Joseph Harden Reich, aged 89, of Fisher Island, Fla., died peacefully on Sunday, September 29, 2024, at his beloved family home in Sheffield. He was born December 16, 1934, in Pittsburgh, Penn., and lived there and in Charleston, W.V., as a child.
Joe entered Cornell University at the age of 16, where he met his wife Carol Friedman; they were married November 11, 1955, on a weekend between his Navy OCS graduation and entering active duty in the Western Pacific. Joe then completed a MBA at Stanford University, during which time his and Carol’s eldest child, Deborah, was born in 1960. He began his professional life at Continental Oil in Houston, Texas, where their second daughter, Marcia, joined the family in 1961. He moved from there to the firm of Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette in New York City, embarking on a long and successful career in finance and a life-long commitment to that city. Their third daughter, Janet, was born there in 1967.
With a partner Joe launched his own market-based money-management firm, Reich & Tang, in 1968, and they moved quickly to a focus on the relatively new area of money market funds. “At the time we started ours, there were only two other money market funds in existence. It was too new a field to have any traditionally male job descriptions associated with it. The women at Reich & Tang were able to rise because of that, advancing so quickly that by the time this segment of the market really exploded, women were the natural experts.”
After leaving Reich & Tang, Joe remained active in the investment business at Centennial Associates, where he co-managed a group of investment partnerships, while turning the real muscle of his attention to philanthropy, primarily education. In 1988, Joe and Carol created a project in New York City schools through Gene Lang’s I Have A Dream program. Appalled at the conditions for their students in the local public elementary schools, Joe and Carol combined his entrepreneurial spirit with her education background to pioneer the first public-private partnership in the system, changing the face of the charter-school movement, in which they remained powerfully involved, for future generations. Together with Carol, Joe founded the Beginning with Children Foundation in 1990. The foundation opened the first charter-like school, Beginning with Children, in Williamsburg in 1992, six years before New York State passed its first charter law. Joe was a co-founder of the New York Charter School Center and served as its chair until December 2007. Joe and Carol served as founding directors of the Hunt Institute in Chapel Hill, N.C., which trains governors and aspiring governors in education reform. He also served as adjunct faculty in the business school at Columbia University, teaching a course of his own design on entrepreneurship.
Joe was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, as his father had been before him, at the age of 70. Parkinson’s was not the first illness he had been asked to fight, and he set himself a goal of managing it more actively than his father had, to both outlive and out-live him, and it was an immense source of pride for him to have crushed that goal. The innovative and excellent care he received from Dr. Susan Bressman, her team, and her colleagues played a huge role in his staying as healthy as he could, and he considered Parkinson’s to be a minor element of his life story. “My drive was a much more powerful factor in shaping me than Parkinson’s disease has been,” he said recently. He was a proud investor in the future of Parkinson’s research and treatment, another example of the spirit of Tikkun olam that guided him and Carol in leveling the playing field for children and creating access and opportunities for all. Together they were involved philanthropists, focused on creating real programs to substantively serve those who needed them the most in communities around the world.
In business, philanthropy, and his health, Joe pursued improvement toward excellence and attracted and retained loyal partners. He remained curious and opinionated about the world to the very end. Joe was a loving family man and took great pride and enjoyment in his children and grandchildren. His family acknowledges an incredible group of loving friends and companions, committed co-workers, and gentle caregivers for their active role in making his later years comfortable, enjoyable and richly engaging.
He was preceded in death by his wife of 63 years, Carol Reich, and is survived by two daughters, Marcia Reich Walsh and Janet Reich Elsbach, as well as their families. His eldest daughter, Deborah Reich, died in 2013.
Joe devoted his life to opening doors to education, culture, and healthcare where it was needed most. The family ask that donations in his honor be made to improve access in your chosen community and love the idea of extending the ripples of Joe’s life to new areas. If you don’t have a favorite organization in mind, please consider a donation to the Beginning with Children Foundation, Brooklyn, N.Y.
