Peter Brandel, 87, LI banker, dies

Peter Brandel, a banker who underwrote the expansion of numerous Long Island businesses and once delivered $300,000 in cash to Madison Square Garden to fulfill a preconcert demand by The Rolling Stones, died Oct. 30 at Winthrop-University Hospital in Mineola. He was 87.

The cause was pneumonia and congestive heart failure, said a son, Paul Brandel, of Malverne.

During a 45-year career at Manufacturers Trust Co., later Manufacturers Hanover Trust, Brandel rose from messenger in 1943 to vice president in charge of Long Island before retiring in 1988.

At Manufacturers Trust, he worked with major companies, including the accounting firm Anchin, Block and Anchin, the law firm Ruskin Moscou Faltischek and such nonprofits as the American Heart Association and Telecare, the Catholic television network.

In the 1970s, Brandel ran the company's 1 Penn Plaza branch, near Penn Station and the Garden. It was there, shortly before the close of business one day, that the family said he fielded an urgent request from a young Garden executive named Joe Cohen to supply The Rolling Stones' cash, which the band wanted on hand before playing weekend concerts.

"He bought a suitcase and went to the Federal Reserve," returning with the cash, Paul Brandel said.

The Stones were appeased, he said, and the show went on.

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Brandel's family said that small success helped boost Cohen, who later became president of the Madison Square Garden Network, and won the MSG account for Manufacturers Trust.

Brandel was born May 31, 1926, in Franklin Square, and was raised in the Bronx. During World War II, he served in the Pacific as a radarman aboard the USS Waukesha, an attack cargo ship.

He attended New York University on the GI Bill, becoming the first in his family to earn a college degree and later an MBA from the school in 1962.

He and his wife, the former Valerie Domozych, now deceased, married in 1948 after meeting at Manufacturers Trust. They moved to Garden City South in 1955.

In Garden City, Brandel founded Little League Baseball's Big League Division for youngsters 16-18, and was a longtime usher and member of the Parish Council of St. Catherine of Sienna Catholic Church, which honored him with a Centennial Leadership Award.

He was also an Islanders season ticket holder from the birth of the franchise in 1972 to his death, the family said.

Other survivors include his sons, Albert, of Melville, and Peter, of East Northport; and his daughters, Mary Pelowski, of Ellicott City, Md., and Valerie Stryker of New Canaan, Conn.

Services were held at St. Catherine, followed by burial with military honors at Holy Rood Cemetery in Westbury.