First meeting Dr. Andrew F. Brimmer in 1985, I was as excited as a distant fan who finally meets a rock star, but I came to know him, not only as the intellectual giant he surely was, but as a supportive mentor, a caring friend and family man as well as a civic leader who was also deeply concerned about the socio-economic development of the Black community.
I likely learned about Dr. Brimmer’s historic appointment as the first African-American to serve on the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System from my Oberlin College professor, Thomas Dernburg, who had served as staff on former President Johnson’s Council of Economic Advisors. At the University of Michigan, Professor Paul W. McCracken, who had served as a chair of President Nixon’s Council of Economic Advisors, praised Dr. Brimmer’s work during a Ph.D. forum. Naturally, I was quite impressed when, while assisting my mentor Dr. Alfred L. Edwards, I observed that he received a call for a freelance consulting job from the renowned Dr. Brimmer.
A few years later, while on leave from Duke University to work as a visiting professor at the Federal Reserve Board, I heard from senior staff economists about Dr. Brimmer’s reputation as one of the Fed’s most prolific and scholarly governors. More recently, as a director of the Charlotte branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, I reflected with pride that then-Governor Brimmer was a leader in creating the important roles for federal bank and branch directors to provide early regional economic reports to policy makers.
Even after leaving the Fed in 1974 to join the Harvard Business School faculty and start Brimmer & Company, he continued his tremendous productivity in both practitioner and academic venues. For more than 60 years, Dr. Brimmer engaged in multiple sessions at the annual Allied Social Sciences Associations meetings. For the last several years, there was a special “Brimmer session,” which included internationally renowned academics, top level government officials and private sector luminaries.
I finally met the esteemed Dr. Brimmer when Dr. Phylicia Fauntleroy, then a staff economist with Brimmer & Company, asked me to help with a project. Throughout the rest of my years in the District of Columbia and sporadically thereafter, for nearly a decade, I had the incredible learning opportunity of working with Dr. Brimmer. He had a keen ability to translate complex analytical insights into clear, practical, actionable recommendations. Thus, he was called upon for myriad analyses from the railroad industry to financial services to the macro-economic cost of discrimination and more.
My experience was that Dr. Brimmer was readily accessible to younger or less well-known economists. Indeed, Dr. Brimmer often shared aspects about his career development with me and with other protégés. He talked about his own mentors who, viewing his potential, advised him to change his plans and instead pursue his doctorate at Harvard and access that network. Dr. Brimmer talked about his unexpected call from President Johnson, their discussion in the Oval Office and his subsequent nomination to the Federal Reserve Board. He shared some of the challenges and privileges of corporate board memberships, including a poignant memory of his visit back to Newellton, La. when USA Today founder Al Newhart decided that Gannett Company board members should be pictured in their birthplaces for publication in the annual report. Dr. Brimmer even shared advice for building a consulting business, with some tips generously credited to others as due.
While Dr. Brimmer did not hesitate to voice his carefully reasoned and elegantly articulated viewpoints, he was never dismissive, and he wore his acclaim lightly. Indeed, although I often worked for his firm, Dr. Brimmer and I both testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on the District of Columbia on one occasion: he represented Brimmer & Company and I represented my own firm. Dr. Brimmer mentored a number of now prominent economists, including Dr. Bernard E. Anderson of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Finance and former assistant secretary in the U.S. Labor Department.
