Julian Reiss

There are lives so well lived, and Julian Reiss lived such a life, that the most basic question is the most difficult to answer: where to begin?

Reiss, born to great wealth in Chicago, struck out on his own to become a self-made entrepreneur in the Adirondacks. Though essentially bedridden for years in his early 20s as he fought tuberculosis in Saranac Lake and Lake Placid, he recovered to become a tireless presence in regional commerce, state government and the Catholic Church. A successful businessman during a time when management and labor were often violently adversarial, Reiss’s Northland Motors—with shops in Lake Placid, Saranac Lake and Tupper Lake—was a pioneer in employee profit-sharing. Despite his establishment roots and his adopted home base in the mostly white North Country, he was a civil-rights crusader who helped pave a way to equal employment rights for New Yorkers of all races, including the baseball great Jackie Robinson—who broke the Major Leagues’ color line 75 years ago. The Reiss legacy persists not just in history books, but in a summer program for New York City youth.

Outside of his work, and his works, Reiss (pronounced “rice”) was an avid skier, a prize-winning sailor, and an ambidextrous tennis player. He was a self-taught pilot; he built his own radio; and he delivered the last five of his and his wife’s six