Honoring Hertog

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun
NY Sun
NEW YORK SUN CONTRIBUTOR

The list of Americans gathered at the White House yesterday should be enough to bury once and for all the falsehood, so popular on the left, that our president is some sort of philistine. There in the East Room were two Harvard professors, Richard Pipes and Ruth Wisse; a scholar of the classics, Victor Davis Hanson; and a great jazz guitarist, Les Paul. They were just a few of those honored by President Bush with the National Medal of the Arts or the National Humanities Medal.

Though our editors have been students of Professor Pipes and guests in Professor Wisse’s home, the honoree that put a particular spring in our step yesterday was our partner, Roger Hertog, who is the founding chairman of this newspaper. He’s too modest to want it written about, but he was among the first several investors to put money into this paper, back in June of 2000, nearly two years before an issue of the paper was even published. He was among the participants in the early meetings at which this newspaper was planned.

The official citation for the National Humanities Medal awarded to Mr. Hertog spoke of “his enlightened philanthropy on behalf of humanities.” It said, “His wisdom and generosity have rejuvenated the institutions that are the keepers of American memory.” A press release from the National Endowment for the Humanities identified him as chairman of the New-York Historical Society, chairman emeritus of The Manhattan Institute, and a trustee of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the New York Public Library, the New York Philharmonic, and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation.

It could have also mentioned Mr. Hertog’s role as a trustee of Israel’s Shalem Center, or, with his wife Susan (a biographer of Anne Morrow Lindbergh), as a donor to Taglit-Birthright Israel or as a backer of scholarships to New York City’s Catholic schools. Mr. Hertog doesn’t come by any of this without working at it — he’s a voracious reader, a learned businessman, and a creator of institutions. The first lady of the United States, Laura Bush, caught the spirit when, in closing yesterday’s White House ceremony, she remarked, “Our culture is vibrant when we honor a custodian of history in rural Wyoming, and a founder of a start-up daily newspaper in the heart of New York.”

NY Sun
NEW YORK SUN CONTRIBUTOR

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.


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