In February, Bill Modell – who led the growth of his family’s eponymous sporting goods chain from an army surplus store that supplied outfits for Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders to a 136-store powerhouse – passed away at the age of 86.

In addition to his role at Modell’s Sporting Goods (1886), he was a philanthropist and pubic servant. Modell was a member of the Negotiating Committee for the Panama Canal Treaty under President Jimmy Carter, New York’s Commissioner of Public Affairs under Mayor Abe Beame and a founding patron of the Metropolitan Opera and Lincoln Center.

He also worked to find a cure for Crohn’s disease, which took his son Michael’s life in 2001.