Stanley Foster Reed
| Stanley Foster Reed | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born |
September 28, 1917 Bogota, New Jersey |
| Died | October 25, 2007 (aged 90) |
| Occupation | Entrepreneur, Inventor, Publisher |
Stanley Foster Reed (1917-2007) was an entrepreneur, inventor, and publisher who founded Reed Research Inc. in 1940, “Mergers & Acquisitions” journal in 1965, and “Campaigns & Elections” magazine in 1980.
Life
Born in Bogota, New Jersey on September 28, 1917, Reed grew up in Hartsdale and White Plains, New York. He started a roofing company and worked briefly at a sheet metal factory for Pittsburgh Steel. In 1940, at age 23, he started up a scientific research company, renting a two-story building next to a junk yard along the C & O canal in Georgetown.[1]
Reed started the publications “Directors & Boards” and “Export Today.” He was the author of several books, including the best-selling “The Art of M & A,” which he co-authored with his daughter, Alexandra Lajoux, and “The Toxic Executive,”.[2]
He built Reed Research, Inc., and the Reed Research Foundation over the next 20 years to a net worth of $1 million. Along with Manley St. Denis, Johann Martinek, Gordon Yeh, James Ahlgren and others, he worked on issues ranging from safe land mine removal to electrocardiography to language learning laboratories, obtaining scores of patents in the process. Based on his work experience, he was admitted to membership in the Society of Naval Architects and received certification as a Professional Engineer (P.E.).[1]
In 1962, after selling Reed Research to Log-Etronics, Inc., he started Tech-Audit as well as the Reed Research Institute for Creative Studies in the RCA Building on K Street in Washington, where he ran a number of publishing businesses. In the 1960s, he was actively involved in social issues, sponsoring programs to encourage inner-city entrepreneurship and writing an article on the poor of Appalachia. He also participated as a panelist in seminars of the Aspen Institute and as a guest lecturer at various universities including the University of Colorado’s World Affairs Conference and Georgetown University, where he once discussed ethics.
He climbed Mount Fuji with his youngest daughter.
His is listed in Marquis Who’s Who. He was an “ideas man” who in addition to starting publications also started a mergers newsletter and a website in his later years.[1]
The third son of Beryl Turner Reed and Morton Gilman Reed, Reed was one of seven siblings who grew up in the Depression era and were instilled by their mother with an appreciation of poetry, history, and the arts. In the mid-1960s, he read the entire collection of Will and Ariel Durant’s History of Civilization and examples from its pages for the rest of his life. He composed music by ear and often turned his hand to poetry. At the time of death he was composing an opera based in Paris and focusing on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Heming . Also in the 1970s, he earned an MBA from Loyola College in Baltimore, Maryland at the age of 64.[1]
Reed sang tenor and played the piano, organ, guitar, banjo, ukulele and accordion by ear at family gatherings. With his son-in-law Bernard Lajoux, he bought a French restaurant in Philadelphia, Pa., which they renamed La Peche d’Argent and later sold to Le Bec Fin. He had moved to that city after selling two of his publications to Hay Associates, where he worked as a consultant in the early 1980s.[1]
Reed lived in McLean, Virginia, for 40 years. In 1994, he moved to Charleston, S.C. to take a position as the Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the College of Charleston, where he taught advanced management courses. Although not a religious man himself, he was a regular organist for the Church of the Nazarenes while residing in Charleston. He also lived in Annapolis, Md., and before entering the University of Virginia Medical Center, lived in Culpeper, Va. on October 25, 2007, in Charlottesville, Va., he died at the University of Virginia Medical Center of a subdural hematoma. He was 90.[3]
Sources
- Bernstein, Adam. "Stanley Reed, 90; Helped Create Niche Magazines", The Washington Post, October 30, 2007. Accessed October 31, 2007.
References
- 1 2 3 4 5 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/29/AR2007102902082.html
- ↑ Cottle, Michelle. "WORKING; A Reign Of Terror", The New York Times, July 18, 1999. Accessed October 31, 2007.
- ↑ Wolfe, J. (2007). "Press Release Written for Obits.", Academic Press.