John Langeloth Loeb Jr.

John Langeloth Loeb Jr. (born May 2, 1930) is an American businessman, philanthropist, and former United States Ambassador to Denmark^[1] and a delegate to the United Nations. Loeb joined the New York law firm Loeb, Rhoades & Co. in 1956,^[2] and was a general partner from 1959–1973 and then a limited partner until the firm's 1979 acquisition by Shearson Hayden Stone.^[3] It became known as Shearson, Loeb Rhoades and a few years later was acquired by the American Express Company.

From 1979 to 2015, Loeb was chairman of John L. Loeb Jr. Associates, a group of investment counselors. Loeb is the founder and owner of the Russian Riverbend Vineyards, which supplies the winery Chappellet.^[4][5] Loeb has sponsored publications and exhibitions on early American genealogy and family histories, and on Danish art. In 2009, he founded the George Washington Institute for Religious Freedom^[6] and serves as chairman of the organization.^[7] In 2016, George Washington University established the Ambassador John L. Loeb Jr. Institute for Religious Freedom.^[8]

Early life and education

Loeb was born in New York City on May 2, 1930, to businessman John Langeloth Loeb, Sr. (1902–1996) and Frances Lehman (1906–1996). His mother was a descendant of Mayer Lehman (1830–1897), one of the three original founders of Lehman Brothers, which was a large investment bank. Loeb is the grandson of Arthur Lehman (former president of Lehman Brothers), and grand-nephew of former New York Governor and U. S. Senator Herbert H. Lehman. He is a great-grandson of Adolph Lewisohn. The Lewisohns are cousins of the Hambro banking family of London, England.

Loeb's father and paternal-grandfather, Carl M. Loeb (1875–1955), were founders of Loeb, Rhoades & Co. Loeb and his father share the middle name Langeloth in honor of family friend and businessman John Jacob Langeloth (1852–1914).^[9] Loeb's grandmother, Adeline Moses Loeb, wife of Carl M. Loeb, was a sixth-generation member of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Loeb is a cum laude graduate of the Harvey School (1939-1944) and The Hotchkiss School (1944-1948). He is a 1952 B.A. cum laude graduate of Harvard College and received his M.B.A. in 1954 from Harvard Business School. From 1954 to 1955, he served as Second Lieutenant in the United States Air Force at Headquarters, Air Materiel Command, Dayton, Ohio. From 1955 to 1956, he served as First Lieutenant, stationed at Air Force Plant Representative Office, Douglas Aircraft Company, Long Beach, California.((cn))

Business and board service

Loeb has served as director or chairman on the boards of the following companies: Loeb Rhoades & Co., international investment bankers, Partner (1957-1979); Societe Financiere pour les Industries du Tourisme, Paris, France (a Rothschild Freres controlled holding company that invests in the tourist industry of the European Union), Director (1964-1984); Holly Sugar Corporation (Colorado), Chairman of the Board (1969-1971); Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad, Director (1967-1970); Rio Grande Industries, Director (1969-1970); Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Director (1968-1969); John Morrell & Company, Director (1958-1962); Atlantico del Golfo (Cuban Atlantic Sugar) (1957-1962); The American Star Insurance Company, San Francisco, CA, Director (1959-1970); Gulf Applied Technology, Director (1984-1986); Catalyst Thermal Energy Corporation, Director (1987-1990); Member of Commodity Exchange, a subsidiary of the NY Mercantile Exchange (1973-1998); Russian Riverbend Vineyards (1973–present); Sonoma-Loeb Wines (1990-2011).

Government and public affairs

On July 30, 1981, President Ronald Reagan appointed Loeb to the post of United States Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary^[9] to Denmark. He served in this post until September 1983. Upon his return to the United States, he was appointed a delegate to the 38th session of United Nations.^[10] He served on the Advisory Committee to Elizabeth Dole, President, American Red Cross (1992-1998). He also served as special advisor to Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller on environmental matters (1967–1973) and chairman of New York State Council of Environmental Advisors (1970–1975).^[11]

Loeb participated in the United Nations Conference on the Environment (June, 1972) and was Chairman of the Keep New York State Clean Program (1971-1975). He was a Delegate, Republican National Convention (1992); Alternate Delegate, Republican National Conventions (1988 and 1992). He was a member of the Advisory Council, Joint Legislative Committee on Matrimonial and Family Laws, State of New York (1966). Loeb participated in the following World Bank and International Fund Meetings: Tokyo (1964); Washington, DC (1965, 1966); Rio de Janeiro (1967); and Washington, DC (1968, 1969).

Organization memberships

Loeb was a trustee of the Educational Testing Service (ETS) from 1986–1993 and a trustee of American University from 1985-1994. He served for almost 40 years as a trustee and ultimately chairman of the Jacob and Valeria Langeloth Foundation and for almost 30 years was on the board of the Museum of the City of New York. Loeb also served on the board of the International Rescue Committee. He is a trustee of the American-Scandinavian Foundation^[12] and chairman of the Winston Churchill Foundation^[13] of the United States (see Churchill Scholarship). He served for several years on the board of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy. Loeb served on the visiting committees of the Harvard Board of Overseers; to the Harvard Business School (1968–1979); to the School of Public Health (1990-1996); to the Department of Government (1971-1977) and to the John F. Kennedy School of Government (1980–1986). He was a trustee of the Montefiore Medical Center and serves on the Board of Advisors of the Department of Ophthalmology at Columbia University Medical Center. He is currently vice-chair of the Council of American Ambassadors. He has also served as a Director and Executive Committee Member of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy (1979-1990). Loeb became active as founder and chairman in 2009 of the George Washington Institute for Religious Freedom (GWIRF), a not-for-profit organization to promote understanding of freedom of religion and separation of church and state in the US. In 2016, George Washington University founded the Ambassador John L. Loeb Jr. Institute for Religious Freedom to carry on the mission, ideals and educational activities of GWIRF.

Interests

George Washington Institute for Religious Freedom

The George Washington Institute for Religious Freedom, founded by Loeb in 2009, was established to improve awareness of the roots of religious freedom and the separation of church and state in the United States. Its efforts are to introduce teachers and students to the principles expressed in George Washington's "Letter to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, RI" of 1790. The institute's first project was to design, build and operate the Loeb Visitors Center on the campus of the Touro Synagogue National Historic Site in Newport, Rhode Island. The Institute has provided support for high school level essay writing contests about the George Washington letter, including programs at the Harrison Central School District, Westchester, NY; the Rogers High School, Newport, RI; and the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, CT. In 2008-2009 a national essay contest was sponsored with the First Freedom Center, Richmond, VA. This contest was offered again in 2012-2013. George Washington Letter Reading Programs took place in high schools throughout Rhode Island in 2010 and have also taken place in Rhode Island, Manhattan and Connecticut in subsequent years.

In 2010, the institute formed partnerships with the Bill of Rights Institute in Arlington, VA.^[14] and with Facing History and Ourselves, Brookline, MA.^[15] to provide civic education enrichment programs and awareness of the Washington letter in classrooms throughout the United States. ^[5] Other teacher and staff training partnerships were formed with the Ashbrook Center at Ashland University, Ashland, OH and The Aspen Institute’s Inclusive America Project under the aegis of The Aspen Institute's Justice and Society Program.

Initiative on Religious Freedom

GWIRF and the Loeb Fellowship Fund (established at the Harvard Business School by Loeb-Rhoades) sponsored Harvard's Center for American Political Studies (CAPS) to carry out the Ambassador John L. Loeb Jr. Initiative on Religious Freedom and Its Implications at Harvard University. CAPS coordinates university-wide research and study of the relationship of religious freedom and religious pluralism to the political, economic, cultural and social development of nations. CAPS awarded research grants and fellowships to students to support their research from the Loeb Fund. The public launch of the initiative was held at Harvard on May 1, 2014. The first symposium featured an interfaith panel of American religious leaders hosted by Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., discussing the import of the Washington Letter for contemporary issues. These leaders were Sheikh Dr. Yasir Qadhi of Memphis, Reverend J. Brent Walker of Washington, DC and Rabbi Angela W. Buchdahl of Manhattan. The second annual symposium was held at Harvard on May 7, 2015 addressing “After Hobby Lobby: What is Caesar’s, What is God’s?”. Oversight of this initiative has recently been transferred to Harvard’s Committee on the Study of Religion, composed of professors from both the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Divinity School.

Loeb Institute

In January 2016, George Washington University opened the John L. Loeb Jr. Institute for Religious Freedom. The John L. Loeb Jr. Foundation and the George Washington Institute for Religious Freedom donated $2.5 million to establish the institute at GWU. The institute operates within the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences. Some of the academic resources and relationships that GWIRF created with its civic education partners will be part of the institute. The Loeb Institute will manage academic, curricular and co-curricular programs, publications, collaborations and activities with organizations, scholars, students, educators and the public engaged in the mission of the Loeb Institute. It will continue the ambassadorial outreach program that GWIRF began.

Early American Jewish history

Loeb is a member and honorary president of the Sons of the American Revolution, and a member of the Society of Colonial Wars. Publications and museum exhibitions on the history and contributions of American Jews to the early history of the United States have been sponsored through the John L. Loeb Jr. Foundation, the George Washington Institute for Religious Freedom, and by Loeb personally. Projects include:

• Loeb Visitors Center on the campus of the Touro Synagogue National Historic Site^[10] in Newport, Rhode Island;^[11]
• Financing the creation of the Adeline Moses Loeb Gallery at Fraunces Tavern Museum in New York City;
• The Jewish Community in Early New York, 1654-1800, an exhibit featured at the Fraunces Tavern Museum in New York City, (1979);
• The Jewish Community in Early America, 1654-1830, opened by President Gerald Ford, an exhibit featured at the Daughters of the American Revolution Museum Gallery in Washington, D.C. (1980);
• Tolerance and Identity: Jews in Early New York, 1654-1825. Museum of the City of New York, (2005).^[12]

Early American Jewish portraiture

In cooperation with the American Jewish Historical Society, ^[26] Loeb funded the development of The Ambassador John L. Loeb Jr. Database of Early American Jewish Portraits.^[27] The online collection includes about 400 portraits in oil, watercolor, miniatures, silhouettes and daguerreotypes, highlighting the Jewish presence in America before 1865. An interactive portrait tree displaying the contents of the database is a significant feature of the Loeb Visitors Center, and other museums have expressed interest in creating a scaled-to-available-space facsimile at their particular venues.

Book publishing

John L. Loeb Jr. traces one branch of his ancestry to the colonial period—to Abraham Isaacks (1658-1743), his 6 times great-grandfather. Loeb has supported genealogical studies and wrote or sponsored several books:

Genealogy

• An American Experience, Adeline Moses Loeb and Her Early American Jewish Ancestors. Contributors John L. Loeb Jr., Kathy L. Plotkin, Margaret Loeb Kempner, Judith E. Endelman and David M. Kleiman with an introduction by Eli N. Evans. (New York: Sons of the Revolution in the State of New York; Syracuse University Press, 2009).
• The Lehmans: From Rimpar to the New World, a Family History. By Roland Flade. (Wurzburg Germany: Königshausen & Neumann, 1996).
• Lots of Lehmans, The Family of Mayer Lehman of Lehman Brothers, Remembered by His Descendants. Edited by Kenneth Libo; foreword by John L. Loeb Jr. and William Lehman Bernhard. (New York, Syracuse University Press, 2007).

History

• The Levy Family and Monticello, 1834-1923: Saving Thomas Jefferson’s House. Melvin I. Urofsky (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2002).
• Louis D. Brandeis: A Life. Melvin I.Urofsky. (New York: Pantheon, 2010).
• A Holocaust Portfolio. Jeanie E. Neyer, introduction by Frederick S. Plotkin. (New York: Midmarch Arts Press, 1999).
• A Genesis of Religious Freedom: The Story of the Jews of Newport, RI and Touro Synagogue. Melvin I. Urofsky (George Washington Institute for Religious Freedom, 2013).
• Washington’s Rebuke to Bigotry: Reflections On Our First President’s Famous 1790 Letter to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island. A collection of essay edited by Adam Strom, Dan Eshet and Michael Feldberg. (Brookline, MA: Facing History and Ourselves, 2015).

The arts

Loeb has held a lifelong passion for the arts, as early evinced by two sculptures that he created when a student at Hotchkiss: one of Moses beginning to break the Ten Commandments; the other of Abraham preventing the killing of Isaac. Later, when working at Loeb Rhoades, he made a figurative sculpture that sits on a table in his home. He has given expression to that passion by service at the following arts institutions. He was a board member of the Museum of the City of New York (1966-1994); Board of Overseers of Harvard College, Visiting Committees to the Loeb Drama Center (1987-1993); to the Department of Fine Arts (1971-1996); and to the Fogg Art Museum (1971-1973). Loeb has served on the International Council of the Museum of Modern Art (1962-present). He served on the President's Advisory Committee to the College Art Association (1994- 2000). Loeb serves on the board of directors (2002–present) and as a member of the investment committee (2003–present) of the American Scandinavian Foundation, where he has lectured on Scandinavian Art (1984–present).

Danish art

Loeb began collecting Danish art when he was appointed ambassador to Denmark. The assembled collection consists primarily of 18th, 19th and early 20th-century paintings, containing representative art from the “Danish Golden Age” (1820–1850), and including paintings by Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, Martinus Rørbye, Constantin Hansen, Christen Købke and Wilhelm Marstrand. Of primary importance in the collection are works from The Modern Breakthrough period (1870–1890) in Danish art, with works by the Skagen Painters including Anna Ancher, Vilhelm Hammershøi and Peder Severin Krøyer.

Danish Art Catalog

In 2005, Loeb commissioned the publication of a catalog of his collection. Images of 128 paintings are accompanied by critical commentary and research on Loeb’s collection by Danish art historians Elisabeth Fabritius, Suzanne Ludvigsen and Mette Thelle, and American art historian Benedicte Hallowell. The catalog also contains detailed biographies of the 63 artists represented. It is available in its entirety online at the "Ambassador John L. Loeb Jr. Danish Art Collection" website.^[19] Loeb also supported the publication of In Another Light: Danish Painting in the Nineteenth Century, by Patricia G. Berman New York: Vendome Press, 2007. This book was also published in London and in Denmark; in London, it was declared one of the ten best art books of the year.

Awards and honors

Upon leaving his ambassadorial post in 1983, Margrethe II of Denmark gave Loeb the Danish equivalent of a knighthood through the awarding of the Grand Cross of the Order of the Dannebrog.^[13] She also bestowed a Danish crest and coat-of-arms. The Danish crest and arms were used as the basis for the British crest and coat-of-arms given to the ambassador by Queen Elizabeth II and registered with the College of Heralds. In 1994 Elizabeth II awarded Loeb the honorary rank of Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (C.B.E) for his contributions to the Winston Churchill Foundation.

Loeb speaks frequently on religious freedom in America. In 2010, he was invited to deliver the Herbert H. Lehman Memorial Lecture at Lehman College CUNY. He was the first direct relative of Herbert H. Lehman to receive the honor. His lecture, Beyond Tolerance,^[14] was an exploration of the history and contemporary relevance of George Washington's 1790 “Letter to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport Rhode Island.” He also has an honoraryDoctor of Laws degree from Georgetown University Law School (1980) and was Person of the Year in 2005 at the Danish American Society.^[15][16]

Personal life

Loeb has been married three times.^[17] In 1960, he married his first wife, Nina Sundby, a Swede,^[18] with whom he has a daughter, Alexandra Loeb Driscoll (who is married to Joseph Edward Driscoll and has two children, Aidan Edward and Allegra Frances Driscoll).^[17] His second wife was Meta Martindell Harrsen with whom he has a son, Nicholas Mears Loeb. In 2011, Loeb married his third wife, Sharon J. Handler.^[17]

Loeb belongs to the Royal Swedish Yacht Club in Sweden; the Royal Danish Yacht Club; Brooks’s and White’s in the UK; Lyford Key Club in Nassau Bahamas; Sleepy Hollow Country Club and Century Country Club in New York City; and Harmonie Club, Knickerbocker Club, Harvard Club, and Downtown Association, all in New York City.

References

External links

• George Washington Institute for Religious Freedom
• Personal website