Marian Sulzberger Heiskell

Marian Sulzberger Heiskell, a New York civic leader and philanthropist who led campaigns to create the Gateway National Recreation Area and restore the grandeur of theaters on 42nd Street, and who was a member of the family that controls The New York Times, died Thursday night March 14 2019 at her home in Manhattan. She was 100. Her death was announced by her daughter Susan Dryfoos. As the granddaughter, daughter, wife, sister, aunt and great-aunt of six successive publishers of The Times, and as the wife of Andrew Heiskell, the chairman of Time Inc., Mrs. Heiskell moved in the circles that dominated New York’s philanthropic and social world. Mayor Robert F. Wagner named her to a “Keep New York City Clean” campaign, and before long her first husband, Orvil E. Dryfoos, the publisher of The Times, was picking up scraps of paper on his morning walks. She met Mr. Dryfoos at a dance given by her parents. A Dartmouth College graduate, he was a Wall Street investor who held a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. They were married in 1941. Soon after her husband’s death in 1963, Marian Dryfoos was elected a director of The Times, a position she held for 34 years. Mrs. Heiskell also served on the boards of the Ford Motor Company and Merck & Company and was a trustee of the Consolidated Edison Company of New York. She married Andrew Heiskell, the chairman of Time Inc., in 1965, a week after his divorce from the actress Madeleine Carroll had been granted. Mr. Heiskell retired from Time in 1980 and died in 2003. Marian Effie Sulzberger was born on Dec. 31, 1918, in Manhattan, the first of four children of Arthur Hays and Iphigene (Ochs) Sulzberger. Her maternal grandfather was Adolph S. Ochs, who bought The Times in 1896 and was its publisher until his death in 1935, when his son-in-law, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, succeeded him. Mr. Sulzberger died in 1968, and Iphigene Ochs Sulzberger died in 1990. Marian was the last surviving member of her generation of the Sulzberger family. Her siblings were Ruth Sulzberger Holmberg, who was the publisher of The Chattanooga Times for 28 years, and who died in 2017; Judith P. Sulzberger, a physician, who died in 2011; and Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, who died in 2012. He was publisher of The Times from 1963 to 1992 and chairman and chief executive of the company from 1973 to 1997, when he became chairman emeritus. In addition to her daughter Susan Warms Dryfoos, Mrs. Heiskell is survived by two other children from her marriage to Mr. Dryfoos: a daughter, Jacqueline Hays Dryfoos, and a son, Robert Ochs Dryfoos, as well as two stepchildren from her marriage to Mr. Heiskell: Peter Chapin and Diane Schetky; seven grandchildren; eight great-grandchildren; four step-grandchildren; and three step-great-grandchildren.