Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Lenfest’s legacy lives on in Chester County
Philanthropist H.F. ‘Gerry’ Lenfest helped establish the ChesLen Preserve
NEWLIN » Sue McKenna has grown accustomed to taking her dog, Chester, for morning walks across the meadows at ChesLen Preserve, the grand open space not far from her West Bradford home. In nice weather, she and her family might be seen putting their kayak in the Brandywine Creek there for a ride. It’s not unusual for her to bump into friends there as well, starting their constitutionals as she is finishing hers. The land is intricately involved with her life.
“That property is so immensely important for the community,” McKenna said Monday, marveling at its hills and valleys, its wooden glades and river views. “It is such a tremendous resource. Its beauty, the peace and serenity you can get just from walking along there, is so welcoming. It is a gem.”
Asked what she would say
to the man who is so intimately responsible for ChesLen’s existence that his name is a part of its, McKenna fairly gushed.
“I would thank him profusely for his generosity and his commitment to the people of Chester County,” she said. “For that space to be retained is huge. It means so much for everyone across the area to have that open space.”
McKenna and those like her who would extend their gratitude to that man, H.F. “Gerry” Lenfest, will have to do so in their thoughts and prayers, not in person. Lenfest, the cable television pioneer who turned a fortune into a wellspring for philanthropic ventures, including the establishment of the 1,282-acre ChesLen Preserve, died Sunday. He was 88.
Lenfest was taken Sunday from his Rittenhouse Square home to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead of complications from chronic illness, said Fred Stein, a family spokesman. A memorial service will be planned in Philadelphia in September.
“There is likely not an organization or charity in Philadelphia that didn’t benefit from the Lenfest family’s generosity in some way,” said Gov. Tom Wolf. “Gerry was a great human being and an even better citizen.”
Lenfest and his wife, Marguerite, made about $1.2 billion when they sold Suburban Cable to Comcast Corp. in 2000. The Lenfests immediately set out to give away the fortune. By 2014, Lenfest estimated he had given away $1.1 billion.
The Lenfests gave to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Barnes Foundation, Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts and Lenfest’s alma maters: Mercersburg Academy, Washington and Lee University and Columbia University. Wilson College, Marguerite Lenfest’s alma mater, also received funds. Lenfest also gave $50 million to champion the new Museum of the American Revolution, which opened in April 2017 and, he felt, provided the “missing link” to tie together the city’s historic sites.
Though the Lenfests lived a luxurious life with yachts, expensive cars and multiple homes, friends described them as down-toearth. They spent much of their time at their house in Huntingdon Valley, which they bought for $35,000 in 1966. With no help, the Lenfests cooked for guests.
The creation of the ChesLen Preserve is among his most important gifts, says Molly Morrison, the president of Natural Lands, the conservancy group which maintains the property, which straddles Newlin and East Marlborough.
“It is such a conservation legacy of Gerry’s in Chester County, to have ChesLen preserved and accessible” said Morrison on Monday, recalling the events that led to its establishment. “I was saddened to learn of Gerry’s passing. He was generous with his resources, but he also had a generous spirit.”
In the 1980s, the Chester County commissioners, for whom Morrison worked as a chief aide, had acquired 500 acres of land across the Brandywine Creek from the Embreeville Center complex. Plans were to turn the property into a county park, but the obstacle that bedeviled the county was where to put public access to the land. One spot was along nearby Cannery Road, through property that Lenfest had purchased in 1987, one of the last parcels of the historic King Ranch.
Morrison said she contacted Lenfest about possibly selling the county land along the road that it could use as a way into the planned park, but he consistently declined.
“He was always very gracious, and listened carefully to our requests,” she said. “But he always told us he had bought the property — sight unseen, he liked to say — as an investment.” A golf course. A large lot development. Something. He didn’t sell.
It was after Morrison had moved her career to Natural Lands that she was contacted by Lenfest himself with a proposal: If she were to convince the county to give up its 500 acres in Embreeville, he would combine it with his 582 acres in Unionville. More than that, he would write a check to endow the land as a conservation preserve for the public. “It was a win-win,” she said. “It was an opportunity to make it publicly accessible at no cost to the taxpayers, and to have it endowed.”
ChesLen is now among the most visited of all of Natural Lands sites across the region, with more than 50,000 visitors a year. “People love it,” Morrison said. “They come back. They discover it.” Not only are there now five points of entry, there is a canoe launch site, an environmental education center, and a children’s environmental playground.
“Gerry shared his passions with the region, be they education, be they the arts and culture, or be they land conservation,” Morrison said. “He was a leader in philanthropy, and the things he supported were the things he truly believed were life-altering, and were necessities.”
Harold FitzGerald “Gerry” Lenfest and his twin sister, Marie, were born in 1930 in Jacksonville, Fla., but soon moved to Scarsdale, N.Y., where their father worked in the shipping industry.
When Lenfest was 13, the family moved to a farm near Lambertville,
N.J., where Lenfest had no shortage of chores. He went to Flemington High School and graduated from Mercersburg Academy in southcentral Pennsylvania.
He graduated from Washington and Lee with a degree in economics in 1953, served with the Navy in Norfolk, Virginia, and got his law degree from Columbia.
He worked for a New York law firm before landing a job in 1965 with Walter Annenberg’s Triangle Publications, which owned TV Guide, Seventeen magazine, several TV and radio stations, and cable franchises.
In 1973, Annenberg decided to sell the cable assets. Lenfest, with the help of two investors, ended up buying the system in Lebanon, Pennsylvania.
“I was editorial director and publisher of Seventeen magazine and I had an office on Park Avenue. I had a good salary,” Lenfest recalled in 2000. “I left all that to work out of my basement for 12 years, not nationally known, not a good salary. I used to sleep on the sofa in Lebanon, because I couldn’t afford a hotel room.”
That one system in Lebanon eventually became Suburban Cable, the 11thlargest cable company in the country.
Lenfest expanded slowly at first. He grew the system in Lebanon, set up cable franchises in towns around Philadelphia and by 1981 the company had about 40,000 subscribers. The company acquired systems in and around San Francisco and pushed hard to expand in the Philadelphia area.
By the time Lenfest sold Suburban to Comcast in 2000, it had 1.2 million subscribers.