Harvey L. Schwartz

Harvey L. Schwartz of Harrisville, NH, died on April 13 at the age of 82. He was at home with his daughters and hospice care after a sudden illness. Mr. Schwartz was a business executive with wide-ranging talents. He was born in Brooklyn, NY, on November 4, 1929. His father, Albert, was a roofer, and his mother, Bertha, a homemaker. A child of the depression, he attended Brooklyn College and then Columbia Law School. He began his career in the executive training program of Time, Inc., where he met his wife, Cornelia Whipple Davenport, and worked closely with her father, the writer and editor Russell Davenport. During the Korean War he was stationed in northern Japan, serving with the US Counter-Intelligence Corps. After the war, he moved to Washington, DC, and served as campaign coordinator and general aide to Senator Thruston Morton of Kentucky. In 1958, Mr. Schwartz became a Vice President at Czarnikow Rionda, one of the world’s largest sugar producing and trading companies. He travelled between Washington, Europe, and Cuba until Fidel Castro came to power and finally seized the company’s Cuban assets -- sugar mills, warehouses, and shipping facilities -- in 1960. In 1966, Mr. Schwartz joined the International Basic Economy Corporation, founded by Nelson Rockefeller to promote socially responsible investment in Latin America. He was the company’s chief political and public affairs officer, the Executive Vice President, a member of the Board of Directors and the Executive Committee, and President of IBEC Management Services. In these roles, he was known for his loyalty, integrity, energy, and problem-solving skills. He was a skilled mediator who made all parties feel heard, and he was creative in brokering compromises and solutions. In 1980, after the sale of IBEC to foreign investors, he formed his own consulting agency, Harvey L. Schwartz Associates, advising a range of clients doing business in Latin America. He and his wife, Nell, moved from New York to Harrisville in 1987. Once in New Hampshire, Mr. Schwartz joined the struggle to block a proposed Route 101 bypass through Harrisville; he was by all accounts crucial to its defeat. He chaired the State of NH Health Services Planning Review Board and served on the Board of the NH Housing Finance Authority, where he was Vice Chair at the time of his death. He was Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Franklin Pierce College and a consultant and director for Warwick Mills in New Ipswich. His executive skills included strategic planning, political lobbying, trouble-shooting, and personnel management. Most recently, he directed the High Bridge foundation, a nonprofit organization established by Warwick Mills to help train New Hampshire high school students for a changing and greening economy. Mr. Schwartz contributed his time and expertise to a wide range of business, government, and non-profit enterprises, including the NH Rural Development Council, the Harvard Latin America Debt Program, the Fund for Multinational Management Education, the National Foreign Trade Council, the Pan American Development Foundation, the Council of the Americas, the Organization of American States InterAmerican Development Bank, the US-Mexico Chamber of Commerce, and the Central Bank of Venezuela, among many others. He was a member of the National Press Club and the International Chamber of Commerce, and a senior fellow at the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. Mr. Schwartz’s beloved wife of 45 years predeceased him, dying of heart failure in 2002. He is survived by two daughters, Cornelia Schwartz of Harrisville and Amy Schwartz of Exeter; by a brother-in law, Melvin Luxenberg of Palm Harbor, FL; and by several nieces and nephews and their children.

A private burial was held in Great Barrington, MA on April 17th.