Was stephen d hassenfeld gay

A Decrease font size. A Reset font size. A Increase font size. While his buttoned-down older brother Stephen ran Hasbro Inc. Whatever the difference in their temperaments, his older brother Stephen was his best friend, his longtime housemate, and his senior partner in managing the company founded by their grandfather and great-uncle in It was Stephen who, inlured Alan to Hasbro from the University of Pennsylvania campus at a time when Alan, a creative writing major flushed with sixties rebelliousness, professed no use for big business.

It was Stephen who had made Alan president of Hasbro in And it was Stephen with whom Alan spoke by phone or in person every day, even though Alan spent perhaps half his time overseas. We disagreed, but we always tackled problems together. But fate had other plans for the Hassenfeld brothers.

His situation was rare but not unique in the annals of Was stephen d hassenfeld gay family business. As a year-old novice inyoung Field was rushed to Chicago from the East for accelerated grooming after his father, the manic-depressive Marshall Field IV, died suddenly a possible suicide at age Ted Field.

In life as in business, the unpredictable inevitably occurs sooner or later. Even the youngest, most vigorous chief executive can be hit by a truck or die in a plane crash, so astute companies learn to plan for the unexpected. That story should have been put to bed long ago.

In any case, Alan — unlike Punch Sulzberger or Marshall Field V, and contrary to the loose-cannon image he had developed — was far more qualified to assume control than most observers imagined. If Alan seemed too sensitive for the executive suite — the sort of fellow who for more than 20 years wore two rubber bands on his wrist in memory of a girlfriend who died in an auto accident when he was 16, and who answered condolence notes with three page handwritten letters — he also possessed precisely the sort of personal touch that a creative company like Hasbro needs.

Stephen and Alan were actually the third set of brothers to run Hasbro. By the s, when Stephen and Alan were both on board, the renamed Hasbro Industries had created such perennial winners as GI Joe the first doll for boys and Mr. Potato Head, which subsequently blossomed into an entire Potato Head family.

Hasbro had also cultivated the casual culture of a family business in style as well as fact — the kind of company where executives wear open-collared sportshirts to the office, and where employees are invited to Hassenfeld weddings and bar mitzvahs and given financial help for sickness, college bills, or family problems.

Most of her energy is devoted to her work as president of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which took her to Moscow three times in to deal with Jewish refugee matters. But he wanted to make sure we learned, so he threw Alan and me into the water and let us make mistakes.

Interview with G. Wayne Miller

But because Stephen and Alan learned from their mistakes, Hasbro roared back in the eighties — acquiring such household names as Milton Bradley, Playskool, Child Guidance toys, and Coleco Industries, the maker of Cabbage Patch dolls. A bigger toy chest helps protect Hasbro from the boom-and-bust cycles that plague most companies in the fickle toy business.

Throughout the seventies and eighties, Stephen and Alan seemed to complement each other nearly perfectly. Stephen — quiet, demure, disciplined — concentrated on finance, product development, and marketing. His approach was to take a toy that had faded in the U.

Throughout most of the seventies and eighties the bachelor brothers shared living quarters — a waterfront home in Bristol, R. Just as Merrill Hassenfeld granted his son Stephen the freedom to fail, so Stephen extended the same freedom to Alan — apparently with the same positive results.