Jack Nash
The death of Jack Nash, coming at a time when the fortunes of so many are up in the air, is a reminder of the impact that can be left in the hearts of a city by a great and steady investor and a man who had a few deep convictions. Nash, who died yesterday at Mount Sinai hospital after a long illness, was a self-made man who started at Stuyvesant High School and City College and eventually was listed by Forbes as one of the wealthiest men in America. Nash, with Leon Levy, ran Oppenheimer for years and built a highly successful hedge fund, Odyssey Partners.
RELATED: The Sun's Obituary.
He built a fortune not only for himself but for many others who placed their wealth with him. He was a great philanthropist, giving millions to education and to Jewish institutions and causes. Though Nash had not been Orthodox himself, he married, in Helen, a woman who, among her many achievements, created a kind of modern, healthy, and delicious kosher cuisine. She wrote a several cookbooks, and her husband and she hosted their children and grandchildren and countless guests at an elegant round table in a dining room that was filled with art and political talk.
Nash was also one of the founders of this newspaper. We remember, when we showed him the business plan and spreadsheets, that he seemed to be able to read them like, say, Isaac Stern read music, though Mozart they weren't. Nash's questions seemed even a bit desultory, but suddenly he laid the spreadsheets aside and then said: "What about Israel?" He was told that editors learn not to answer questions like that with promises, but he should know that the prospective editor had declined, even in the face of warnings that he might lose a newspaper that he loved, to write editorials supporting a division of Jerusalem.
Nash called the next morning to say that he would make an investment. It made a difference. It would be vainglorious to suggest that the Sun was a large part of Jack Nash's magnificent life, but it would not be erroneous to suggest that he was a large part of ours. The last time we saw him, we had gone to his apartment in Manhattan for a dinner for four. His wife prepared one of her celebrated meals, and Jack rallied from his illness with every morsel of food and conversation, which ranged from the economy, to religion, to Israel, to the war, to Washington and New York schools, to the Nazi Germany he'd fled as a youth. His was one of those remarkable lives that bloom in this city and country and inspire us all.
