October 7, 2024

Elisabeth Murdoch, 103, Matriarch of a Journalism Family

Mr. Murdoch announced her death.

Elisabeth Joy Greene was just a teenager, a shy, obedient girl of privilege, rail thin and fashionably coiffed (though not long out of pigtails), when she was introduced to Keith Murdoch in 1927. He was 42, already a wealthy, famous and worldly newspaperman destined to become one of Australia’s foremost publishers. He had seen her debutante picture in a society magazine and had come courting.

Months later, in June 1928, they were married. She was 19. As a wedding present he gave her a sprawling estate at Langwarrin, near Australia’s southeast coast. They called it Cruden Farm, after the ancestral parish of his Scottish forebears, and it became the seat of Murdoch family life for generations.

There, while her husband amassed a newspaper and radio empire in Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane and became a political power broker, she gave birth to her four children: Helen in 1929, Rupert in 1931, Anne in 1936 and Janet in 1939.

She reared them with what she called “loving discipline,” to discourage materialism, especially in the headstrong Rupert. She sent him for eight years to Geelong Grammar, a boarding school near Melbourne that imposed a military regimen and canings. He was bullied and teased and became decidedly unhappy, but his mother was firm.

“I was never indulgent with them because my husband was inclined to be a bit indulgent, so I had to swing the other way,” she told Frances Jones last year. “They all grew up to appreciate my attitude about material things.”

She was also alert to her husband’s self-indulgences. During the Depression, when the Murdochs hired men desperate for work to build stables and other outbuildings at the farm, she was aghast when her husband drove up one day in a Rolls-Royce. She ordered him to return it.

And she herself was frugal. For decades, according to The Australian, a national broadsheet, she refused to have heating in the house, resisted hairdressers and one year gave up a trip abroad to pay for a pool in the garden. The newspaper said she preferred to spend money on the garden rather than herself.

Dame Elisabeth, who was styled Lady Elisabeth when her husband was knighted in 1933 and Dame Elisabeth when she was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1963, said her philanthropies were inspired by Sir Keith, a trustee of national museums and galleries. He died in 1952.

Although much of her husband’s wealth went for taxes, she inherited shares in his media company, News Limited, and its subsidiaries; a Melbourne magazine, and a newspaper in New South Wales. The Adelaide News and Sunday Mail went to her son, and became the foundations of his international media empire.

Dame Elisabeth gave millions to more than a hundred charities. Her beneficiaries included deaf children, epileptics, victims of mental illness and substance abuse, prison inmates and Melbourne institutions. These included the Royal Children’s Hospital, of which she was president from 1954 to 1965, the Australian Ballet and the Royal Botanic Gardens. Last year she greeted Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, at ceremonies to dedicate new facilities at the hospital.

At Cruden Farm, she developed a magnificent garden, with a lake and vistas of woodlands, lawns and beds of roses, irises and honeysuckles. Rows of lemon-scented eucalyptus lined the long, winding driveway like sentries. The garden became a centerpiece of her life — she worked on it for more than 80 years — and a treasure of landscape architecture, which she opened to the public.

In a life that spanned a century, Dame Elisabeth met and entertained royalty, prime ministers and presidents and many world leaders in business, entertainment and other fields. The house at Cruden Farm was comfortable, if not imposing, with white columns across the portico and an Australian flag flying from the roof. The public rooms were filled with photographs, mementos and old oak furniture.

She was a matriarch from a gentler age, speaking softly, keeping track of appointments in a small red leather diary, writing letters in her own hand, reading biographies voraciously, and each week playing bridge, calling it her secret vice. In 2009, her family and 500 guests attended her 100th birthday, and the Spanish tenor José Carreras performed eight songs.

Even after her centennial, Dame Elisabeth, alert and observant, kept up a busy schedule of meetings, charity functions and gardening chores. She got around with a walker and a wheelchair, and in the garden used an electric buggy driven by her gardener as they discussed what to trim, remove, plant or rearrange.

Elisabeth Joy Greene was born on Feb. 8, 1909, in Melbourne, the third daughter of Rupert and Marie Grace De Lancey Forth Greene. Her father was the wool expert of the New Zealand Loan and Mercantile Agency and the son of a Scottish railway engineer who had emigrated to Australia. Her mother, descended from Scottish and English forebears, was active in society and philanthropic circles.

She attended elite schools in the Melbourne area, St. Catherine’s in Toorak and Clyde in Woodend. While still a schoolgirl, she knitted woolen shirts for babies at the Melbourne Children’s Hospital and was rewarded with a tour. There she saw victims of abuse and neglect, and she was appalled. She volunteered to work one day a week at a free kindergarten for poor children. She said these early experiences were the seeds of her philanthropies after her marriage.

Dame Elisabeth’s oldest child, Helen Handbury, died in 2004. Besides her son Rupert, she is survived by her two other daughters, Anne Kantor and Janet Calvert-Jones, as well as many grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren. A News Limited newspaper, The Courier-Mail of Brisbane, said she is survived by 77 direct descendants.


Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/06/business/media/dame-elisabeth-murdoch-matriarch-of-journalism-family-dies-at-103.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

The Boss: Maximilian Riedel: Bearing the Family Torch

At the age of 12, I served an internship in the Riedel Crystal factory for two weeks. My father wanted to show me how work related to school. He was smart to do that because I wasn’t the best student, and the experience turned me around.  

At 16, I went to boarding school in Salzburg, and at 18  enrolled in a business management course in Kufstein, Austria. I’d attend it three days a week, and on the other two days I’d work in our factory, in sales and administration. I rebelled for a time as a teenager, but watching my father as a businessman gave me perspective. It taught me a lot about family and work relationships.

At the time, Austrians were required to serve eight months in the military. I completed my service after business school. I was used to the regimentation and heavy athletic program from boarding school, so I enjoyed my time in the service. My group was involved in humanitarian work. There were avalanches that year, and we were ready to assist people.

In the late 1990s, my father sent me to Dubai to increase our customer base. We had only one customer there at the time. Out of respect for the country’s general religious beliefs about  alcohol, we decided not to sell our wine glasses there. Instead we sold our other products — giftware, bowls and vases.

At 20, I went to work for one of our Paris distributors. It sounds glamorous, but it wasn’t that easy at first. I had left a girlfriend in Austria, and I wasn’t fluent in the language. Though I had learned French in school, I took a two-week crash course at Berlitz in Paris to speak it much better.

At 23, I moved to America to become executive vice president of our American business. We were doing about $10 million in sales. All the employees were older than me. I thought I could just jump in, be passionate and go from there, but no one trusted me. Even with my father’s training and with business school, I was unprepared. But I won the employees over and increased sales substantially in five years.

I became C.E.O. at 25. The most difficult part was analyzing some employees and realizing I had to let them go.

To develop a line of wine glasses for restaurants, I talked to chefs. They wanted glassware that was dishwasher-safe, among other things. It took me a year to determine what was needed. I designed a durable glass with a shorter stem called Riedel Restaurant.

Later, when I moved from Long Island to a small apartment in Hoboken, N.J., I learned what kind of glassware worked best for apartment dwellers. For example, when I returned from work in the evening, I wanted a wine glass that was beautiful and stackable but more casual than our others. I designed the wine glass that I needed for myself, our stemless “O” line. The glass was controversial in our family because my grandfather always said there’s a reason for a long stem — it allows you to swirl the wine in the glass for the best aroma. Americans, however, don’t adhere to that thinking.

I’ve belonged to the Young Presidents’ Organization for four years. It’s been helpful because I didn’t grow up here — I’ve learned how Americans conduct business. Once a month, I sit around a table with 10 other members. We talk about personal and business issues, and I can be myself.

I have only lately realized the importance of my heritage. It animates me because I don’t want to be the last of our line. I hold the torch now. 

As told to Patricia R. Olsen.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=d8d241396153fa9cb5798a7ea46e1f08