Jay Fishman, 63, executive chairman and former CEO of Travelers last week died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the progressive neurological disease also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease. Gehrig, the legendary New York Yankees first baseman, died from the disease in 1941 at the age of 37 after having played in 2,130 consecutive baseball games, the latter feat earning him the nickname The Iron Horse.
Diagnosed in 2014, Fishman stepped down as Travelers' CEO last December. Alan Schnitzer, Fishman's successor at the company, called him an "icon among corporate leaders."
Fishman turned around The St. Paul Companies and in 2004 merged it with Travelers, a company he had run while at Citigroup. He led the insurer through turbulent times on Wall Street unscathed. Amid the booms and busts that marked the era coinciding with his ascendancy as an executive in the financial services industry, Fishman steered clear of much of the excessive risk-taking that hobbled or felled many financial institutions.
While prominent big banks like Citigroup and big insurers like AIG collapsed in the financial crisis and required massive bailouts, Travelers hardily weathered the 2008-2009 financial storm and was added mid-2009 to the Dow Jones Industrial Average as its only property and casualty insurance component. Over his last decade at the helm of Travelers, the company's stock outperformed both the S&P 500 index and Berkshire Hathaway common.
After being diagnosed with the debilitating disorder, Fishman joined the battle against ALS, exhibiting his characteristic tenacity and effectiveness. He contributed and raised millions of dollars for a project directed by neurologist Jeffrey Rothstein at Johns Hopkins to use big data techniques to identify characteristics of different versions of ALS. Fishman also backed a Boston Children's Hospital project that banks the voices of ALS patients so that when the patients lose the ability to speak they can rely on computers that will speak for them in their own voices.
Fishman and his wife Randy recently donated $3 million to the University of Pennsylvania to support comprehensive at-home respiratory care for adult patients with chronic respiratory insufficiency due to neurological, muscular, skeletal or chronic respiratory diseases, including ALS. Earlier this month, he served as co-chairman of the PGA Tour's Travelers Championship golf tournament, the main charitable beneficiary of which was the ALS Clinic at the Hospital for Special Care (HSC) in New Britain, Connecticut. In honor of Fishman, in the midst of the tournament 2-time Masters champion Bubba Watson pledged $100,000 to fight ALS.
"You can be a skeptic and say, 'Well, the only reason he's doing it is that he has the disease,'" Fishman said in June. "The answer is, 'Yeah, of course.' If not me, then who? If I'm not going to reflect all the good things that have happened to me in my life and find a way to plow that back to help people deal with what I personally know is a horrible disease, then shame on me."
Having an old friend battling the disease for three years now, count us not among the skeptics. If you'd like to join the movement to end ALS, there's no better time than summer's end to cool off and learn more about the ALS Association's undying mission.
Robert Stead
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