell. The heartbreak of this loss affected him profoundly. | |||
| He was a Renaissance man, a gardener, a statesman and a humanitarian. | |||
| == External links == | == External links == | ||
Revision as of 22:57, 20 November 2006
Frank Smeal (August 7, 1918 - April 8, 2003) was a partner of the Goldman Sachs Group of New York City.
A limited partner of Goldman, Sachs & Co., Mr. Smeal spent his 38-year career on Wall Street as an expert in the municipal bond market. As executive vice president and treasurer at Morgan Guaranty Trust co., he was instrumental in counseling New York City through its 1975-76 fiscal crisis. He became a partner and member of the senior management committee of Goldman Sachs in 1977 and retired in 1985.
Mr. Smeal was born in rural Jefferson County, the son of a coal miner, and credited his mother, Mary, for inspiring him to seek a college degree. It took five years of working part-time as a "soda jerk" and a mortgage on his parents' home before he could achieve his goal of a college education. To get there, he had to hitchhike five miles a day. A few years ago he said he went to college to stay out of the mines where his father had worked. "That's why Penn State is my first love after my wife and family. It gave me the education I needed."
His philanthropic support of Penn State also extended to endowing a fellowship in business administration, a faculty chair in literary theory and comparative criticism, a creative writing award and a graduate assistantship in botany and plant pathology. In 1989, he and his wife, Mary Jean, donated $10 million to Pennsylvania State University, which renamed the Smeal College of Business in their honor.
He died Tuesday, April 8, 2003, after a long illness, at the age of 84.