Enterprising Lord & Taylor Senior Executive Gerald Blum Dies at 86

Gerald H. Blum, a longtime Lord & Taylor executive, died July 25 at age 86. Blum died at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center of an unspecified cause, according to Gloria Rabinowitz, a former colleague. A small ceremony may be held in the early fall and a memorial is being considered for a later date, she said. Raised in Bayonne and then North Bergen, N.J., Blum earned a liberal arts degree at New York University. As a Greenwich Village-living undergrad in 1950 in need of a part-time job, a walk up Fifth Avenue led him to his future career. A window display featuring Jacques Fath designs in the Lord & Taylor flagship stopped him cold in his tracks, according to Rabinowitz. Thinking that would be an interesting place to work, he went inside to inquire and wound up being hired as a stock boy in the designer department, she said. After a two-year stint in the U.S. Army’s Quartermaster Corps, he joined Lord & Taylor’s executive training program in 1956. There he climbed the corporate ladder working an assortment of assistant buyer and buyer jobs before being named vice president of sales promotion in 1972 and then senior vice president in 1975. He took on

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