William “Bill” Lehr Jr., the former Capital BlueCross leader and Hershey Company executive, and prominent advocate for the arts and other nonprofit organizations, died on May 11 at the age of 81.
Lehr was previously a senior vice president, secretary and treasurer at The Hershey Company. He retired from the company in 1995 after 28 years. He also served as the lead director of Hersha Hospitality Trust. Lehr began working with foundation during his final year with The Hershey Company. Black said his efforts helped expand the group’s connections with donors, and he started many funds himself with his own donations. According to Black, Lehr’s contributions helped to “turned the foundation upside down and inside out, and and just really started to grow it.”
“It is not an overstatement to say our arts community would not be what it is were it not for their extraordinary contributions,” said Samuel Kuba, a former executive director of Theatre Harrisburg, said at the time about the Lehrs and another honoree, PNC. Alice Ann Schwab, executive director of the Susquehanna Art Museum, said that his work as a board member or chairman was never a passive one.
“The museum would not exist today, if it weren’t for Bill,” she said, adding that the same sentiments were shared among many other of the museum’s major donors and supporters. “Today we are thriving, and it is because the community started to believe in us. And the community started to believe in us because Bill Lehr was behind us.”a National Art Award, from Americans for the Arts, an arts advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C., that Lehr helped to found and served as director emeritus.