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House Co-Sponsorship Memoranda
House of Representatives
Session of 2017 - 2018
Regular Session
MEMORANDUM
| Posted: | April 20, 2017 02:39 PM |
|---|---|
| From: | Representative Dan Frankel |
| To: | All House members |
| Subject: | Honoring the life of Henry Hillman (December 25, 1918 to April 14, 2017) |
| In the near future, I will introduce a resolution to honor the life of Henry Hillman, who passed away on Friday, April 14, 2017, at the age of 98. Henry was a constituent of the 23rd Legislative District and someone that I was honored to call "friend". He was a leader in Pittsburgh, using incredible financial and professional success to make our community better in a remarkable and transformative way. Throughout his life, he was able to predict economic trends and invest early in some of the great technological companies of the last fifty years. But his impact goes so much beyond that. America has had many financially successful individuals in our nation’s history, but it would be difficult to find someone who used their success to help so many causes in such a thoughtful, modest and significant way. Growing up in the family’s coal and coke business in Pittsburgh, Henry went to Princeton and trained other pilots as a naval aviator during World War II. His talent was immediately recognized and after the war, he was offered employment in other states. But he turned those offers down in order to return to Pittsburgh, where his future wife Else Hillman also grew up. Hillman worked with a variety of non-profit and government agencies to develop the infrastructure and institutions of Pittsburgh in the 1950s and 1960s. Yet, Henry and Elsie Hillman also believed that Pittsburgh’s renaissance should be more than brick and mortar and that communities as individuals, nonprofits and businesses should also invest in and care about people of every background, every neighborhood and every faith. It is truly a measure of Hillman’s long-term dedication to service that not only was he and his wife’s charitable efforts record breaking, but their work will continue to be part of the fabric of the Pittsburgh region for years to come. His generosity created the Hillman Cancer Center at UPMC, a groundbreaking center that brings a wide range of expertise to help patients fight cancer, the largest donation ever made to UPMC at the time. Hillman’s contributions to the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University have spurred research that helped make Pittsburgh one of the leading centers for technology, biotechnology and medical research in the nation. We will miss Henry Hillman and it is only appropriate to honor him with a resolution. I hope you will join me in support of this important endeavor. |
Introduced as HR411