Harry J. Volk; Set Trends in Finance and Charities
Harry J. Volk, an innovative and blunt-spoken leader of Union Bank who helped shape Los Angeles’ cultural and charitable institutions, has died.
Volk died Friday morning at his home in Los Angeles, according to his son, Robert H. Volk. He was 94.
As a businessman, he divided his long career between two companies, Prudential Insurance Co. and Union Bank, and left a lasting imprint on both the insurance and the banking industry.
He came to Los Angeles in 1947, then 41 and the youngest vice president in Prudential history, to create the company’s first regional home office as part of the decentralization of the mammoth company, which he helped engineer.
Because of his work with Prudential, which included originating the family life insurance plan and instigating the return of unclaimed funds to beneficiaries, Volk was recruited as chairman and chief executive officer of Union Bank in 1957.
Over the next 23 years, Volk guided the bank through recession and a period in which banks across the country were beset by loan defaults. In 1967, he established the first one-bank holding company, Union Bancorp Inc. Seven years later, to meet changing federal regulations, he helped son Robert split the Union operation into the core bank, under his original holding company, and mortgage banking and insurance operations, under Unionamerica Inc.
During the bleak days of the mid-1970s as banks began to fail, Volk managed reductions in staff through attrition, telling a Times reporter: “There were no wholesale firings. We simply adjusted our staff to the workload.”
Volk was candid with news media about banking’s difficulties, telling The Times in 1976: “We built a lot of houses in the late 1960s and early 1970s. We also built a lot of headaches.”
From the time of his arrival in Los Angeles, Volk wove himself into the fabric of the community. Within a decade, he had become a director of major Southern California companies, including Western Air Lines, Southern California Gas and Times Mirror.
While still at Prudential, Volk was asked to head a Los Angeles citizens committee to resolve simmering disputes involving the United Way fund-raising campaign and its recipient charities. Volk set up what he called Associated In-Group Donors, an innovative system for voluntary contributions by employees through payroll withholding. It has now become the standard for nonprofit fund-raising organizations. With that, he persuaded United Way to accept policies for collecting and distributing donations, including a “donor choice” option directing how a contribution could be allotted.
As financier and advisor on construction, Volk helped rebuild Los Angeles’ historic Bunker Hill after Victorian homes were razed in a controversial redevelopment project there during the 1950s. The first building on the new site was the skyscraper for Union Bank itself.
Volk, a founder of the Los Angeles Music Center, also handled much of the financing for the arts complex. A founder of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, he also served on boards of the Southern California Symphony Assn., the Boys Club Foundation and various Boy Scout Councils. After his retirement from Union Bank in 1980, Volk headed the Weingart Foundation, a wide-ranging charitable institution established after the death of millionaire businessman Ben Weingart, whose assets Volk had helped invest. During Volk’s tenure, foundation assets increased from $155 million to more than $500 million and the foundation distributed about $250 million to charities and public service agencies throughout Southern California.
Born in Trenton, N.J., Volk earned business and law degrees at Rutgers University and later served as a university trustee and headed its Alumni Assn. He was also a trustee of Caltech for 20 years, a board member of the Los Angeles branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, and president of the Los Angeles Clearing House Assn.
Volk’s wife of 41 years, Marion, died in 1972. He is survived by his second wife, actress Marjorie Lord, best known as Kathy, the second wife of Danny Thomas on the long-running television series, “The Danny Thomas Show.”
Volk is also survived by two sons from his first marriage, Robert of Los Angeles and Richard of San Francisco; two stepchildren; nine grandchildren; and 12 great-grandchildren. A daughter, Carolyn Volk Jacques, died in 1987.
The family said memorial services will be private, and asked that any donations be made to the Los Angeles Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America or to the Salvation Army of Southern California.
