Never have I witnessed an outpouring of grief over the death of a businessman as I did when Harris Rosen died. Then again, Harris Rosen was no ordinary businessman.
Rosen’s story begins on New York City’s Lower East Side, where he grew up playing stickball and marbles in the gritty streets. He got an introduction to hospitality at a young age. His father, Jack, the son of Eastern European immigrants, worked as a safety director and sign painter at the famed Waldorf Astoria. As part of the job, Jack would letter by hand hundreds of place cards for events, first in pencil, before tracing over the lines with his quill pen. A 10-year-old Harris would erase the pencil marks, fold the cards, alphabetize them in a shoebox and help his father deliver them to the hotel’s ballroom.
He earned a penny per card, but the apprenticeship proved life-changing thanks to chance meetings at the hotel with Jackie Robinson, Gen. Douglas MacArthur and Marilyn Monroe. “I thought if I could meet all of these incredible people in an elevator, this really was a business that I might enjoy,” Rosen told the University of Central Florida’s Pegasus Magazine.
After graduating from Cornell University in 1961 with a degree in hotel management and serving for three years as an officer in the U.S. Army, Rosen returned to the Waldorf Astoria as a convention salesman. He went on to manage hotels in Texas and Mexico and eventually landed at Disney as an administrator of hotel planning, working on several notable projects including the Contemporary Resort and the Polynesian Village Resort.
But in 1973, a Disney boss fired him, saying he didn’t quite fit the mold of a Disney executive. Rather than wallow in self-pity, Rosen made a promise to himself. “I would never work for anybody else after that even if I had to sell hot dogs on (Orlando’s) Church Street,” he told FLORIDA TREND'S Barbara Miracle in a 2007 interview.
Hot dog vending wasn’t in the cards. Instead, the determined entrepreneur plunked his last $20,000 in savings down on a struggling, 256-room Quality Inn along Orlando’s International Drive. He then hitchhiked his way up the East Coast, offering motorcoach operators in New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts rates they couldn’t refuse of $7 to $8 per night. As the tour buses delivered heads to his beds, Rosen lived and worked in the hotel, wearing every hat, from housekeeper to manager to director of sales.
Rosen Hotels & Resorts grew to become Florida’s largest independent hotel chain, with nearly 7,000 rooms at seven I-Drive locations.
Along the way, Rosen grabbed attention for his innovative approach to problem-solving, including the trailblazing company health plan he designed to tackle spiraling health insurance costs. Self-funded since 1991, Rosen Hotels & Resorts offers primary care to its employees at an onsite clinic. Employees’ out-of-pocket costs are minimal, and by cutting out the group insurance middleman, the company says it’s reduced its health care costs by hundreds of millions of dollars over the past several decades.
Around the same time that he launched RosenCare, the hotelier had a revelation. Knowing that he’d been “blessed beyond his wildest dreams,” an inner voice told Rosen it was time to offer a helping hand to others. And did he ever.
He started in Tangelo Park, an Orlando neighborhood struggling with crime and low high school graduation rates. Rosen provided free preschool to every 2-to- 4-year-old in the community coupled with full-ride college scholarships. Graduation rates soared to 100% and hundreds of students went on to earn college degrees. And later he did the same thing in Orlando’s Parramore neighborhood, near downtown.
Rosen told the New York Times in 2015 that the programs were about cultivating hope. “If you don’t have any hope,” he said, “then what’s the point?”
Rosen also cultivated kindness and stayed grounded. He worked out of the same modest office — three combined rooms in his original two-story motel — for 50 years. It wasn’t unusual to see him bussing tables at his resorts during busy holiday buffets. And he always made time to speak with anyone and everyone, even us journalists.
Abraham Pizam, a retired professor and the founding dean of University of Central Florida’s Rosen College of Hospitality Management, got to know Rosen 25 years ago when he donated $10 million and 25 acres that helped transform the school’s then-mediocre hospitality program into a top-ranked school with its own campus near International Drive.
I spoke with Pizam after Rosen died in November at the age of 85, and the former dean believes his late friend is still hard at work making this world a better place.
“Harris was a brilliant businessman, master innovator, a modest man, deep thinker and philosopher who dedicated his life to help the underprivileged succeed in life. His impact on our community was huge, and we all owe it to him,” Pizam said. “If there is a heaven, I am sure that Harris is seated in the front row and helps God to improve humanity.”
— Amy Keller, Executive Editor akeller@floridatrend.com