Capitol Words a project of the Sunlight Foundation

Sen. Barbara Boxer

Mr. President, today I ask my colleagues to join me in honoring the life and legacy of Warren Hellman, a San Francisco financier, philanthropist, and community leader who died last month at age 77 from complications of leukemia.

In addition to its spectacular beauty, the City of San Francisco is known around the world for its great heart and free spirit, its celebration of diversity, and its charm. In recent years, perhaps no San Franciscan has embodied his beloved city more than Warren Hellman. He was a fantastically successful businessman and investor who liked to dress casually, ride horses, run 100-mile races, and play bluegrass banjo.

Here is how Warren was remembered by the Bay Citizen, the free newspaper he founded when he felt that local news coverage was in decline:

A rugged iconoclast whose views on life rarely failed to surprise, Hellman was a lifelong Republican who supported labor unions, an investment banker whose greatest joy was playing songs of the working class in a bluegrass band, and a billionaire who wanted to pay more taxes and preferred the company of crooners and horsemen who shared his love of music and cross-country `ride and tie' racing.

Warren Hellman was born in New York and raised in San Francisco. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley and earned an MBA at Harvard Business School. After becoming the youngest director in the history of Lehman Brothers, Warren moved home to California and co-founded the private equity firm of Hellman & Friedman. Though he made a lot of money, he much preferred giving it away. Warren said that money was ``like manure: If you spread it around, good things will grow--and if you pile it up, it just smells bad.''

Among the many institutions Warren helped grow were the San Francisco Free Clinic, the Hellman Fellows Program at UC Berkeley, and his Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival, where more than half a million people come each year to hear free concerts from top entertainers and from Warren's band, the Wronglers.

He served as chairman and trustee emeritus of The San Francisco Foundation; advisory board member of the Walter A. Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley; trustee of the UC Berkeley Foundation; trustee emeritus of The Brookings Institution; board member of the Committee on JOBS; member of the Board of Directors and Executive Committee of the Jewish Community Federation; chairman of the Jewish Community Endowment Fund; board member of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and the Bay Area Council; and chairman of Voice of Dance.

Warren also led many efforts to support civic initiatives in San Francisco, from the underground parking garage that saved two major museums in Golden Gate Park to the broad-based campaign to reform San Francisco's city employee pension system.

On behalf of the people of California, who have benefitted so much from Warren Hellman's great generosity and public sprit, I send my deepest gratitude and condolences to his wife, Patricia Christina ``Chris'' Hellman; son Marco ``Mick'' Hellman; daughters Frances Hellman, Judith Hellman, and Patricia Hellman Gibbs; his sister, Nancy Hellman Bechtle; and his 12 grandchildren. Warren's passing is a great loss to his family, his friends, and the city he loved and served so well.