Gerald Gidwitz

Gerald S. Gidwitz (July 16, 1906 – July 11, 2006) was a co-founder of the cosmetics and salon parlour firm Helene Curtis Industries.

Early life

Gidwitz was born in Memphis, Tennessee. His father was a cotton farmer and general store owner in Mississippi. When Gidwitz was 12 years old, his family moved to Chicago, Illinois, where his father started a business that made paper boxes.

Gidwitz also founded or acquired companies in other economic sectors. In the 1980s he launched a company providing building supplies, Continental Materials Corporation. He also bought two companies that manufactured farm equipment.

Political life

In the 1950s Gidwitz founded the anti-communist Education for Survival Foundation, which had the aim of making "every school district in the nation aware of the grim fact that we are engaged in a battle of the classroom with Russia."

During the Cold War, Gidwitz supported groups that assisted defectors from Soviet bloc countries. In 1962, he launched a monthly "Cold War digest" that provided information on military, political and technological aspects of the Cold War.

Gidwitz served on the board of Roosevelt University. Gidwitz funded literacy programs through Roosevelt University and worked with the National Planning Association, which creates programs to improve education and promote literacy. During the 1940s, he set up after-hours classes for workers at Helene Curtis.

In 2002, Gidwitz gave a grant to National-Louis University to create the Gidwitz Center for Urban Planning and Community Development.

He died on July 11, 2006, of congestive heart failure, five days shy of his 100th birthday.