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Brooklyn Born Public Relations Giant, Howard Rubinstein, Dies at 88

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Edited by: Fern Sidman

Public relations veteran Howard Rubenstein, who for decades polished and protected the images of New York celebrities and power brokers from George Steinbrenner to Donald Trump, has died. He was 88, according to an AP report.

Rubenstein died Tuesday at home “in peace and in no pain,” his son Steven Rubenstein wrote on the website of the firm that bears the family’s name. No cause of death was given, as was reported by AP.

A report on the OdwyerPR.com web site said that as founding chairman and president of Rubenstein Associates, Rubenstein was likely “best known for his efforts to help those in the public eye negotiate scandals and crises. Serving clients in the worlds of politics, business, real estate and entertainment, he provided them with what usually proved to be an effective playbook for handing political, personal or legal difficulties.”

A Brooklyn native, Rubenstein grew up in a Jewish-American household in the Bensonhurst section of the borough on 74th Street near Bay Parkway with an older sister, June, as was reported by Wikipedia. His mother, Ada, an immigrant from Russia when she was nine, was a homemaker, and his father, Sam, was a crime reporter for the Herald Tribune. Wikipedia reported that Rubinstein graduated from Midwood High School in Brooklyn and then from the University of Pennsylvania Phi Beta Kappa in 1953 with a degree in economics.

AP reported that Howard Rubenstein founded the agency in 1954 after dropping out of Harvard Law School. ODwyerPR.com reported that he eventually earned his law degree from St. John’s University in 1959, and took a six-month break from the PR industry to serve as assistant counsel to the House Judiciary Committee.

Rubinstein began writing press releases for a Brooklyn nursing home, the Menorah Home and Hospital for the Aged and Infirm, after his father introduced him to some officials at the home, as was reported by Wikipedia. Initially he worked out of his parents’ kitchen, but later moved out after his parents refused to answer the phone saying “Rubenstein Associates”.

Business grew quickly; according to Wikipedia, as Rubenstein later said, “I was the only Democratic press agent in Brooklyn, so the politicians started coming to me”.

Polite and soft-spoken, he was the antithesis of the stereotypical curt and fast-talking New York City press agent, as was reported by AP.  But his company’s hundreds of clients — from high-brow cultural institutions to politicians — attested to his clout.

The report on the OwdwyerPR.com web site said that while Rubenstein came to that job “through his connection with Committee chairman Emmanuel Celler, a Brooklyn Democrat, his political connections crossed party lines, including Rudolph Giuliani, Ed Koch and David Dinkins. That breadth of contacts proved an invaluable tool as he solidified his place as a power broker on the New York scene.”

Rubenstein also worked with such media figures as Marv Alpert, whom he helped through a 1997 sex scandal, and talk-show host Kathy Lee Gifford, who faced criticism after her clothing line was charged with using child labor, according to the OdwyerPR.com web site.

Rubinstein’s other notable clients included many of New York’s iconic organizations including: The New York Yankees, News Corporation, Columbia University, New York Philharmonic, Sarah – Duchess of York, Rupert Murdoch since 1976, both Fred Trump and Donald Trump since 1973, and The Metropolitan Opera, as was reported by Wikipedia.

Rubinstein was also instrumental in making the New York City Marathon the world’s largest and one of the World Marathon Majors. Wikipedia reported that he was described by Archie Obrien of Everything PR as “a PR genius” and “public relations royalty.”

Rubenstein worked with Trump during the future president’s highly publicized divorce from Ivana Trump in 1990. (AP, Wikipedia.com & OdwyerPR.com

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