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Andrew HeiskellAndrew Heiskell
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Session:         Page of 824

funds that you scramble to get and the income from the endowment. Well, it was a pretty bleak picture and you either said to yourself, well I think I'll get out of this one, or you say to yourself, “Well, the Library is so essential to the future of the city, and all the institutions in the city that maybe a really big effort should be made.” So, as I retired from Time Inc. I agreed to become chairman with one condition. And that is that I have something to do with picking a new president. Parenthetically I'd gotten rid of the previous occupant of that slot.

Q:

That was Couper?

Heiskell:

Couper, yes. Salomon said, Dick Salomon kept shaking his head and saying, “My life,” Dick Salomon's life, “would have been so much easier if he'd done that three years before.” So we, we had a search committee and the search committee hired, you know, one of these firms, search firms and we saw a number of characters. Adequate, but not sparkling, not the kind of people who would take a newly defunct organization and make it into a very lively and vibrant one. To show you how bad the place was, when I looked at the main building at Forty-second and Fifth Avenue, I didn't know it was made of marble because it was so brown that it hadn't ever been cleaned that I could find. What once had been the exhibit hall had been chopped up, and with Masonite board made into offices for personnel and accounting; this beautiful room in the center of the building. Horrible. The branches were all run down, so on and so. Anyway-back to the search committee. One day, seemingly out of nowhere, another





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