Biography of 	Lienhard, Robert Orleans Parish, Louisiana
Submitted by 	Don Fucich June 1998

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Taken from the Times Picayune Newspaper, October 19, 1937:

Robert Lienhard who started to work for D. H. Holmes Company, Ltd., 
more than 40 years ago as a messenger at a salary of $2. per week, was 
elevated Monday from the position of assistant treasurer and assistant 
secretary to be president and general manager of the firm.

He was elected by the Holmes board of directors to succeed Fred W. 
Evans, who died Wednesday.  Mr. Lienhard, who had been assistant 
treasurer and assistant secretary of the firm since September 14, 1911, 
has been a member of the board of directors since January 1937.  He is 
56 years old.

The board chose James Anthony Smith, Mr. Lienhard's assistant for 
several years to succeed him in his former position.

Son of the late Mr. and Mrs. Charles Lienhard, the new president and 
general manager was a freshman in the old Boy's High school, after 
preparation at McDonogh No. 9 and McDonogh No. 3 public schools, when 
at the age of 14 his father's illness made it necessary for him to 
leave school and go to work.  He spoke to a school friend, George 
Zitzman, then an employee of D. H. Holmes Company, Ltd., telling him of 
his need, and through his friend's efforts got the job.  He has been 
with the firm ever since.

He recalled Monday starting to work at 7 a. m., getting an hour off for 
breakfast between 8 and 9 a. m., getting 20 minutes off for luncheon, 
and working to 6 p. m. for his $2. a week.  After a few weeks he had a 
chance to "go on a delivery wagon" for the firm at $3. a week.  "Stick 
inside, son" he recalled his mother advised him.  "So I stuck inside," 
he said.  From messenger boy, or "check boy" as they called them then, 
he was promoted to office boy, then to a clerkship.  Fred J. Stroop, 
the bookkeeper of the store, that then had 100 employees, would pay him 
something to work on the books nights when Mr. Stroop "had a date."  So 
when the Spanish-American war began in 1898 and Mr. Stroop enlisted in 
the United States army, "Bob" Lienhard was promoted to bookkeeper.  He 
held this post until 1903, then was office supervisor until 1906, was 
promoted to office manager and credit manager and held that post until 
September 14, 1911, when he was appointed to assistant treasurer and 
assistant secretary.

Mr. Lienhard was married June 1, 1904, to Miss Clementine Young.  Three 
daughters born of that marriage are Mrs. Hilary J. Gaudin,  Mrs. Sam 
Fucich, Jr., and Mrs. Felix Birney Voorhies of Bastrop, La.  Mrs. 
Lienhard died in 1912.  On September 20, 1916, Mr. Lienhard was married 
to Miss Marie Maillet of New Orleans.  They reside at 3830 Napoleon 
Avenue.

"I find no difference in the basic principles of operating a store 
today and those D. H. Holmes himself instituted in his lifetime, and I 
worked for him and attended his funeral." Mr. Lienhard said.  "The only 
difference is that when the store had 100 employees I knew them all 
personally and intimately.  Now that we have 1000 employees, and 1250 
in rush seasons, I can't find time to know them all.  But I know most 
of them personally, at that."

He "never had time to learn golf" and he doesn't hunt or fish, he says, 
but "I played a lot of sandlot baseball when I was a kid, and I get my 
amusement outside the store watching baseball and football yet."


Taken from the Times Picayune Newspaper, December 3, 1947:

Robert Lienhard's death brings a sharp sense of loss to many who are 
outside the family circle where his place can never be filled.  
Hundreds of employees of the D. H. Holmes Company will miss the shy 
smile with which he greeted them on his daily rounds of the big store.  
The whole community will be the poorer for his inevitable departure 
from it.

In a very real sense, he was the American success story, with none of 
the clamor and tub-thumping which so often accompany it.  He was the 
two-dollar-a-week messenger boy, who on his own time worked nights to 
help out the bookkeeper, and who ultimately rose to the presidency of 
the firm.  That is part of the record:  1894, messenger boy; 1898, 
bookkeeper; 1901, office supervisor; 1911, assistant secretary and 
assistant treasurer; 1937, member of the Board of Directors and, later 
that same year, president of the firm.

Yet Robert Lienhard was anything but the general popular model of a 
business tycoon; no heavy-shouldered, granite jawed, beetle browed 
battler, no desk-pounder, no traditional man-on-horseback riding 
roughshod to a date with destiny.  Quite, retiring to the point of 
shyness, soft-spoken and always smiling, he moved among his employees 
and his associates, a gentle and beloved presence.

The inspiration of his career left a lasting impress on the lives of 
may because of its very freedom from the ostentatious trappings of 
success.  Here was the sort of man you might find mowing his own lawn 
in any suburb of a Saturday afternoon, catching the street car 
to work in the morning, going to a neighborhood movie on Friday night, 
or doing any one of the thousand-and-one homey things that fall to the 
lot of most of us in a busy, workaday world.  Yet he rose by his own 
efforts to the presidency of one of the nation's leading mercantile 
firms.  Many in Orleanian is the better today for having taken shy, 
smiling Bob Lienhard for an example.

And so Robert Lienhard, who died at the end of a long and useful career 
Tuesday, will live on in the hearts of his descendants, in the 
affection of all who knew him, and in the memory of those who were 
inspired by his career to follow paths of rectitude.

Copied by Don Fucich, 6/6/1998