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Albert H. Gordon ’23, Harvard’s oldest
living alumnus and a generous donor
to the University,
died in his New York
home on May 1. He
was 107 years old.
Gordon is the
namesake of the
Albert H. Gordon
Track and Tennis
Center and the
Albert H. Gordon
Professorship of
Business Administration
at Harvard
Business School, and served a six-year
term on Harvard’s Board of Overseers—
the second of the University’s two governing
boards.
“He was without a doubt the largest
benefactor of the Harvard track program,”
said cross country and track director
Jason S. Saretsky.
Gordon, who ran freshman track at
Harvard, remained a fitness enthusiast
throughout his long life. He was the oldest
participant in the London marathon and
continued to travel to work four times a
week until he was 105.
“Even at the age of 105, he was still
very sharp and very on top of things,” said
Sartesky, who visited Gordon at his Manhattan
home in 2006. “Mr. Gordon just
had something about him that was very
charismatic and personal.”
Gordon graduated cum laude from
Harvard College in 1923 with distinction
in economics, and was also a Crimson editor.
He graduated third in his HBS class
two years later, according to The New
York Times.
Gordon arrived on Wall Street in time
for the 1929 stock market crash. After
leaving his first job at Goldman Sachs,
Gordon purchased the stock brokerage
firm Kidder, Peabody & Co in 1931 and
led the firm through the Great Depression.
Gordon transformed the company
from a struggling financial institution
into what Forbes magazine called “a minor
powerhouse” in 2005.
John C. Whitehead, former chairman
of Goldman Sachs, described Gordon to
Bloomberg as “a famous business-getter.”
“Work hard and never give up—those
were very valuable lessons I learned from
trying to compete with him,” Whitehead
said.
Gordon served as the CEO of Kidder
until 1976, and worked at Deltec Asset
management LLC until 2006.
Today, one of the main roads into the
business school is named after him.
Throughout his long life, Gordon
continued to give back to his alma mater.
He served as the President of the Harvard
Club of New York, the chairman of the
Harvard College Fund, and was on the executive
committees of the Harvard Varsity
Club and the Friends of Harvard Track.
“All his life, helping people out and
giving away money have been his favorite
things,” Gordon’s grandson John Roberts
told the New York Road Runners club,
where Gordon sat on the board of directors.
“It’s incredible how he’s always looking
for new ways to challenge and improve
himself,” he said.
Gordon was born on July 21, 1901 in
Scituate, Mass. He is survived by three
sons and two daughters. All three sons
participated in varsity sports at Harvard.
—Staff writer Manning Ding can be
reached at ding3@fas.harvard.edu.
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