This is one of an occasional series of articles intended to paint a cumulative portrait of our Jewish community. Individuals are selected at random from the Milwaukee Jewish Federation database. The Chronicle does not have access to donor information, nor does it contact members of the community with regard to their giving habits.
Today, we focus on Philip A. Himmelfarb.
Three or four years ago, Philip A. Himmelfarb and Herbert Cummins were both exercising and chatting at the Harry & Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center, when Himmelfarb turned to Cummins and said, “How would you like to be my friend?”
“I’ve never heard a statement like that from a man in my life,” Cummins recalled. What is even more surprising to Cummins is that they have been tight friends ever since. “I never expected to meet someone at this stage of my life that I could feel that close to,” said Cummins, 70.
In fact, these two retired men are going to go to Mongolia — yes, Mongolia — together this summer to participate in a Habitat for Humanity project there.
“We both were looking for what we can do at our age that’s out of the box, out of our comfort zone,” said Himmelfarb in a recent interview at the JCC. “I can still barely believe we’re going to be doing this. It’s an incredible thing.”
But “out of the box” thinking and directness seem to have been characteristic of Himmelfarb, 68, even as a young man. For example, there was the way that some 45 years ago he met his wife, Carole (nee Chatis).
“It was a blind double-date,” Carole said in a telephone interview. “He was supposed to go with the other girl; and he decided he’d rather go with me, and he did.”
To him, it was love at first sight, while she needed a little more convincing. But she soon concluded that he was “very warm, gentle and kind” and “somebody I could easily trust.” He also impressed her as “smart” and “very wide-ranging” in his interests.
Making things happen
That combination of traits appears to have shaped an amazingly varied career and roster of achievements. Himmelfarb, a New York native raised in the Boston area, started out as a microbiologist, earning his doctorate in 1962 at the University of Massachusetts.
He was attracted to the field because it contained “a lot of unknowns” and “I’m curious about a lot of things in nature [and] fascinated by things I couldn’t see.” But after doing some post-doctoral research, “I decided I didn’t want to work in the isolation of a lab [and that] I was more of a ‘people person’ than I realized.”
So he made the shift into business. After short periods at east coast firms, he and his family (three children; today he and his wife have two grandchildren) came to Milwaukee in 1970 so he could join the Jos. Schlitz Brewing Co. — even though, he said, “I don’t like beer. I never did.”
But Schlitz did much more than make beer, and Himmelfarb helped create much of that business. He helped the company develop new products, including the first low-alcohol “cooler” beverages; helped design and build a winery in California; and helped the firm acquire and remodel a bottled water facility in Sweden.
During that time, he took classes in various business topics and developed a taste for that field. “I like people and I like making things happen,” he said. “In business, you can often make things happen and see the results of your work…. I need to make a difference, to make things happen, to create organization where there is chaos.”
Eventually, Himmelfarb decided he wanted both to create his own business and to remain in Milwaukee after Schlitz was purchased by the Detroit-based Stroh Brewery Co. So in 1982, he created Philip Adam & Associates, a consulting firm that has helped companies all over the country with new product development.
He has also written two books: “Survival of the Fittest: New Product Development During the 90s” (1992) and “Back to Basics: A Fad-Free Diet for Corporate Managers” (1997).
His interests are wide-reaching and diverse outside of business also. For one, he grew up in what he described as a “Jewish agnostic family” and was “Jewish in name only” when he married Carole.
However, Judaism meant a lot to her, and she “carefully introduced me” to it. He ended up serving as president of Congregation Shalom for two years, which he said was “a wonderful experience.”
And he has internalized Jewish values to the point that Cummins calls him “Mr. Tikkun Olam,” saying he is the kind of person that even during a recreational hike will pick up litter he encounters on the way. Himmelfarb also volunteers regularly at the Jewish Home and Care Center. “He is a giving person, trying to make this a better world,” Cummins said.
Above all, Himmelfarb seems to exude energy and optimism, and his wife agrees. “There are some people born that way” and he is one of them, she said.
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