Successful financier and stockbroker found a home in Brooklyn. Fund at The Trust supports research on diseases with no known cure.
Raymond Hill Fiero (1876-1967)
Raymond Hill Fiero was born December 4. 1876, in Catskill, New York, to Peter Fiero and the former Helena Hill. Raymond’s father was a driver on the stagecoach running between Catskill and Stamford, New York. The family lived with Raymond’s maternal grandparents, Emanuel and Elizabeth Hill. Raymond’s grandfather was a sea captain.
Raymond married Teresa May “Tennie” Rebhann on April 5, 1899, in the Nostrand Avenue Methodist Church in Brooklyn. They had a son, Raymond Rebhann Fiero. Their home at 1296 Pacific St. in Brooklyn was a neighborhood landmark. The 1890s Arts and Crafts-style house, made of rough-cut stone, sat in the middle of a generous lot, with rowhouses lined up behind it.
Raymond H. was a successful banker, financier, and stockbroker, with a seat on the New York Stock Exchange and an office at 25 Broad Street. For many years, he was a trustee of the Greater New York Savings Bank and a director of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce. He also was a trustee of the Cadman Congregational Society and a member of the Municipal Club of Brooklyn.
Most wealthy people who lived in the St. Marks District of Brooklyn, as it was known, didn’t stay long. They were always moving to the next “in” place, like Park Avenue or out to the prosperous suburbs of Westchester and Long Island. But Raymond H. Fiero was different. He was ensconced in the hustle and bustle of Brooklyn, and never left. He can be seen in photographs with President Calvin Coolidge and members of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce in February 1929, about eight months before the stock market crashed.
Raymond’s first marriage ended in divorce. He married Kathryn L. Bornmann (nee Van Name) on May 20, 1938.
He died in August 1967 at age 90 of complications from Alzheimer’s disease. His son, Raymond R., a 1924 Harvard graduate and an attorney, also died of Alzheimer’s, on November 18, 1983.
After the elder Raymond died, a small tissue sample of his brain was sent to the brain bank at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx to help further research into the aging brain and the special challenges of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.
Raymond H. Fiero arranged for a fund in The Trust for the purposes of preventing, healing or curing diseases for which no practical medical or surgical remedy has been discovered.