Walter C. Bladstrom

1932 - 2019

Bladstrom, Walter C.
April 5, 1932 - June 4, 2019
Walter C. Bladstrom, 87, died on June 4, 2019 at his home in Sarasota, Florida.
Walter grew up in Chicago. After graduating from high school, he joined the US Marine Corps, attaining the rank of corporal and serving in Korea, where he was wounded. He graduated from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, the first person in his extended family to attend college.
After beginning his career as an investment banker at the New York Life and Allstate insurance companies, he went on to become a partner at Cyrus J. Lawrence in New York. He then bought New Jersey Zinc, a division of Gulf + Western, with a group of partners, and restructured it as Horsehead Industries; and then became a principal in Fulcrum International Ltd., an investment banking firm in Greenwich, CT.
Walter served on the boards of LA Gear, Solid State Equipment, the Humane Society of New York, the Animal Rescue Coalition, and the National Museum of the Marine Corps, of which he was a founding member. He endowed a professorship at the Wharton School, where he and his wife, Anne, also created a scholarship for an undergraduate student interested in entrepreneurship.
In addition to Anne, his wife of 48 years, he leaves a daughter, Evalyn, of Chappaqua, NY; a stepson, Jay Wickersham, of Cambridge, MA; and three grandsons.
Donations in his memory may be made to the Southern Poverty Law Center and the National Museum of the Marine Corps.