Professor Brad Roth Creates Two Endowments at Wayne State University

Brad R. Roth, Professor of Political Science and Law, has made two substantial donations in loving memory of his maternal grandfather, James S. Reich, aka Jimmy Rich (1900-1986). Within the Department of Music (College of Fine, Performing, and Communication Arts), he has established an endowed scholarship for the study of organ. In the Department of Political Science, he has contributed a substantial sum for the support of students participating in the Department's Study Abroad programs, including but not limited to the Divided Societies course in the former Yugoslavia, to which he and Professor Kevin Deegan-Krause have brought over one hundred students during eleven runs of the course over the past two decades.

Jimmy Rich was the organist at Radio City Music Hall in New York in the 1930s, the Music Director of WNEW AM Radio in New York in the 1940s, and a voice coach and manager until his retirement in the 1960s. He worked with some of the biggest show-business names of his era, many of whom appeared on WNEW's nationally syndicated program, The Make Believe Ballroom, hosted by Martin Block. His discoveries included Fanny Rose Shore - subsequently, "Dinah." (See attached photo.) He went on to write well-known jingles for radio ads, performed by a group that he managed: "Three Beaus and a Peep."

Born to impoverished immigrant parents at the turn of the twentieth century, Rich was obliged to end his formal education after the eighth grade, so that he could work to help support his family (including three younger siblings). He became an organist in churches and in silent-picture movie theaters in Jersey City, New Jersey, before achieving big-time success in Manhattan. Notwithstanding his lack of formal education, he was extraordinarily well read, and became an aficionado of the fine arts, traveling abroad frequently to visit the museums of Italy, Switzerland, and France.

Thanks to his grandfather's financial support, Professor Roth enjoyed educational opportunities of which the young Jimmy Rich could only have dreamt. Moreover, it was thanks to his grandfather that Dr. Roth was able to undertake a formative undergraduate study-abroad experience in the summer of 1983 in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. He is therefore determined that support of the Department's Study Abroad students be part of his grandfather's legacy. Students for generations to come will benefit from these two endowments from Professor Roth in remembrance of his grandfather.