From the archives: Builder William Levitt remembered as generous man

This story was originally published in Newsday on February 2, 1994

As snow fell gently on the Southern State Parkway yesterday, the funeral cortege carrying William J. Levitt to his final resting place skirted south of the community he began building almost a half-century ago, the community that still symbolizes the vision of one of this century's most influential builders.

Levitt, who would have turned 87 this month, died Friday at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, where he had been one of its major benefactors. Yesterday, at a service attended by about 200 people at Riverside Memorial Chapels on Manhattan's Upper West Side, Levitt was eulogized by family and friends and depicted as a generous benefactor, an eternal optimist, a person capable both of dreaming and of achieving the grand gesture - whether it was taking care of the fatherless son of a close business associate or arranging the wedding of a couple who decided to get married while cruising on his 250-foot yacht, La Belle Simone.

For the most part, both at the funeral and later at the brief graveside service, it was the private William J. Levitt who was being remembered - not the builder who, with his father, Abraham, and younger brother, Alfred, built the community that bears their name, and in effect began the transformation of Long Island, and the rest of the country, after World War II.

"I wanted people to speak who were directly affected by Bill," said his widow, Simone, who seemed touched by the presence of three members of the American Legion Post 1711 of Levittown, who had decided to come to Mt. Ararat Cemetery in North Lindenhurst to show their respects to Levitt. Among those waiting was George Merritt, who said he moved to Levittown more than 40 years ago after leaving the Army.

"It's better than ever," said Merritt, describing the community that Levitt and Sons built beginning in 1947.

Don Hewitt, executive producer of CBS-TV's "60 Minutes," who attended the service with his wife, said he understood why most speakers at the funeral focused on Levitt's private world. "It was a kind of remembering Bill, nobody had to enumerate his accomplishments," said Hewitt.

As it turned out, when Rabbi David Glazer, who officiated at the service, recounted the story of how Levitt once arranged a wedding aboard his yacht, he was talking about the 1979 marriage of Hewitt and Marilyn Berger.

"We had flown down to Caneel Bay to board the yacht, and after I proposed Bill decided we had to get married then and there," Hewitt said.

Sprinkled among the mourners attending the chapel service yesterday were longtime friends like designer Pauline Trigere, and writer and designer John Weitz.

Weitz, who said he had known Levitt for more than 40 years, said that over the years, Levitt managed to develop extensive friendships with different groups of people. "He seemed to have so many different sets of friends, and he especially enjoyed being a host," said Weitz, who also had been a guest aboard Levitt's yacht.

Levitt and his family had prospered and grown immensely wealthy, so that when he sold the company to a conglomerate in 1968, he reportedly received more than $ 90 million in stock. Levitt followed up with a string of projects that failed and eventually felt so squeezed he began taking funds from projects and misused family foundation money, which seriously tarnished his reputation.

But no mention was made of that. For the most part, yesterday's service sought to keep things upbeat. His son, William Jr., who lives in Los Angeles, told a story about how, when his father was a teenager, "one summer Saturday morning, he came downstairs all dressed up." At the time, the Levitts were living in Brooklyn, and when his mother, Pauline, asked him where he was going, he reportedly replied: "I'm going to Manhattan. I want to buy the Chrysler Building."

"He was always Big Bill Levitt," said his son, who suggested that most people thought he was taller than he actually was.

"He was a man both complicated and simple," his son said.

At the cemetery, the numbers were reduced to just Levitt's family and closest friends, and perhaps the most poignant moment occurred when those attending were asked to recite in unison from what was described as Levitt's favorite poem, Rudyard Kipling's "If - " which includes the lines:

"If you can make one heap of all your winnings:

"And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss

"And lose, and start again at your beginnings . . . you'll be a Man, my son."

Yesterday, William Jaird Levitt was buried in his family's plot, a bit more than a stone's throw from Levittown. His grave was next to his mother, brother and father, and beneath a leafless dogwood.

Andrew Smith contributed to this story