NEW CANAAN – Longtime cable TV magnate, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and business consultant Leonard Tow died peacefully on Aug. 10, 2025, with his loving family and caregivers by his side. He was 97.
Born on May 30, 1928 in Brooklyn, New York, he was the son of the late Estelle and Louis Tow. He was a resident of New Canaan since 1987 and lived in nearby Pound Ridge, New York for 15 years prior. He spent summers in Chilmark, Massachusetts, on Martha’s Vineyard for over 40 years.
He is known for having founded Century Communications, which grew into the fifth largest cable TV company in the US, and Centennial Cellular.
The news of Leonard Tow’s death will strike a deep and solemn note among the many people he knew, loved, cared for and influenced. Len’s life was long and eventful. Professionally and personally, he was committed to expanding opportunity for all, ensuring that everyone had the ability to thrive and achieve their potential.
Len met Claire Schneider at Brooklyn College in 1948. They were, as he often said, “in love from the very beginning.” They married three weeks after her graduation in 1952 and shared more than six decades of marriage, parenthood, business building, and philanthropy until Claire’s death in 2014 following a 14-year fight with ALS.
As Len once said about Claire, “Whatever else our lives were, no matter the problems we faced, it was always exciting to be together. We developed a kind of approach to life where we weren’t going to put off anything. It was sort of anything goes.”
In his own words, Len’s life began in “abject poverty” in Brooklyn in 1928. For many years, Len’s parents Estelle and Louis Tow lived with Len and his brother Bert in a single room behind the small store they operated. The children slept on the floor; some days the family had to wait until they made a sale to afford breakfast. Although his parents wanted him to stay home and help run the family business, Len saw education as the way to a different life. He received a B.A. from Brooklyn College and a Ph.D. from Columbia University in economic geography. He taught at Hunter College, Columbia Business School, and other institutions.
One of the formative moments of Len’s academic career was a fellowship in the 1950s to study the political geography of Southern Rhodesia (now part of Zimbabwe). This gave Len, Claire, and their 2-year-old son Frank the chance to make a 6,000-mile tour of southern Africa that included going down into a copper mine, getting into a standoff with an elephant, and seeing Victoria Falls from an airplane.
“The whole adventure of floating around what was then largely a lightly populated, huge territory was one of the greatest experiences I have had in my life,” he said.
An entrepreneurial period
Eventually, Len realized he needed to look beyond the limitations of a career in academia. This began a period of entrepreneurship. He joined a partnership that bought a few theaters on Broadway and put on productions that ranged from “Baby Want a Kiss,” with Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, to the Habima Theater company from Israel, to a play with an all-Black cast that included early performances by Nipsey Russell, Mickey Grant, and Lou Gossett. This experience added to Len and Claire’s love of theater, which began when they were dating, sneaking into the second or third act of Broadway plays when they could not afford the tickets.
Eventually that partnership folded and Len, nearly 40, was unemployed. After more than a year of borrowing money and looking for work, Len found a job with the consulting firm, Touche Ross & Company (later Deloitte & Touche). One of his first clients was the TelePrompTer Corporation, where Len became the assistant to its president, Irving B. Kahn. He worked on deals to acquire cable systems across the country and as the liaison with the Howard Hughes Corp.
Eventually, he struck out on his own. He and Claire wrote a business plan at their dining room table that would become Century Communications. Founded in 1973 with a line of credit, Century grew into the fifth-largest cable television company in the country by the time it was sold in 1999. It was truly a family business, where Len created a culture of support and economic security for hundreds of employees across the country upon which numerous careers were built.
He also founded and directed Centennial Cellular and served as chairman and CEO of Citizens Communications (now Frontier Communications) from 1989 to 2004. Later he became CEO of New Century Holdings, an outdoor advertising company.
In 1999, Len decided it was time to sell the businesses he had created. Claire had been diagnosed with ALS, and Len wanted to devote more time to her and to their newfound ability to practice philanthropy in a more significant way.
Philanthropic pursuits
The two shared a deeply felt belief: the wealth they amassed wasn’t theirs to keep, but rather to be paid forward in service of others. That conviction shaped The Tow Foundation from its inception in 1988. Philanthropy became Len and Claire’s life’s work, proudest role, and a shared path forward for their entire extended family. Their shared values of humility, fairness, curiosity, kindness, and a deep belief in education animated all that they built together. Those principles still guide the foundation today.
“Neither Claire nor I grew up in a situation where philanthropy on any scale was a possibility, and that remained true really until we were in our 50s,” he said. “We didn’t know what plenty was, but we did understand the other side – we knew the stresses and strains of poverty.”
Len and Claire always gave back through donations to charitable organizations, even early in their lives together, when they could only afford to give a few dollars here and there. They also used their early good fortune to help their closest friends pay for college tuition, medical bills, and to pay down their debts.
As their ability to give back grew, Len and Claire channeled their wealth to address what Len called “opportunities to alleviate pain, increase joy, and expand human potential.” In its earliest years, the foundation focused on medicine, higher education, and the cultural arts. Under their leadership, and later that of their daughter, Emily Tow, the Foundation evolved to support criminal legal reform, journalism, and civic engagement in addition to its existing priorities.
Since then, The Tow Foundation has grown to be governed by three generations of the Tow Family, granting hundreds of millions of dollars to institutions and organizations in New York, Connecticut, and across the US.
Throughout his career, Len served on many non-profit and professional boards, including Lincoln Center Theater, Educational Broadcasting Corporation (WNET), the Lenfest Institute for Journalism, Cablevision Systems, AMC Networks, Brooklyn College Foundation, and the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University.
Len remained deeply involved in the Foundation’s work until his death, with a particular interest in cutting-edge medical research and care, education and the arts, for incarcerated people, and mentorship for students at Brooklyn College. He hoped to offer others the opportunity to fulfill their dreams, as he and Claire had done. Not one for taking the limelight, Len said about their philanthropy, “We do our thing quietly. It makes me feel good. I hope that’s how people remember me.”
“For two kids from Brooklyn with no prospects, I think we did okay,” he said.
In 2019, Len was awarded the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy in recognition of his lifetime of generosity, vision and service.
He is survived by his three children: Frank Tow (Ronnie Klein), Andrew Tow (Kathleen Tow), Emily Tow; as well as eight grandchildren: Cameron Tow (Eva Johnson), Molly Tow (Matt Delman), Olivia Tow Akers (Tommy Akers), Celia Tow, Grace Tow, James Jackson, Benjamin Jackson, Hope Tow Jackson and one great grandchild, Alice Johnson Tow.
The family will receive visitors at Len’s home at 160 Lantern Ridge Road, New Canaan, CT on Aug. 15 and 16 from 1 p.m.-6 pm.
In lieu of flowers or gifts, and in the spirit of Len’s philanthropy, please make a gift in his honor to a nonprofit organization that is close to your heart. Plans for a celebration of Len’s life will be shared at a future date.
