Lance Marconnay Konselman – 50th Reunion Essay

Lance Marconnay Konselman

Date of Death: 29-Jul-2007

College: Davenport

(This memorial appeared in the November/December 2007 Class Notes.)

Lance Konselman died in July after a long illness. At the time of his death he was the vice president for finance and administration at the Staten Island Botanical Garden. He was Phi Beta Kappa at Yale, and upon graduation served a tour of duty in Army intelligence. (His parents met in London while both were in Allied military intelligence.) He was posted to Beirut and was fluent in Arabic. Lance spent most of his post-Yale career in the not-for-profit sector. He held executive positions at Project Return Foundation, Medical and Health Research Association, and Praxis Housing Initiatives.

Here is what Eric Johnson says about Lance: He was a dear friend, a fraternity brother of incredible wit and bridge skill, and a member of my wedding party in 1971. I will always remember him as an outgoing gentleman, a quick study, and one who taught me much of what I now know about living outside whatever norms may exist at one time or another. A moment I shared with him—when I recall him being his most animated—was when we were in the TV audience and heard, in March 1968, “I will not seek, nor will I accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.” Good work, Lance, then—we were “clean for Gene”—and now. Obviously, your great heart has gone on to touch many others. I wish you always well and to your family, a share of your strength.”

Excerpts from Garden City High School ’65: “Lance had the background and connections to thrive in the world of high finance and international banking,” said Frances X. Paulo Huber, a close friend and president of Snug Harbor Cultural Center. “But he always gravitated back to public service. It was part of his persona, part of his heritage. It was an honor to work with him at Snug Harbor.”

The Army assigned him to intelligence and enrolled him in the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California in 1969. There he earned a master’s degree in Arabic and became a translator and interpreter in a number of high-security assignments in the United States and abroad. Upon his discharge from the Army in 1972, he worked for Citicorp in the office of the chief financial officer, but by the late 1980s the attraction of the public, not-for-profit sector became increasingly strong to him. “It’s that I wanted a deeper sense of satisfaction in what I did,” Mr. Konselman recalled.

It was that need that led him to Project Return Foundation in Manhattan, where he became director of administration and acting chief financial officer. The Foundation specialized in providing space for such organizations as the Women and Children’s Center in East Harlem, the Second Avenue Parole Center and Project Samaritan.

In 1998, Mr. Konselman became the Botanical Garden’s chief financial officer. Rona Cusick, acting president of the Botanical Garden, remembered him as “a wonderful guy, always present on the job, who rarely took vacation and loved every part of what he did. He had a smile for everyone, and he will be sorely missed.”