B. Sommers, 78; Founder of Capezio Foundation

Ben Sommers, who joined Capezio Ballet Makers at age 14 as a stock boy and rose to the presidency of the theatrical and dance shoe manufacturing company, died April 30 in a New York City Hospital.

The founder of the Capezio Foundation, an organization that supports dance nationally, was 78 and had suffered a heart attack.

Sommers in 1952 became the first non-designer to win fashion’s coveted Winnie-Coty Award. He was a Capezio salesman in 1923 who filled one of his first orders when he provided shoes for the dancers in “The Ziegfeld Follies” of that year.

He rose through the Capezio organization, founded by Salvatore Capezio in 1887, and in 1940 began a 36-year reign as company president.

In 1957 Sommers established the annual Capezio Award in recognition of lifetime achievements in dance. Its recipients have included Martha Graham, Agnes de Mille, Robert Joffrey, Jerome Robbins and Alvin Ailey. He also founded the Assn. of American Dance Companies and led the 1978 drive that established a National Dance Week.