Maurice Tempelsman
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Maurice Tempelsman (born August 26, 1929, Antwerp, Belgium) is a Belgian-American businessman and diamond merchant. He moved to the United States as a child and attended New York public schools and New York University. He is fluent in several languages and has interests in the fields of history, archaeology and sailing.
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[edit] Business interests
Tempelsman is Chairman of the Board of Directors of Lazare Kaplan International (LKI), the largest cutter and polisher of “ideal cut” diamonds in the United States. He also serves on the International Advisory Council of the American Stock Exchange where LKI is quoted.
[edit] Philanthropic and political activities
Tempelsman maintains extensive relations with political and business leaders, in particular government leaders in southern Africa, and leading figures in the Democratic Party (United States).
Tempelsman served as Chairman of the Corporate Council on Africa (CCA) from 1999 to 2002, when he became Chairman Emeritus. In April 2007, he was elected to another one-year term as CCA Chairman. He is a past Chairman of The Africa-America Institute, and is also a trustee of the Eurasia Foundation. He is a Director of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs; the Center for National Policy; the Business Council for International Understanding and the US-Russia Business Council. He is Chairman of the International Advisory Council of the Harvard AIDS Initiative, and is an honorary trustee and an honorary member of the corporation of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and was named a Visitor to the Department of Classical Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. A director of the Academy of American Poets, Tempelsman also serves as a trustee of the New York University Institute of Fine Arts, and on Lenox Hill Hospital’s Advisory Board. He has served on several Presidential Commissions including the President’s Commission for the Observance of Human Rights, the Citizen’s Advisory Board of Youth Opportunities and the National Highway Safety Advisory Committee, and was appointed to the New York Council on International Business. Tempelsman was also an active fundraiser for the Democratic Party.
[edit] Family life
He has three children by his estranged wife, Lilly Tempelsman. While still married to Lilly, he became the companion to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, former First Lady of the United States. The two began their lengthy relationship in the late 1970s, shortly after the death of Onassis's wealthy second husband, Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis.
Tempelsman soon moved into Onassis's Fifth Avenue penthouse apartment in New York City. The couple frequently took walks through Central Park and were photographed doing so in the days preceding her death on May 19, 1994 at age 64 from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Templesman read Constantine P. Cavafy's poem Ithaca at Onassis's funeral service. It was, reportedly, one of her favorites.
After Onassis's death, Tempelsman became more of a "father figure" to her's surviving children, Caroline Kennedy and John F. Kennedy Jr..[citation needed]
[edit] Lilly Tempelsman
Lilly Bucholz, a Polish Jewish refugee from the Nazis married Maurice Tempelsman at the age of 17 in the late 1940s. Her father also was a diamond merchant, which may explain how the couple met.
After her husband left her for Jackie Kennedy, Lilly Tempelsman became a social worker with the Jewish Board of Family & Child Services. As of 2007, she is the program coordinator for the Compeer program, a project that, through the auspices of the Jewish Board and the UJA Federation of New York, "matches volunteers one-to-one, with a recovering mentally ill adult who is in need of a friend" (see [1]).
[edit] Conflict diamonds
Tempelsman’s company, LKI, has helped develop and fully supports policies which prohibit the trade in conflict diamonds, prevent money laundering, combat the financing of terrorism, and promote transparency, fair dealing and disclosure throughout the diamond pipeline. It is LKI’s strict policy to clearly identify its prospective suppliers and its customers before entering into any business transaction. In particular, LKI supports and participates in the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme. For comprehensive details of these policies, refer to Lazare Kaplan International.
