Brandeis Magazine

J. Victor “Vic” Samuels ’63, who died on June 14 at age 79, was a Houston business entrepreneur and civic leader described by family as a “rare seventh-generation Jewish Texan, outspoken liberal and proud American.”

Along with his wife, Barbara “Bobbi” Greenfield Samuels ’63, he supported financial aid at Brandeis, creating the Bobbi ’63 and Vic ’63 Samuels Endowed Scholarship, and the Vivian and Irving Greenfield Endowed Scholarship. In the 1970s, when Brandeis launched the Alumni Admissions Council, Vic and Bobbi established a chapter in Houston. Vic also chaired Brandeis’ Board of Fellows and served on the university’s Board of Trustees from 1988-92.

Samuels “embodied the Brandeis spirit in his commitment to creating a more just world, his innovative approach to business creation and mentoring, and his devotion to family and faith,” says President Ron Liebowitz.

Vic and Bobbi married a week after graduating from Brandeis, where Vic served as senior class president and loved the study of history, including a class taught by Eleanor Roosevelt.

After entering the world of business in Houston, over the course of a half century Samuels created and led four businesses — Houston Terminal Warehouse, Leedo Manufacturing, Leedo Furniture and Victory Packaging — that employed thousands of people. Described by his family as a “risk taker willing to bet it all,” he excelled as a business strategist and mentor.

Samuels — who shared a commitment to progressive Judaism with his late brother, Rabbi Robert Samuels ’54, a leader in the Reform Movement in the United States and Israel — often said he divided his time evenly among his business, family and community responsibilities. “We are what we commit ourselves to,” he would say. “We have a responsibility to make the world a better place.”

In the 1960s, Samuels helped lead Citizens for Good Schools, a diverse group that worked to peacefully desegregate Houston schools. He actively supported numerous charitable causes in his hometown, including Houston Achievement Place, the Jewish Community Center and the School of Social Work at the University of Houston. In 2015, he and Bobbi created the Samuels Family Foundation.

Samuels also coached Little League teams, attended theater performances and always made it home for family dinners.

“Vic Samuels was truly a man for all seasons and always a scrapper for the public good,” says Michael Kalafatas ’65, former director of admissions at Brandeis and a longtime friend.

In addition to Bobbi, Samuels’ survivors include three sons and seven grandchildren.

— Mark Sullivan

For years, Gil Schwartz ’73 held a closely guarded secret. Everyone knew him as a top broadcasting executive. But he was also writing popular magazine columns that humorously skewered the corporate world of which he was a part, under the pen name Stanley Bing.

Schwartz, who was 68 when he died on May 2 at his home in Santa Monica, California, retired in 2018 from his post as senior executive vice president and chief communications officer at CBS Corp.

As Stanley Bing, he wrote a column in Esquire starting in 1984, then switched to writing a column in Fortune in the mid-1990s.

Being offered the Esquire column was “a golden opportunity to speak truth to The Man,” Schwartz said in a 2018 New York Times Book Review piece. “But with this cool little secret came the fear — debilitating, crushing, sleep-destroying. Because, you know, I simply could not be fired. I had a mortgage [and] a little girl about to go to a preschool that cost more than my car each year.”

He kept his secret for a while. However, by the early 1990s, the fact of his dual identities was being described as the most poorly held secret in the media business. When he was finally outed as Stanley Bing, his CBS bosses took it well — they even promoted him.

Schwartz joined CBS as senior vice president of communications in 1996, following the company’s merger with Westinghouse Broadcasting Group, where he had overseen communications for 14 years.

At his passing, CBS said in a statement that Schwartz “was a counselor to senior management, a mentor to future PR executives and a popular presence in every hallway. His diverse and sophisticated repertoire ranged from artful media relations and gifted wordsmithing skills to an insightful and humorous view of the media world he loved.”

Schwartz’s 13 books as Bing include “Crazy Bosses: Spotting Them, Serving Them, Surviving Them,” “You Look Nice Today” and “Immortal Life: A Soon to be True Story.” In the Fall 2011 issue of Brandeis Magazine, Bing conducted an “interview” with Schwartz, in which Bing boasted, “As the years have gone on, and my star has achieved uncommon luster, Schwartz has languished in relative anonymity, wrapped in the cocoon of a bureaucratic functionary somewhere in the dark heart of corporate America.”

A native New Yorker who studied theater arts and English at Brandeis, Schwartz wrote poetry and plays; was an accomplished guitarist and an avid photographer; and, before launching his corporate career, was one of the founders of The Next Move, an improv troupe in Boston.

His brother Michael ’75, an associate professor and the director of the Disability Rights Clinic at Syracuse University College of Law, says Gil was “always broadening my horizons and encouraging me to take risks. I miss him.”

In addition to his brother, Schwartz’s survivors include his wife, Laura Svienty; a daughter, Nina Pajak, and a son, William; two stepchildren; and two grandchildren.

— Mark Sullivan