Herbert Kurz, Businessman and Philanthropist

Herbert Kurz, founder of Presidential Life Insurance Company, Philanthropist, and Humanitarian died Monday, November 24, 2014.

Kurz founded Nyack, NY based Presidential Life Insurance Company. He has received high praise for his business success, philanthropic accomplishments, and humanitarian commitment.

“I was at a meeting of agents in Pelham, Alabama, and a fellow asked if I ever heard of a town called Nyack,” said Donald Liebert, owner of a Nanuet insurance agency. “He said that the most competitive term insurance writer in the whole country is Presidential.”

Presidential Life made it to the #1 position of USA Today’s “100 Hottest Stocks of the 80’s.”

Kurz founded Presidential Life in 1964. He remained C.E.O. of the company until 2008.

Presidential candidate and Senator George McGovern, a friend of Herb, has stated: “Herb is a humanistic, Roosevelt-type Democrat and a committed activist on the war and peace front…” “He’s a person of deep political convictions, but not in a narrow partisan sense.” He termed his relationship with Kurz “rewarding.” “He’s what a businessman ought to be,” McGovern said. “He makes money, no question about that, but he does it while preserving a warm relationship with his employees.”

Kurz was honored by President Bill Clinton at the White House Conference on Corporate Citizenship in 1996.

Kurz went on to become the founder of the Kurz Family Foundation through which he endowed a chair in constitutional rights in the political science department of Brooklyn College, his alma matter and established the Frederic Ewen Center at NYU’s Tamiment Library. He also supports numerous organizations in Rockland County, NY, the community where Presidential Life is based. Some of these include: the Rockland Nero Scholarship Fund, the Center for Safety and Change (formerly the Rockland Family Shelter), Rockland Community College (SUNY – Rockland) student support fund, and the Martin Luther King Multipurpose Center.

Born in Harlem in 1920 to Max and Molly Kurz, he served in the Army Air Corps during World War II and was a decorated navigator aboard B-26 bombers for his rescue mission over Greenland. He and his wife Edythe moved to Rockland County, NY in the 1950’s. He is survived by his son, Leonard, of Piermont, NY; a daughter, Ellen Kurz of Cambridge, MA, and two grandchildren, Tommy Kurz Cosgrove and Sophie Kurz Cosgrove.

A service will be held 10 a.m., Friday, November 28 at Temple Beth Torah, 330 North Highland Avenue, Upper Nyack, NY 10960.

Donations in his name can be made to the President’s Student Support Fund at Rockland Community College, Suffern, NY and the Center for Safety and Change, New City, NY.