A major player in life insurance whose funds at The Trust support nonprofits across New York City and Long Island.
Richard (1905-1965)
Mildred Teasdale Rhodebeck (1902-1989)
Born in Brooklyn in 1905 to George and Freda Rhodebeck, Richard had a sister, Dorothy. His father was a cement worker and his mother was president of the Ladies Aid Society, a mutual aid society that offered welfare aid and free burials. She also was active in Goodsell Memorial Methodist Church in East New York, Brooklyn.
Mildred Teasdale was born in 1903, one of George and Fannie Teasdale’s eight children. They lived on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, and Mildred worked as a bookkeeper in a dry goods store.
Richard started his insurance career right out of high school with Graham C. Wells, New York City agent for Provident Mutual Life Insurance Company of Philadelphia. Mildred and George married in 1928 and settled in Flushing, Queens. In 1935, Richard became a general agent of the United States Life Insurance Company, and the young couple moved to Hempstead, Long Island. In 1947, Richard was elected company president.
Richard resigned from U.S. Life in 1952 and joined American Life Insurance Company as a vice president. He soon became president, then chairman in 1963. Ironically, American Life was founded in Shanghai and sold insurance only in foreign countries. The president’s office was in Bermuda, the chairman’s office was in New York, and the company’s headquarters were in Wilmington, Delaware. Richard traveled extensively, opening offices in 38 countries and building up agencies in the Caribbean and the Middle East. By the early 1960s, American Life had annual sales of $120 million and about $500 million of insurance in force.
The company was about to start construction of a high-rise home office building in Delaware when Richard was diagnosed with cancer. He died November 7, 1965, at age 59, just shy of his 60th birthday.
Two years after Richard died, the company incorporated as American International Group (AIG). In 2010, AIG sold Alico (American Life Insurance Company) to MetLife for $16.2 billion.
Mildred established the Rhodebeck Charitable Trust, a private foundation, in 1987 to “alleviate the plight of disadvantaged people in the New York metropolitan area, including people who are homeless, hungry, elderly, or sick, and children.” She died in 1989, and the sole trustee of her foundation was Huyler Held, an estates lawyer with strong ties to Long Island.
When Huyler died in 2012, the foundation’s assets were moved to The New York Community Trust, where six funds were established. Grants from those funds have supported more than 200 charitable and cultural organizations around New York City and on Long Island.
One striking example is the community garden at the corner of Bruckner Boulevard and Faile Street in the Bronx. The former junkyard, now called the Mildred T. Rhodebeck Garden of Eden, has a play area for kids, brick pathways, and raised beds overflowing in summer with flowers, corn, greens, tomatoes, and other vegetables.
