In Memoriam: Jacob Hiatt, 1905-2001

Released on February 27, 2001

Friends, beneficiaries remember diminutive 'dream maker'

By Dennis Nealon

"The Brandeis community has lost a good, generous and caring friend."

With that mournful sentiment, Brandeis President Jehuda Reinharz announced the loss of Jacob "Jack" Hiatt, who died at his home in Worcester, Mass., Feb. 25, at age 95.

Reinharz was one of several speakers at a service for Hiatt a day after his death.

"In Jack Hiatt, hard work, generosity of spirit, and concern for the well-being of others stood the test of time for over nine decades of a well-lived life. I have known few men like him," said Reinharz. "I will miss our wonderful conversations and I will miss the perennial twinkle in his eye.

"Like his biblical counterpart," he added, "Jacob Hiatt was also a quiet man, who traveled to a new land to seek his fortune, but in so doing never forgot his roots and his people and who always gave back for the betterment of us all."

To hear his friends tell it, Hiatt was wholly altruistic, a man whose devotion to Brandeis and many other groups and institutions was matched by a life-long mission to create understanding among disparate groups of people.

More than anything, they say, Jacob Hiatt was a man who lifted others up. He spent his lifetime doing that and never cared about the credit due him.

A quiet man who emigrated from Lithuania in the mid 1930s and lost his parents and other relatives in the Shoah, Hiatt also is being remembered as a man whose physical stature belied his role as a giant in his support of education and other philanthropy.

While Brandeis will forever be grateful for Hiatt's service and generosity, his reach extended far beyond the hilly campus 10 miles west of Boston. After becoming a successful businessman in the United States - he was chairman of the Rand-Whitney Container Corp., one of the nation's largest manufacturers of paper containers - Hiatt selflessly gave millions of dollars to education programs abroad, in Israel, in the city of Worcester, at Brandeis University and the College of the Holy Cross, and at Clark University and Assumption College.

The city of Worcester was among his chief beneficiaries. His giving there has become the stuff of legend, and prompted a Boston Globe headline writer 11 years ago to dub him "Worcester's dream maker." By 1990, Hiatt had given nearly $30 million to improve the education and the arts for the people of that city.

Lawrence H. Fuchs, the Meyer and Walter Jaffe Professor of American Civilization and Politics at Brandeis, and close friend of Hiatt and his late wife, Frances, recalled that Hiatt never wanted any credit for his donations, but did affix his wife's name to some after her death in 1980.

"He should never be underestimated," saidFuchs. "His broad humanity, his ecumenism, were very, very great."

Fuchs remembered his old friend as being "very sweet, and very clear and sharp in his thinking."

He recalled Hiatt's generosity "at the personal level," and said he admired his intellect, as well. "He read in several languages. He would read at night."

In the roughly five decades during which he was associated with Brandeis University, Hiatt gave selflessly and generously to create scholarships and fellowships for deserving students. There is a long list of things he helped to support, endow or create over the years. His major Brandeis benefactions, among many, many more in the United States and abroad, are the Hiatt Career Center and the Myra and Robert Kraft and Jacob Hiatt Chair of Christian Studies.

The latter was established in 1990 when Hiatt and his daughter and son-in-law, Myra and Robert Kraft endowed a unique program in comparative religion at Brandeis and Holy Cross. The donors at the time said they hoped the professorships "will afford students the opportunity to learn about the history and culture of people of different religious convictions, and thereby diminish the bias and prejudice that only hurts us as human beings."

Hiatt was sending a message from his heart.

"He was an extraordinary man in many, many respects," said Ricardo B. Morant, the Minnie and Harold L. Fierman Professor of Psychology and Volen National Center for Complex Systems. A close friend of Hiatt's for some 30 years, Morant recalled that Hiatt "wanted to help people directly."

Hiatt was elected a Brandeis Trustee in 1966, and served, with what Reinharz called "enormous commitment, dedication and generosity," as chairman of the board from 1971 to 1977. In 1977, the University gave Hiatt an honorary degree at its 26th commencement, citing among other things "his commitment to young people and his abiding belief in our present and our future."

Before coming to the United States, Hiatt was an assistant district attorney and circuit court judge in Lithuania. Morant remembered that Hiatt's interest in Catholicism grew from his time spent in parish houses in Lithuania, which were the only places he could stay when he had to travel on his official rounds. In those he made friends with priests and parishioners.

At his funeral service in Worcester Feb. 26, speakers included Reinharz and former Holy Cross President Rev. John Brooks, whom Fuchs recalls may have been Hiatt's best friend. Brooks said the loss of Hiatt leaves a void in the many who knew him.

Hiatt, in addition to his daughter Myra, '64, a Brandeis Trustee, leaves a daughter, Janice; a sister, Goldie Rassen; four grandchildren and six great grandchildren.