NJ Hall of Fame
Gen. Robert Wood Johnson II
Enterprise | New Brunswick | Highland Park | Raritan (1893 – 1968)
Robert Wood Johnson, the son and nephew of the co-founders of Johnson & Johnson (J&J), built J&J into a global, diversified healthcare company. Born in 1893 in New Brunswick, New Jersey, Johnson served as J&J’s chairman of the board from 1938-1963.
Under Johnson’s direction, J&J opened new sales and manufacturing plants in Brazil, Argentina, India, and other locations worldwide. He expanded the company’s product lines beyond first aid kits and baby powder and, under his leadership, J&J entered the pharmaceutical industry, becoming one of the world’s largest drug manufacturers.
Johnson’s corporate philosophy, embodied in the J&J Credo, which outlined the company’s values, emerged as a new model for other companies to follow. The Credo emphasized J&J’s corporate social responsibility: first to its customers, followed by its workers, management, community, and lastly its stockholders.
Robert Wood Johnson believed strongly in public service. He had earned the title of “the General” during World War II when he served as a brigadier general in charge of the New York Ordnance District. He resigned that post when President Roosevelt appointed him vice chairman of the War Production Board and chairman of the Smaller War Plants Corporation.
A prolific writer, he authored four books and numerous articles on a range of subjects such as military preparedness and business-labor relations.
Johnson contended that full industrial production, combined with engaged, satisfied employees, safeguarded capitalism against potential Communists threats at-home and abroad. Unlike other business leaders of the time, he believed in the rights of the worker. He advocated for higher wages, improved working conditions, and job training skills for working-class Americans.
Johnson also promoted health care issues such as patient care in the hospital setting. He pushed for improved nursing education as one means to enhance the quality of care, and believed that hospital administrators needed specialized training. His work with Malcolm Thomas MacEachern, MD, then president of the American College of Surgeons, led to the founding, at Northwestern University, of one of the first schools of hospital administration.
Throughout his lifetime, Johnson demonstrated compassion and concern for the poor and indigent. In December 1936, he founded the Johnson New Brunswick Foundation. The philanthropy’s first grant involved a donation of 130 acres of land in Highland Park to the County of Middlesex for use as a public park. In 1952, his foundation – newly named the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) – expanded its domain beyond New Brunswick to include all of New Jersey.
Johnson died on January 30, 1968, and bequeathed his company stock to RWJF. It took three years to probate his estate. By that point the foundation had a net worth of more than $1.2 billion, making it the second largest foundation in the country. Today, RWJF, worth more than $10 billion, is the nation’s largest philanthropy devoted solely to the public’s health. Its grantmaking serves as a living tribute to the General.
The Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, both New Jersey-based institutions, also testify to Johnson’s lasting impact on health care in New Jersey.
John ‘Bucky’ Pizzarelli
Born and bred in New Jersey, he is a legendary jazz guitarist who has collaborated with some of the greatest musicians, including Les Paul, Stephane Grappelli, and Benny Goodman.
Antonin Gregory Scalia
Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court
Born: March 11, 1936, in Trenton, New Jersey
Died: February 13, 2016, in Presidio County, Texas
New Jersey Hall of Fame, Class of 2021: Public Service
As a member of the U.S. Supreme Court for 29 years, Antonin Scalia had a huge influence on the course of the nation, articulating the conservative point of view and supporting an originalist interpretation of the Constitution.
Scalia was born to a Sicilian immigrant father and a first-generation Italian-American mother. An exceptional student, he graduated first in his class from Georgetown University and magna cum laude from Harvard Law School. He began to practice law in Cleveland, then taught at the University of Virginia. He entered government service in 1971 as general counsel of the Office of Telecommunications Policy, where he helped formulate regulations for the cable television industry. Three years later, President Richard Nixon tapped Scalia to be assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel; after Nixon’s resignation, Scalia testified before congressional committees on behalf of the Gerald Ford administration on the issue of executive privilege.
After a return to teaching at the University of Chicago Law School, Scalia accepted an appointment by President Ronald Reagan to the federal appeals court for the District of Columbia. As an appellate judge, Scalia built a reputation for his conservative views and forcefully written opinions. This further impressed President Reagan, who nominated him for the Supreme Court in 1986.
Although understood to be a staunch conservative, Scalia won Senate approval to the High Court by a 98-0 vote, an achievement that seems virtually impossible by 21st-century political standards. Indeed, taking the seat of Chief Justice Warren Burger, a more moderate conservative, Scalia helped swing the court further right in the ensuing decades.
Scalia’s decisions on the High Court were often based on his adherence to the judicial philosophy of originalism, which called for a strict interpretation of the Constitution and what is assumed to be the intent of those who drafted and ratified it more than two centuries ago. This is in contrast to those who view the Constitution as a living document that should change with the times.
As the Supreme Court’s conservative anchor, Scalia ruled against gun control and in favor of states’ rights. He loudly dissented against court rulings reaffirming abortion rights and legalizing same-sex marriage. In 2000, he concurred with the court’s decision to shut down a Florida vote recount, assuring George W. Bush’s defeat of Al Gore for the presidency. And in 2015, he dissented from the court’s decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act. At the same time, he sometimes surprised conservatives with his consistent support for free speech, even in a flag-burning case.
Scalia served on the High Court until his death in 2016. Although blunt and contentious in his opinions, he was revered by his fellow justices for his wit and intellectual prowess.
Joe Piscopo
Joe is a comedian, actor and entertainer best known for his work on Saturday Night Live. Born Joseph Charles John Piscopo on June 17, 1951, Piscopo worked as a disc jockey and dinner theater performer before he turned to stand-up comedy. In 1980, he and Eddie Murphy dominated the second wave of SNL’s “Not Ready for Primetime Players” and stayed on for the next few years. Piscopo was famous for his impressions of celebrities, the most prominent of which was Frank Sinatra. Sinatra, who repeatedly endorsed Joe’s work, referred to Piscopo as “The Vice-Chairman of the Board.” Piscopo also had a hit single with “The Honeymooners Rap.”
By the time he left SNL in 1985, Piscopo left his mark on the program, and the nation, thanks to his wide range of celebrity impersonations, including David Letterman, as well as outrageous characters such as “The Sports Guy” and “Doug Whiner.” His work on SNL naturally led to Hollywood, and starring roles in such smash hits as Wise Guys (with Danny DeVito) and Johnny Dangerously (with Michael Keaton). Other film credits include Dead Heat, Sidekicks and the independent feature films Two Bits & Pepper, Roger Corman’s Demolition Day and a dramatic, critically-acclaimed performance in Jonathan Parker’s Bartleby. In January 1996, Joe starred on Broadway as disc jockey Vince Fontaine in Grease!
Live performances have always been an important part of Joe’s career. He has filled arenas and casino showrooms from coast to coast and in Canada. Joe also has won acclaim for his dramatic guest-starring roles on Law and Order. Piscopo also has been a guest on many other TV shows, including The Late Show with David Letterman, the Fox News Channel and other broadcasts. He serves each year as co-host of New York City’s Columbus Day Parade with Maria Bartiromo.
Piscopo devotes much of his energy to non-profit and charitable activities, particularly for causes in New Jersey. Piscopo was the keynote speaker at the Big Brothers Big Sisters National Conference in Chicago. In addition, Piscopo has received Community Service Awards from Boys and Girls Clubs in New Jersey and Broward County, Fla. and was recognized by Boy’s Town of Italy in Rome. Piscopo has five children: Joey, Alexandra, Michael, Olivia and Charley Rae.
Mary Roebling
Mary Gindhart Herbert Roebling (July 29, 1905 – October 25, 1994) was an American banker, businesswoman, and philanthropist. She was the first woman to serve as president of a major US bank.
Mary Gindhart was born in West Collingswood, New Jersey on July 29, 1905. Mary’s parents were Isaac Dare Gindhart Jr. and Mary (Simon) Gindhart, and was the eldest of four children. Mary’s father Isaac was the president of the Keystone & Eastern Telephone Company, and mother was a singer and pianist. She attended public schools in Moorestown and Haddonfield. She married musician Arthur Herbert in her teens (15), in 1920, and had a daughter, Elizabeth, in 1921 . Arthur died in 1922. She then worked in Philadelphia at an investment house while taking night classes in business administration and merchandising at the University of Pennsylvania. Her second husband, was Hugh Graham. They married in 1923. She divorced Graham and married Siegfried Roebling in 1932 (a son of John A. Roebling II. Siegfried died in 1936 and left her Trenton Trust stock. She took his seat on a Trenton Trust Company board. She was elected president of the board on January 21, 1937, and became the first woman to serve as president of a major American commercial bank. She served as either president or chair of the board until 1972 when the bank merged with National State. She then chaired the combined banks until 1984.
Over the years Mary was requested to serve in various public service capacities including Citizen’s Advisory Committee on Armed Forces Installations, Atlantic Congress for NATO, White House Congress on Refugee Programs, International Chamber of Commerce’s 17th Congress, and Citizens Advisory Council to the Committee on the Status of Women. Through several administrations, Roebling served as a civilian aide to the Secretary of the Army. She was made president of the new Army War College Foundation in 1978. That year she also founded Women’s Bank N.A. in Denver, the nation’s first chartered bank established by women, and chaired its board until 1983. From 1958 to 1962, she was governor of the American Stock Exchange. She was their first woman governor.
In a 1965 speech, Mrs. Roebling said: “As a woman who for years has competed in the business world, I would be the first to agree that the American woman has almost unbelievable economic power, but American women, like women of all civilized nations, do not use the influence their economic power gives them.”
She died on October 25, 1994, of renal failure at her home in Trenton, NJ.
Guglielmo Marconi
Born in Italy, this celebrated inventor who won the Nobel Prize for his “contribution to the development of wireless technology” came to New Jersey in 1899 and did much of his pioneering work here in our state. Marconi stands out among some of the greatest pioneers of radio communication who called New Jersey home, including Thomas Edison, Lee De Forest and David Sarnoff. Over a 15-year period, Marconi pursued his experiments in several locations from Highlands to New Brunswick, making Hoboken his American home. He shared the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics with Karl Ferdinand Braun. In 1912, his wireless was renowned for saving those who got into the Titanic lifeboats and made the world realize the value of his wireless system. Finally in 1914, he established a brand of the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company in Wall Township, where he built his lab, dormitories and home. It is now the site of the Info Age Science/History Center, which seeks to preserve Marconi’s memory and excite young people about the field of science.
