GERTRUDE G. MICHELSON

MICHELSON--Gertrude G. "G.G.", who rose from humble origins to become a trail-blazing executive and an influential presence at the highest levels of American business, academia, philanthropy, and public service, died peacefully at her Greenwich Village home on Saturday morning. Born in 1925 in Jamestown, NY, G.G. graduated from Penn State University and from Columbia Law School, where she was one of six women in the class of 1947. At Columbia Law, she met and married Horace Michelson, a classmate whose quiet brilliance perfectly complemented G.G.'s sparkling extroversion. He introduced her to another great love, the New York Yankees, for whom she developed what this newspaper would decades later describe as an "unswerving devotion." After law school, G.G. joined the Executive Training Squad at R.H. Macy & Co., the retailer, where she would continue to work, in a series of increasingly senior positions in labor relations, human resources, and external affairs, until her 1992 retirement (She remained a Senior Advisor and Director until the company's merger with Federated Department Stores, at which point she joined that company's board). With each appointment, to Vice President in 1963, then to Senior Vice President for Labor and Consumer Relations in 1970 and to Macy's New York Executive Committee and Board of Directors that same year, G.G. was almost invariably the first female to have risen so high. But she quickly won over those unaccustomed to dealing with women in managerial roles, establishing a reputation as a firm but fair-minded labor negotiator (she was responsible for collective bargaining with the Teamsters and fourteen union locals, representing a total of twenty thousand employees) and helped Macy's successfully navigate the workforce challenges associated with the legal and social upheavals of the 1960s and the consumer movement of the 1970s. In 1971, G.G. was named to the Board of Directors of the Quaker Oats Corporation and over the course of the next three decades she served as director of numerous important American corporations, including General Electric, Goodyear Tire & Rubber, the Stanley Works, Chubb Insurance, Irving Trust, and Harper & Row; and as President of the Board of Overseers of TIAA-CREF; a member of the Executive Board of the American Arbitration Association and a Governor of the American Stock Exchange. When these responsibilities took G.G. to board meetings and similar events, Horace, by then a high-powered partner at a New York law firm but an ever-stalwart booster of his spouse's career, played his assigned role, taking his place at luncheons and garden tours organized for the "wives" of the corporations' directors. G.G's commitments and leadership roles extended beyond corporate boardrooms. She served on the boards of Spellman College and of the RAND Corporation, whose Graduate University awarded her an honorary Ph.D. in 2002. In 1980, she was named to the Board of Trustees of Columbia University and was elected its Chair in 1989 the first woman to lead the overseers of an Ivy League institution. It was during her tenure on the board that the University decided to admit women to Columbia College, after 229 years as a male-only institution. She was named to the National Commission on the Public Service; served as Deputy Chair of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York; was a long-serving Director of the New York City Partnership and a Director of the Better Business Bureau of Metropolitan New York; served on the Emergency Financial Control Board, the state entity established in the wake of the New York City fiscal crisis of the 1970s; and was appointed to numerous commissions by Mayors Koch, Dinkins, and Bloomberg. In these many roles, G.G. endeared herself to colleagues through her sharp intelligence, geniality, and commitment to hard work. She approached board appointments as work, not honors, and discharged her responsibilities diligently. Surrounded by other powerful leaders accustomed to having their own way, G.G., true to her background in progressive labor relations and consumer affairs, earned a reputation as a conciliator par excellence though not, as a colleague emphasized, one of the "peace at any price" stripe. An enduring aspect of G.G.'s professional legacy stems from her role, spanning decades, as a mentor and friend to newly-minted Macy's executives and to a much broader circle of younger people who sought her out for advice and support as they began to make their way in the business, philanthropic, and academic worlds. Seeing these people advance to positions of leadership was a source of particular pride for G.G., and they--and the hundreds of rank-and-file Macy's employees whom she had come to know and help in myriad ways repaid her generosity with warm friendship and steadfast loyalty. G.G. was a devoted mother and grandmother and a doting great-grandmother and a central, beloved figure in two unusually close-knit extended families, her own and her husband's. She is survived by her sister, Mildred Terr, of Las Vegas, New Mexico; her daughter, Barbara Michelson and son-in-law Jim Heffron; her three granddaughters Phoebe, Sarah, and Claude; and four great-grandchildren, as well as legion friends, admirers, and others whose lives she enriched. Her husband Horace and her daughter Martha predeceased her. Plans for a memorial service will be announced at a later date. Those who wish may make donations in GG.'s memory to Friends Seminary or the Columbia University School of Law.