Philip Klutznick

Klutznick was born on July 9, 1907, in Kansas City, Missouri, the son of Morris and Minnie Klutznick, who had emigrated from Russian Poland two years earlier. In 1924, Klutznick participated in the formation of the second chapter of the Jewish fraternal youth organization Aleph Zadik Aleph (AZA). He became the 2nd Grand Aleph Godol (International Teen President) of the expanding organization in 1925. After high school, he became the first executive director of AZA. He attended the University of Kansas at Lawrence and the University of Nebraska and received an LL.B. degree in 1930 from Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska. After school, he worked as an attorney and became involved in housing construction. During World War II, he was responsible for building homes for defense workers in the eastern United States including the construction of the residential town of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where parts of the atomic bomb were being developed in the Manhattan Project. After the war, he built suburban shopping malls in the Chicago area in partnership with the Chicago department store chain, Marshall Field & Company. ==Career==

Klutznick's career in public service advanced along with his success in business. After World War II, he joined American Community Developers to create Park Forest, a suburb south of Chicago. In 1953, he was elected to the first of two three-year terms as president of B'nai B'rith. That record was broken in 2017 when Wilbur Ross became Secretary of Commerce at the age of 79. Klutznick had long-standing relationships with Vice-President Walter Mondale and U.S. Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance and his ties to the Carter administration were further strengthened by his significant role in Arab-Israeli peace talks. His appointment was viewed by some critics as an effort to strengthen Carter's status among Jewish voters. Klutznick's tenure was marked by the economic recession and inflation that characterized the later years of the Carter administration, Carter's unsuccessful bid for re-election, and the completion of the 1980 census. ==Personal life==

Klutznick married Ethel Riekes in 1930. They had six children, Bettylu, Richard, who died in early childhood, Thomas, James, Robert and Samuel. Ethel Klutznick died in 1996. Philip M. Klutznick died of Alzheimer's disease on August 14, 1999. His daughter, Bettylu Saltzman, is widely credited with helping launch President Barack Obama's political career. She introduced the then-community organizer to David Axelrod in 1992. ==See also==