Harvey M. “Bud” Meyerhoff celebrated his 80th birthday Saturday night, surrounded by about a hundred family members and friends saluting him for a life conducted with breathtaking generosity. He is the Enoch Pratt, or the Johns Hopkins, of our time. He does not take many bows, or give many memorable speeches. He just gives enormous sums of money to great causes and makes certain the money is spent wisely, and this is how he makes a life.

He has given tens of millions to universities, hospitals and museums, to the Maryland Zoo and the National Aquarium and the Baltimore Symphony. He has given enormously to the state of Israel —and without the help of Meyerhoff and his late wife, Lyn, there would be no United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. That specific assessment comes from Sara Bloomfield. She is the Holocaust Museum’s director.

In the Jewish religion, some of this is called tzedakah. In any religious faith, it is the stuff of civilization, of looking beyond one’s own needs to help those around you.

“He’s always told us, the pursuit of the dollar is not what’s most important,” Buffy Minkin, one of Meyerhoff’s 10 grandchildren, said Saturday night at the birthday party at the Baltimore County home of Meyerhoff’s daughter Terry Rubenstein. “It’s the impact you make on the world.”

This story continues below
Advertisement

“He always said the greater good of the community overrides any self-interest,” his daughter Jill (Zoh) Hieronimus told the gathering.

Sen. Barbara Mikulski was there. She authored a U.S. Senate citation declaring Meyerhoff’s life a classic American story of impoverished immigrants finding their way in the new country, and helping to reinforce the country’s greatness.

Meyerhoff, sitting with his wife, Phyllis, listened to some of the tributes and said, “You hear the accolades and wonder if they’re talking about the same person. I don’t deserve the praise.”

There’s been plenty of it over the past week or so. The Holocaust Museum honored him the other night, and so did the Johns Hopkins University and the hospital. He’s contributed enormously to all these places.

“Baltimore is extremely important to him,” Fred Lazarus, director of the Maryland Institute College of Art, said not long ago. “And he knows that a great city needs great institutions. He has a sense of tradition, which he inherited from his father. There’s a sense that he’s a civic leader, and not just a corporate leader.”

The father was Joseph Meyerhoff, who carried the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra on his back for so many years that its concert hall is named for him. Over the years, the Meyerhoffs have given about $25 million to the symphony. Father and son made a fortune in real estate. But the son, selling the firm when he was 52 to devote his life to philanthropy, learned a lesson beyond business from the father.

“My father was committed to giving back,” Meyerhoff said. “If you fared reasonably well in life, you ought to set about repaying the community that had helped you reach your goals. To fail to do that was, in our family’s philosophy, a serious dereliction of being a citizen.”

Americans are givers. The National Philanthropic Trust says 89 percent of American households give charitably each year. Across the country, there are more than a million charitable foundations, including about 39,000 private foundations, the majority of them run by families.

According to a Brandeis University study in the 1990s, about two-thirds of these private family foundations give $50,000 to $250,000 a year, while about one-quarter give more than $250,000. The Meyerhoff family foundations donate millions year after year.

And they’ve given when it hasn’t been easy. Two decades ago, Meyerhoff was racing around the country, trying to raise money for the Holocaust Museum, when the family learned that Bud’s first wife, Lyn, was dying of cancer.

Bud rushed to her side, hoping to comfort her through the worst of it. She sent him back out to work, insisting there were more important things in life than one woman’s illness. Besides the millions they personally gave to the museum, Bud helped raise $150 million more.

But there were difficult times before that. In Baltimore’s post-riot years, when many were leaving the city, the Meyerhoffs continued to give generously to institutions that helped stabilize the town — and then helped create its renaissance.

So it’s a fine thing to see an 80-year-old man honored — especially since he’s spent so many years honoring those around him with his remarkable generosity.

Michael Olesker is an award-winning columnist, author and former commentator on local radio and teevision.