Walter B Kissinger

Walter Kissinger, who was a successful businessman and philanthropist on Long Island and who for much of his adult life had to contend with being the lesser-known Kissinger — that is, not the secretary of state — died on May 3 2021 at his home in San Rafael, Calif. He was 96. He was the president and chief executive of the Allen Group, a multinational conglomerate based in Melville, N.Y., that under his leadership concentrated on manufacturing automotive parts as well as on mobile communications technology. He left the Allen Group in 1988. He and his wife, Eugenie (Van Drooge) Kissinger, who worked at the United Way and other charities, established the Kissinger Family Foundation in 1997, to which they donated most of their assets. They also owned a 230-acre Arabian horse ranch in Colorado, where they spent summers. After his wife died in 2014, Mr. Kissinger moved to San Rafael to be near his son William. In 1938, when Walter was 14 and Henry was 15, they fled Germany, first to London and then to New York. They settled in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan. At least a dozen members of their family were killed in the Holocaust. Walter graduated from the Woodrow Wilson school in 1951. he became disillusioned with the idea of government service and instead went to Harvard Business School, graduating in 1953. After stints with Sperry Rand, General Tire and other companies, he became chief executive of the Allen Group in 1969. He married Ms. Van Drooge in 1959. In addition to his brother and his son William, Mr. Kissinger was survived by a daughter, Dana Kissinger-Matray, and two other sons, Thomas Kissinger and John Kissingford, who melded his last name with that of his wife, Katharine Clifford, when they married in 1999. He is also survived by eight grandchildren.