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Revision as of 15:03, 24 January 2005 by 146.186.138.58 (talk)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Frank Smeal was a partner of the Goldman Sachs Group of New York City. Additionally, he and his late wife, Mary Jean provided the funding to help found the Smeal College of Business at Penn State University.
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.
He died Tuesday, April 8, 2003, after a long illness, at the
age of 84.