Jay M. Schwamm ’51

Jay was born April 17, 1930, in Brooklyn and grew up in New York City. He attended the Ethical Culture School and New York Military Academy before majoring in history at Princeton, where he particularly enjoyed taking part in discussion forums led by Albert Einstein.

Jay completed his required military service in the Army Reserve Counterintelligence Unit, graduated from Harvard Business School in 1953, and served as chairman and CEO of the American Trust Company Bank, building successful relationships in the emerging Mexican banking sector.

He left the bank in 1962 to pursue other business ventures — representing Westinghouse in the USSR, producing spaghetti westerns, and developing dishware with pop artist Peter Max — as well as politics. Jay served as one of Hubert Humphrey’s most valued advance men on the 1964 campaign trail and spent 1968 as special assistant to the vice president in the Executive Office Building of the White House. Jay later established Redafco, a real estate development and finance company where he worked until his death, developing major commercial buildings and other properties.

New York City, where he was a longstanding member of the Lotos Club, was always home. In recent decades, a wide (and ever-widening) circle of friends and family came to know him, with respect and affection, as Papa Jay.

Jay died Oct. 16, 2023. He was predeceased by his loving wife of two decades, Judy Mello Schwamm. He is survived by his daughter Jennifer Schwamm Willis ’79; sons Michael and Lee ’83; seven grandchildren; and one great-grandson.