My "Who-ness" (part 2 of 4)

My father was the 4th richest American in history, a ranking derived by calculating his net worth as a percentage of GNP.? On a couple lists he's ranked 5th and 6th, leading me to guess the full extent of his real estate holdings weren’t considered.*

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Because of his vision (100 years ahead of his time!) and wealth (America's first self-made multi-millionaire and, at the time, richest citizen), I had a late-primary and secondary school education that would be difficult to match—including academic, vocational, business, music & art, athletics, religious and, even, military tracks—all within a single 42-acre facility over a period of seven years. ?

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I was not alone.? I have 22,000 brothers and sisters who, since 1848, were similarly raised in our Philadelphia home.? My father's combined progeny over 175 years equals in size the population of a major American city.? And because we all arrived at his home from economically struggling (mostly fatherless) households, think of our father—our benefactor—as having forestalled almost incalculable economic desperation, and made millions of productive lives possible.

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Who are we?? We are the sons, daughters, and progeny of Stephen Girard (1750-1831), who left his entire estate to found and run in perpetuity Girard College (for Orphans), which recently celebrated its 175th year of serving children from economically distressed backgrounds.

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No American in history can claim a progeny the size and scope of Girard's, because no other UHNW American, other than Milton Hershey (1857-1945), ever dedicated his or her potentially transformative estate to raising indigent children.

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Girard and Hershey, both childless, correctly perceived that the greatest threat to these United States—which they so loved and whose principles and freedoms allowed them to build fortunes—is its permanently marginalized children, its youth bereft of opportunity, its young adults with little to no prospect of gaining an economic toehold and becoming productive citizens. ?

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Girard—the new nation's largest shipping magnate, merchant, and banker (hey, Jeff, you forgot the bank!)—and Hershey are America’s two greatest unsung patriots and heroes.? Both hail from Pennsylvania's grounded and understated, if not self-effacing, Quaker culture and, unlike the robber barons (who, through their estates, constructed museums, libraries and park preserves), Girard and Hershey provided refuge, structure, and a robust education for the nation's least fortunate.?

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Doctors, lawyers, judges, accountants, university professors & presidents, teachers, journalists, tradesmen, business owners of every imaginable flavor, ministers & priests, civil servants, military leaders, Fortune 500 CEOs, and accomplished artists: Girard and Hershey built the nation’s citizenry, while the baron’s built buildings.? This is why the moniker "Father of American Philanthropy" rests comfortably on the shoulders of Stephen Girard, and not on one of them.

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There are 400,000+ children in state custody.? Of these, no fewer than 100,000 should be in schools like Girard's and Hershey's.? One hundred thousand is not a random number.? We know, anecdotally from Girard College’s 175 years in operation, this: between one-in-three and one-in-four children could make good use of an excellent boarding school education.? We should serve them.

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In fact, by educating 25% of the kids in state custody in excellent boarding schools—the 25% for whom a boarding school education is the better path—we will depressurize the unwieldy, failing foster care system, specifically as a result of dramatically reducing social worker caseloads, and enabling "the system" both to be more selective in its enlistment of foster parents, and better able to provide them with comprehensive and ongoing training and other high-touch support.?

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Right now, a staggering number of kids aging out of foster care are headed for homelessness, drugs, crime, early pregnancy, welfare, and prison.? Chew on these two nuggets: not even 2% of former foster care youth complete college, and a staggering 25% of all prison inmates have spent time in foster care.? The last nugget alone makes the entire economic case for prioritizing this domestic issue above all others. ??

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Question: who in the United States in 2024 will step up to be the 21st century's Stephen Girard and Milton Hershey?? Perhaps our self-made and recently-minted UHNW women will lead the way.?

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A modest calculation: it will take $3 billion to get the job done.? A single billionaire could do it.? So could three splitting the tab.? Six billionaires, of course, could do it handily, and 12 could collaborate without feeling a pinch.? And a mere $3 million would enable us to create the blueprint and action plan.

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Stephen Girard: The Life and Times of America’s First Tycoon, by Greg Wilson, should be mandatory reading for all nine-figure millionaires and billionaires.? Why?? Because it’s a biographical treasure capable of delivering a combined dose of humility and inspiration.?

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Girard was the first-ever businessman to vertically integrate business; he’s the public health pioneer who single-handedly led the nation out of its first pandemic—the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1792; he privately financed the War of 1812 (the only American citizen ever to finance a major war personally); he envisioned and funded in perpetuity Girard College, which has spawned over seven million productive, versus (likely) problematic, lives.?

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Heck, read Wilson’s book because Girard raised me, and my firm gets the credit for having catalyzed, and been the primary capacity-builder in, the world of walkathon fundraising, which generated, at peak, over $2 billion per year to fund the nation’s many public health organizations, and enabled millions of Americans of modest and minimal means to be philanthropists in their own right.

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A final word:? I am ever-mindful of and grateful for the gifts received from my biological father, who died when I was six-years-old; they are numerous and profound.? But they are neither material nor temporal in any way, shape or form.? I was raised by Stephen Girard, and want others like me to be raised by others like him, too.

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(This is the second in a series of four posts.? My next one will discuss life growing up in a boarding school. ?Stay tuned!)

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*See Wikipedia’s “List of richest Americans in history” for all the lists.