Carl E Reichardt

He was born Carl Edwin Reichardt Jr. in Houston on July 6, 1931, the elder of two children born to Carl E. Reichardt, who managed the Auditorium Hotel in the city, and the former Cora Elizabeth Robichaux, an accountant for a lumber company. (The younger Mr. Reichardt dispensed with “Jr.” after his father died but later named his own son Carl Jr.) He enrolled at the University of Houston but left to enlist in the Navy in 1950, joining the Korean War effort. Stationed in Long Beach, Calif., he met a fellow quartermaster, Patricia Longenecker, whom he married in 1954 and who survives him. Besides his daughter Gretchen Reichardt Pullar, he is also survived by his sons Carl Jr. and Fritz, and six grandchildren. Mr. Reichardt resumed his education at the University of Southern California, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in economics. He got his start in banking in a training program at Citizens Bank in Los Angeles. After six years at Citizens, Mr. Reichardt went to Union Bank in Los Angeles, where he spent much of his time making loans to real estate developers and commercial builders. That expertise was what Wells Fargo was seeking when it hired him in 1970 to create a real estate investment trust in Los Angeles and a bank unit to advise it. He retired in 1994, but went on to serve on several corporate boards, including that of Ford Motor Company, where in 2001 William Clay Ford Jr., in his first act as chief executive, named Mr. Reichardt vice chairman, giving him broad responsibilities over the company’s leasing, credit and rental car operations.