MEYERHOFF, HARVEY

MEYERHOFF, HARVEY (1927– ), U.S. businessman, communal leader, philanthropist. The middle child and only son of Joseph and Rebecca Witten Meyerhoff, Harvey "Bud" Meyerhoff was born in Baltimore, Maryland. He attended Baltimore public schools and the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He settled in Baltimore and joined his father in the family-owned firm known as the Property Sales Company (later the Joseph Meyerhoff Corporation). As a partner, Meyerhoff led the firm to focus on developing shopping centers and apartment buildings, and oversaw the merger of the Meyerhoff Corporation with Monumental Life Insurance Company, which became Monumental Properties, Inc. in 1969.

In 1987 Meyerhoff was appointed by President Ronald Reagan to succeed Elie Wiesel as chairperson of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council (ushmm). When he assumed office, expectations were high but little had been achieved with regard to constructing a building, developing the permanent exhibition, and raising the requisite funds. Meyerhoff strengthened the organization's fund-raising efforts and met its fiscal goals, pushed for distinctive architectural treatment of the museum building, and navigated complex matters of exhibition content.

Meyerhoff 's leadership of the ushmm came in the midst of a long career of service to his native city of Baltimore and its Jewish community as well as national causes. He served as chairman of the Johns Hopkins Hospital (1987), the Central Maryland United Way Campaign (1975), and the Associated Jewish Charities Campaign. He was president of the board of trustees of Baltimore's Park School, a non-sectarian, private elementary and high school, from 1972 to 1975. He played a leadership role in such diverse organizations as the National Conference of Christians and Jews, Maryland Region; the United Jewish Appeal; the Baltimore County Advisory Committee on Mass Transportation; the Baltimore Convention Bureau; the Baltimore League for the Handicapped (president, 1961–64); the National Association of Homebuilders Research Foundation (president, 1965–66); and the United States Rent Advisory Board.

Meyerhoff 's wife, lyn (1927–1988), was also a prominent community leader. Long active in Maryland and national Republican politics, she was appointed by President Reagan in 1983 as a United States public delegate to the United Nations 38^th General Assembly. She was also very active in many philanthropic initiatives including the National Aquarium, the Digestive Disease Center at Johns Hopkins Hospital, and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Harvey and Lyn Meyerhoff were following in Joseph Meyerhoff 's footsteps when they established a charitable foundation, The Harvey M. and Lyn P. Meyerhoff Fund, in 1972. Seven years later, they broke new philanthropic ground by setting up a separate fund to be administered jointly by their four children, who named their fund The Children of Harvey M. and Lyn P. Meyerhoff Philanthropic Fund. It was joined in 1999 by an additional fund known as The Grandchildren of Harvey M. and Lyn P. Meyerhoff Philanthropic Fund.

bibliography:

E.T. Linenthal, Preserving Memory: The Struggle to Create America's Holocaust Museum (1995); K.L. Falk, If I Ran the World: A Biography of Lyn P. Meyerhoff (2006).

[Karen L. Falk (2^nd ed.)]