09-12-2021 Hall of Fame - Flipbook - Page 16
16 Baltimore Sun Media | Sunday, September 12, 2021
BALTIMORE SUN’S 2021
BUSINESS AND CIVIC HALL OF FAME HONOREE
THOMAS AND
BARBARA BOZZUTO
T
homasBozzutoandBarbaraMancinelli,bornsixmonths
apart, grew up in hardworking Italian American families in Waterbury, Connecticut, but it’s not like they were
childhood sweethearts. He was a public school kid who
became captain of his high school football team. She
went to Catholic school, a self-described music nerd
who studied piano. They didn’t know each other until
after both had gone off to separate colleges. They dated,
but only briefly because Tom had been drafted into the Army for wartime service;
he went to Vietnam in October 1969.
Six months into his tour, Tom talked a captain into granting leave to meet
Barbara in Hawaii. No one familiar with this woman will be surprised at what
happened next: On April 17, 1970, in Waikiki, she proposed.
“A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s
gotta do,” Barbara says. “I opened
my suitcase and showed him a little
white dress for me and a blue suit
for him. We were married that
afternoon at the Fort DeRussy
chapel wearing red leis and sporting $14 gold wedding bands.”
Over the course of the next five
decades, Tom and Barbara Bozzuto
moved to Maryland (with $370
cash), started a family and became
leaders in Baltimore’s business
community and philanthropic
circles. Their 51-year marriage has
provided the foundation for Tom’s
successful development company
and Barbara’s myriad civic and
professional endeavors. He built
apartment buildings; she promoted
Baltimore. They both took on leadership roles in supporting institutions and charities. Barbara brought
Olympic gymnastic trials to the
downtown arena and tall ships to
the harbor.
“They are just terrific people,
they’ve done a tremendous amount
here in Baltimore,” says developer
Mark Joseph.
As the Bozzutos tell it, it was
Tom’s desire to solve the problems
of cities that brought the couple
to Baltimore just three years after
BACKGROUND
Age: 74 (both)
Hometown: Waterbury,
Connecticut (both)
Current residence:
Baltimore County
Education: Barbara: B.A., Marymount College. Tom: B.A., Hobart and
William Smith Colleges; M.A. in public
administration, Syracuse University
Career highlights: Barbara: Operation Sail, executive director; Baltimore Mayor’s Office of Promotion
and the Arts; Bozzuto-Lowenstein
Marketing Group; Pride of Baltimore,
public relations director. Tom:
co-founder and chairman, Bozzuto
Group
Civic and charitable activities:
Barbara: former chair, Baltimore
Symphony Orchestra board of
directors; BSO Endowment Trust;
chairman, WYPR board of trustees;
Enoch Pratt Free Library, board of directors; Stevenson University, board
of trustees. Tom: Baltimore Community Foundation, chair; Greater
Baltimore Committee; National
Multifamily Housing Council, chair;
Maryland Science Center board of
trustees, chair
Family: Married 51 years; two
children; six grandchildren
the destructive riots of 1968. With
idealistic ambitions and a graduate
degree in public administration,
he looked for a job in government.
He landed at the Baltimore office
of the U.S. Department of Housing
and Urban Development. “I worked
there for two years,” he says, “and
that was long enough to learn I
was not cut out to work in government service. It rewards inaction,
discourages risk taking. I couldn’t
thrive in government.”
He set out to learn the economics of real estate, how to finance and
build market-rate and affordable
housing. He worked for the Rouse
Co. for a couple of years, then joined
the Oxford Development Co. That’s
where he learned how to be a developer. The company built apartment
buildings. Tom managed Oxford’s
East Coast operations.
In 1988, he and two partners
broke away and formed the Bozzuto
Group. They built houses, condominiums and town houses, but
the main focus was the multifamily market — apartments they built
and then managed. The decision to
take on property management was
key to the Bozzuto Group’s growth.
“You would not go into the prettiest hotel in the world if it was not
being run really well,” Tom says.
“We concentrated on building a
property management organization
that [could be] better than any other
in the country.”
The Bozzuto Group now
manages some 82,000 units, mostly
on the East Coast. It expanded operations to the West Coast during
the last year, with contracts in Los
Angeles and Seattle. The company
has 2,500 employees under the
day-to-day leadership of the Bozzutos’ son, Toby. Tom remains chairman and can look back on a career
that created more than 50,000
apartment units and homes.
“Tom leads with integrity and
he’s both respected and admired by
all who know him,” says Julie Smith,
the Bozzuto Group’s chief administrative officer. “He’s also one of the
most down-to-earth people I have
ever met. He’s very kind. He has a
great sense of humor and a great
sense of fun.”
Ms. Smith, who has known
Tom since the 1980s, calls him
“extremely driven.” Mark Joseph
finds him “thoughtful and fair.”
“You would not go into
the prettiest hotel in
the world if it was not
being run really well.
We concentrated on
building a property
management
organization that
[could be] better
than any other in
the country.”
— Thomas Bozzuto
Patricia Joseph, who serves with
him on the board of the Baltimore
Community Foundation, calls
Tom diplomatic, unfailingly giving
thanks or credit to others.
“And Barbara,” she says, “is
incredibly charming, highly energetic, very smart and very funny,
and she has done amazing things in
the community.”
Barbara has been in the middle
of Baltimore life since the early
1980s. She was part of the group
of civic volunteers and public relations professionals who helped
promote the city in the years after
Harborplace opened and Baltimore
became a destination for tourists
and conventioneers. “There was so
much going on,” she says. “It was
very exciting to watch the buildup
of appreciation for your city, and
how people came together. It was an
excitement that just rarely happens
in a city.”
She’s helped raise millions of
dollars for the Baltimore Symphony
Orchestra, WYPR, the Enoch Pratt
Free Library, the Peabody Institute,
Stevenson University and St. Agnes
Hospital.
“Barbara agreed to chair our capital campaign, the first real campaign
ever for the organization,” says
Bonnie Phipps, the hospital’s
former CEO. “She was amazingly
successful at opening doors for us.
That campaign convinced me that,
though Barbara is small in stature,
she is a true force of nature. It’s hard
to say no to her and Tom because
they walk the walk.”