The head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce exhorted a Westchester County Association audience to fight for America”™s endangered free enterprise system on a night of tribute and shared memories of the late WCA chairman Alfred B. Delbello at the organization”™s annual Fall Leadership Dinner on Thursday.
In a video tribute and in speakers”™ remarks, DelBello ”“ the former Yonkers mayor, Westchester county executive, New York lieutenant governor, private-sector CEO and law firm partner who died on May 15 ”“ was variously remembered as a man whose qualities in both public and private life might be captured in his son Dr. Damon DelBello”™s one-word description of his father: “extraordinary.”
“Al”™s whole theme was collaboration,” said WCA President and CEO William M. Mooney Jr., adding that DelBello in his four-year tenure as chairman of the WCA board of directors raised the organization”™s level of achievement and engagement.
“”™With vision, creativity and good people, you can accomplish anything,”™” said Dee DelBello, publisher of the Westchester County Business Journal, quoting her late husband, whom others described as both a principled and pragmatic leader and man of action.
Westchester County Executive Robert P. Astorino, a Republican, recalled the former Democratic county executive”™s generous counsel after Astorino”™s election to the office in 2009. “The best advice that he gave me, and I live it every day, is to make time for my wife and kids,” he said.
“It”™s amazing that one man”™s life made all of us better,” Mooney said.
DelBello”™s widow and son presented Joseph DePaolo, president and CEO of Signature Bank, with the WCA”™s inaugural Al DelBello Visionary Award. The 14-year-old private client bank last December was named America”™s best bank by Forbes magazine in its annual rankings.
DePaolo recalled his resignation from Republic Bank in 2000 after its purchase by HSBC and his decision to launch Signature Bank. He called 30 people to tell them of his plans.
“Twenty-nine of them thought I was on drugs,” said the Iona College graduate. “Al DelBello said to me 16 years ago, ”˜What can I do to help?”™” The influential Democratic Party leader and partner at Delbello Donnellan Weingarten Wise & Wiederkehr LLP in White Plains served with dedication on Signature Bank”™s board of directors, said DePaolo.
DePaolo, a Republican, recalled his travels with his persuasive friend and bank director to Democratic campaign fundraisers. “I wrote a lot of checks for people I didn”™t vote for,” he confessed.
Also honored at the annual dinner at the Westchester Marriott were three recipients of the WCA Leadership Award: New York Medical College; Dr. Ron Cohen, founding president and CEO of Acorda Therapeutics Inc., and Wilson Kimball, Yonkers commissioner of planning and development.
The night”™s keynote speaker, Thomas Donohue, is president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The former Westchester resident and College of New Rochelle employees warned of an ongoing “frontal attack” on free enterprise by overreaching, overspending government and criticized both left-wing Democrats and right-wing Republicans for political positions and policies that have hurt businesses.
“Business has become a punching bag on the left and increasingly on the right,” he said.
For the business community, “We have a real fight on our hands. ”¦ We all need to say loud and clear that prosperity does not come from government but from free enterprise.”
Inequality in the nation”™s public education system “is denying a certain percentage of our young people the opportunity to have a future,” Donohue said. And the failure in Congress to reform immigration policy and address the immigrants issue “will kill our economy,” he warned.
“Private-sector-led growth won”™t solve all of our problems but they can”™t solve any of them without it,” said the Chamber of Commerce chief.
