Leonard Florence was the son of poor Russian-Jewish immigrants.
One of eight children of Myer and Fannie Florence. Leonards first job
was shining shoes at the Soldier’s Home in Chelsea to help out his
family. Years later, the Jewish chapel at the Soldiers Home would be
named for his parents and he would become a member of the home’s
board of trustees. A resident of Bloomingdale Street in Chelsea, he
attended the Chelsea schools and graduated from Chelsea High School
in 1950.
Leonard attended Boston University School of Business
Adminstration under a Dewey Stone scholarship. Dewey Stone, who gave
the BU scholarship was a Brockton industrialist and philanthropist
who saw Leonard’s potential and, in 1956, put up the money for him to
buy the small and struggling Raimond Silver Company of Malden. In
1963, Leonard founded the Leonard Silver Manufacturing Co. Inc. A
millionaire at 30, he helped pioneer the mass-production of silver
picture frames before becoming the head of the Towle Manufacturing
Company, a 300 year-old silverware maker. In 1985 he left Towle and a
year later founded the Syratech Corporation in East boston. Syratech
was a giftware and seasonal products company that markets, imports
and sells flatware and other sterling silver items. After buying his
old company, Towle, and faberware, he built Syratech into a $300
million company. In 1996 Leonard sold Syratech to the Thomas H. Lee
Company. With the money received from the sale, he began to
accelerate his philanthropic efforts. In the 1960s, a chance meeting
in Cambridge with a Catholic priest, the Reverend Lawrence Cronin,
Leonard was told about the work of the St. Coletta and Cardinal
Cushing Schools in Hanover. He was impressed by the care given to
special needs children. He soon became good friends with Cardinal
Cushing and was appointed the first lay person to the schools’ board.
In 1999 Leonard and Cardinal Bernard Law travelled to Israel to
dedicate the Leonard and Charlote Florence Center for Special
Education in Haifa. Earlier Leonard had paid for teachers from the
Haifa center to learn at the Cardinal Cushing center which was the
model for the Haifa school. In 1993 Pope John Paul II bestowed on him
the Order of St. Gregory The Great, the highest honor a layman can
achieve in the Catholic Church, recognizing individuals who
distinguish themselves for notable accomplishments on behalf of
society, regardless of their religious beliefs. In 2000 the pope
elevated him to a commander of the Knights St. Gregory.
Leonard Florence died of a brain tumor on June 26, 2006 at his
home in Brookline, Massachusetts at the age of 74.
