Former AT&T; President Robert D. Lilley, 74, Dies

Robert D. Lilley, retired president of American Telephone & Telegraph Co., has died after suffering a heart attack. He was 74.

Lilley, who lived in Short Hills, N.J., died Wednesday at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan.

After graduating from Columbia University, Lilley worked as an engineer in the West Virginia and Pennsylvania coal regions. He joined the Bell System in 1937 as an assistant engineer in the Western Electric plant at Kearny, N.J.

From 1965 to 1970, Lilley worked in Newark as president of New Jersey Bell Telephone Co. and also served as chairman of the governor’s commission that studied civil rights disorders in New Jersey in 1967 after the Newark riots.

The commission found widespread discrimination in both the government and private sectors, and its recommendations brought about sweeping changes in minority hiring policies and establishment of training programs.

One of his proudest accomplishments with Jersey Bell, he said, was the building of a $3.5-million telephone equipment center in Newark using predominantly minority construction workers.

Lilley moved to AT&T; in 1968 as an executive vice president, and was named president in 1972. He retired in 1976.