Harold W. McGraw Jr., Publisher, Dies at 92
Harold W. McGraw Jr., who as leader of McGraw-Hill, his family’s publishing business, helped build it into a billion-dollar enterprise in the 1970s and ’80s, died on Wednesday at his home in Darien, Conn. He was 92 .
His son Harold W. McGraw III, who is now chief executive of the company, announced his father’s death, attributing it to natural causes.
Mr. McGraw’s leadership at McGraw-Hill was far from a simple matter of inheriting and minding the family store. He played a significant role in its growth and survival as an independent and diversified company in the last half of the 20th century, withstanding a bitter takeover attempt by American Express.
Though McGraw-Hill lacked the prestigious trade book department of rivals like Random House and Doubleday, it remained one of the largest publishing conglomerates in America when Mr. McGraw became chief executive in 1975, reporting gross revenue of about half a billion dollars. In his eight years in the post, McGraw-Hill’s revenue more than doubled and its earnings per share more than tripled, the company said.
Self-effacing, formal in bearing and courteous in an old-fashioned way, Mr. McGraw seemed an unlikely candidate to climb to the top of the corporate ladder. He was the eldest son of the only second-generation member of the family who had never run the company. The man he worked for in the book division, Edward E. Booher, thought little of his abilities. “It just never occurred to me that Harold would one day be my boss,” Mr. Booher told Fortune magazine....
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His son Harold W. McGraw III, who is now chief executive of the company, announced his father’s death, attributing it to natural causes.
Mr. McGraw’s leadership at McGraw-Hill was far from a simple matter of inheriting and minding the family store. He played a significant role in its growth and survival as an independent and diversified company in the last half of the 20th century, withstanding a bitter takeover attempt by American Express.
Though McGraw-Hill lacked the prestigious trade book department of rivals like Random House and Doubleday, it remained one of the largest publishing conglomerates in America when Mr. McGraw became chief executive in 1975, reporting gross revenue of about half a billion dollars. In his eight years in the post, McGraw-Hill’s revenue more than doubled and its earnings per share more than tripled, the company said.
Self-effacing, formal in bearing and courteous in an old-fashioned way, Mr. McGraw seemed an unlikely candidate to climb to the top of the corporate ladder. He was the eldest son of the only second-generation member of the family who had never run the company. The man he worked for in the book division, Edward E. Booher, thought little of his abilities. “It just never occurred to me that Harold would one day be my boss,” Mr. Booher told Fortune magazine....