Mentor: Life and Legacy of Joe Rosenfield

by George Drake

This is a readable, often absorbing biography of a big man from a small college. The College is Grinnell, in central Iowa. The man, Joseph Rosenfield. The author draws us ineluctably into his story as we grasp the setting of a private liberal arts college, originally religious based or “sectarian”, as were so many of its peers, from Harvard and Yale to Oberlin, Carleton, Pomona and others. The college and its ethic of service had a profound impact on Joseph Rosenfield, perhaps because he was raised to appreciate commitment to community and the public. He was the product of four Jewish merchant families who arrived in the state in the 19th century. Those families began a culture of integrity in their business lives and of service to their communities in smaller Iowa cities and then Des Moines. Rosenfield’s years at Grinnell in the 1920s led to a life-long love affair with the college. He was there at a time when Grinnell produced a gold-winning Olympic athlete, an internationally celebrated men’s glee club, and was an epicenter for the “Social Gospel Movement” which produced Harry Hopkins who went on to be Franklin Roosevelt’s alter ego in the New Deal and World War II. But after he went on to law practice, the College’s fortunes were not inevitably bright. Unlike his beloved Chicago Cubs, whose comeback he did not live to witness, Joe did see and was instrumental in Grinnell’s move away from financial peril and uncertainty about its future. It was Rosenfield’s role to become the force to build Grinnell into one of the most successful of America’s liberal arts colleges. Joe had the gift of humor; he had the gift of extraordinary prowess at invest ing. He had a gift of friendship. He had a gift of listening, particularly understanding students as mores changed over the 59 years he served as a Grinnell Trustee. And he gave. Often writing checks to balance the books of the college at the end of a fiscal year, he drew others in on his almost pure fun of working to make Grinnell, as he put it, “financially impregnable.” Money Magazine , in a cover story about Joe termed him “the most successful investor you’ve never heard of.” This was one reason he and nearby Omaha-dwelling Warren Buffett came together. Buffett heard of Joe. They formed a remarkable team to help the college which Buffett would spend time almost every week to help even though he had no connection to it other than his growing esteem for, and keen pleasure of conspiring with Rosenfield. Together, they would make highly unusual, often highly risky, investments for the college. They would commit that if the investment went sour, the loss was on them. If successful, it would redound entirely to the college’s endowment. This is then a story about a college which inspired love in a man, who inspired affection and respect in others. It is not a universal tale. Rather, it is very much about one midwestern man and his college and his co-conspirators to make that college able to carry on into the indefinite future, giving the gift to others which he knew had been his to treasure. - John Price

336 pages, Hardcover

Published April 13, 2019

Reviews

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an amazing story. A third generation (from immigration) man from a solid well-to-do midwestern Jewish family goes to a small rural liberal arts college. Though he's a middling student, he loves his time there and appreciates the lack of antisemitism. He gets his law degree. Then he works as an independent lawyer and eventually joins the family business as General Counsel and eventually Chairman. But he always remembers his love for that small college, and soon joins its board as a trustee. For the next 59 years, he puts the college's interests ahead of his own, and grows the endowment of the college from debt to nearly a billion; today that college's endowment is about $1.8 billion.

The man is Joe Rosenfield, and the college is Grinnell College, located in Grinnell, Iowa. The author of this book is George Drake who was President of Grinnell in the 1980s. Rosenfield was a cunning and adaptive investor. He made some outrageous investments for Grinnell; if they came to a loss, he would take the loss; if they made money, the college kept it. Among Grinnell's most audacious investments were early support for Intel (founded by a Grinnell grad, Robert Noyce) . . . buying a TV station . . . and many others. Along the way, Rosenfield got Warren Buffett to join Grinnell's board, and between the two of them, they guided the college way beyond financial sovereignty -- Rosenfield always said that he wanted the college's financial edifice to be "impregnable," and obviously he succeeded. Along the way you learn a number of curious facts, such as that the college usually had an extremely small number of investments -- maybe 20 -- and exercised the classic Buffett style of long-term "hold" investing for value. Even when their investment in Freddie Mac immediately went sour, they held. And profited.

There is a lot of small college inside baseball here, but if you went to a top liberal arts college or are interested in that scene, this is a worthy read. In fact, I would read it out of order and start with Part IV regarding Rosenfield's history as a trustee. In terms of understanding how small colleges work, this one is right up there with Alma Mater: A College Homecoming by PF Kluge. The business history of Des Moines is involving as well: Rosenfield was for his entire career the "background" guy who made all of the big Iowa deals work: It is reminiscent of a Keiretsu or Chaebol (or the mafia!).

Let's see. Complaints? Drake is altogether too coy. I hope George Drake the author is preparing a tell-all memoir with all of the gory details of college history from the 50s to the 2000s. For example, he notes that one President intended to reduce faculty expenses by firing three women faculty members: OK, who were those faculty members? Drake was a student in the mid-50s, and notes in passing that because of financial constraints, Grinnell had to drop 40% of its faculty in 1954 or 1955: Wow, what was that like? Because of the focus of the book, Drake doesn't tell us. And when the author recalls his own memories, they is frequently the among the most tart moments in the book, as when he recalls that Rosenfield said his job "was to keep George Drake and his bandits from raiding the endowment" (p. 238). Whoa.

As an alumnus of Grinnell, I do take some issue with some emphases here. I look back on Grinnell's divestment story as much more of a disaster; similarly with the way Grinnell dealt with the prospect of lesbian marriage -- there's a turn to a more conservative Grinnell after the early 80s that really dismays me. On the other hand, Drake approved of Rosenfield's advocacy for a campus pub, which today to a mainstream audience probably looks like a misstep, though as Drake notes, when the drinking age was raised to 21, there was more misbehavior (here, too, he could probably say more). Also, a book like this talks a lot about new building on campus. I happen to agree with Rosenfield when he insists that the endowment not be used for capital expenditure -- but after his death, the college did just that, with a lot of new construction. Then there are little details in passing, such as some praise for the renovations of Burling Library. Naw. My god, the addition of that "pop up" layer for extra stacks: What an abomination! But that, too, is inside baseball and will probably not even be a major blip in Grinnell history in 20 years.

[Ellen the Herbivore · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really wanted to read this book, as I attended Grinnell College when the author was its president and am grateful to the college for its continued commitment to need-blind admissions. Mr. Drake is a bright person who has had interesting experiences.

So, what happened with this book? It's not a vanity press publication, but it seems that no one edited it. Large chunks of it consist of verbatim conversations with the book's subject. It also seems not to have been copy-edited. After about 35 pages of complete dreck, I paged through it a bit to see whether there was anything readable. No one was paying me to read it, so I gave up.