Remembering L. William Seidman

ALLENDALE, Mich. — Hundreds of family members, friends and colleagues from across the country will gather at Grand Valley State University on Friday, September 11 to celebrate the life and accomplishments of L. William Seidman at the university he helped establish. Seidman, founding chair of Grand Valley’s board and former head of the FDIC, died May 13 at age 88.

The only public memorial for Seidman will be 3 p.m. on Friday, September 11 in the Louis Armstrong Theater of the Performing Arts Center on Grand Valley’s Allendale Campus. The memorial will be followed with a reception in the Grand River Room of the Kirkhof Center. The event will be carried live by WGVU-TV on Channel 35-1. It will also be webcast live at www.gvsu.edu/seidman.

Memorial speakers will include Seidman’s son Tom, as well as Richard M. DeVos, co-founder of Amway and chairman of the NBA Orlando Magic. DeVos is a former Grand Valley trustee and served on the university’s governing board with Seidman. He now serves as general chairperson of the Grand Valley University Foundation. Also speaking is Arend D. Lubbers, president emeritus of Grand Valley State University; Birge Swift Watkins, former national investor outreach director, FDIC/RTC and former staff assistant to President Ford; Roger Porter, IBM Professor of Business and Government, Harvard University and Sue Herera, founding member of CNBC and co-anchor of “Power Lunch.”

As one of the founders of Grand Valley State University, Seidman helped galvanize local support for the establishment of a public four-year university in West Michigan. Beyond his connection to Grand Valley, Seidman was a remarkable man. He served in the U.S. Navy during World War II and earned the Bronze Star for service in the invasion of the Philippines, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. He was the managing partner of Seidman and Seidman (now B.D.O. Seidman), an international accounting firm, and was president of WZZM-TV in Grand Rapids, which he helped found. In 1961 he was elected as a delegate to Michigan's Constitutional Convention, which re-wrote the state's turn-of-the-century document. In 1974 he joined President Gerald R. Ford's administration as an economic advisor and later became chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., a position he held from 1985 to 1991. He also served as head of the Resolution Trust Corp. in the aftermath of the Savings and Loan crisis. In later years, Seidman served as chief commentator for CNBC.