Vigorous Gift
Albert Zesiger, '51, commits $8M to build a new pool because good health, he says, is priceless
On the morning you first meet Albert Zesiger you wish you just had swum the English Channel. It would be a good detail to weave into a conversation with this 67-year-old man who became a champion of fitness when he quit smoking 40 years ago, and who since has run 17 marathons, swum the Bosphoros, and climbed the Matterhorn.
Recently, he and his wife, Barrie, committed $8 million to build an Olympic-class swimming pool at MIT, which will be the centerpiece of a new athletic facility scheduled to open in the year 2000. The reason for the gift, he says, is to support the life, health, and happiness of the MIT community for years to come.
“Fitness is a lifestyle. It feels great and is just a great way to live,” says Zesiger, founder of Zesiger Capital Group in New York, who is convinced that a life of physical fitness is the reason he has been successful in his own life and work. “It gives you energy, clarity, relieves stress, is good for the body, and great for the mind.
A Doer
“I never watch TV. If I’m going to do something, I’m going to do it myself, not watch somebody else do it,” says Zesiger, who for relaxation rides his bike 25 miles or swims laps around the one-mile island on which he lives in Long Island Sound.
A lover of the outdoors since he was four and his family spent two months camping in Montana, Zesiger always hiked, fished, and rode horses, but it was not until he quit smoking at age 27 that fitness became a lifestyle.
“I’d just gotten into the investment field in New York; it was stressful and I found exercising was good,” says Zesiger, who began to run around the reservoir in Central Park, then figured, might as well run twice around, until he was running around the whole park, then running the New York and Boston Marathons.
On a trip to Switzerland, he gazed up at the 14,000-foot peak of the Matterhorn and thought, I’m going to climb that; the next year he returned to Zermatt with an ice ax, ropes, and crampons (those shoes with the spikes) and made the 14-hour climb. “You get on top of the Matterhorn,” he says, “and you’re on top of the world.”
He climbed 15 peaks in Switzerland, then several in the U.S., including Mts. Washington and Rainier. “You climb Rainier roped, and just for fun, the guide charged into the rope and dragged us down the mountain. You go down feet first and head first and right-side-up and upside-down. And it’s fun.”
Long Life
“I get a big kick out of life. I plan to live to 100 and plan to enjoy every minute. I love my work. I love investing around the world. If the market goes down 500 points, it’s okay. I’ve learned to deal with stress,” says Zesiger, who seven times swam from Alcatraz Island to San Francisco.
“Swimming is aerobic. It affects your cardiovascular system, makes your bones dense, your heart efficient, clears your mind, keeps your blood flowing, and keeps you healthy and young. You relax, think better, function better, and you always can solve problems better when your mind is clear.”
He began swimming in 1984 when he injured a hip and no longer could run. Suddenly aware New York had no Olympic-size pool, he became chairman and chief financier of Asphalt Green AquaCenter, now a five-story athletic facility on the upper east side which opened in 1994 with one of the only Olympic-size pools on the East Coast open to the public. It was then, he says, that he picked up on the need for MIT to have one, too.
On this day, he is standing on the roof of that center where the view of the surrounding facilities is better, and the view of the East River is much better, and he is joking that it is the Eighth Wonder of the World because it took years of wrangling with the New York Zoning Department to okay five and-a-half acres of New York real estate; and although he does not say he invested a lot of effort, money, and love into this building you know that he did, and you also know he feels it all was worth it; and as the cars on FDR Drive whiz by below, Zesiger looks out across the river which is sparkling in the sun, and in a voice filled for the first time not with energy but with softness, says:
“You see, I came out of a quiet suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. I played in the back yard or we played Kick the Can. I had an ordinary childhood and did a lot of ordinary things. There were no mountains to climb there.
“At MIT, the whole world opened up, and see…well…I’ve been lucky. I was born into a good family. I was born with a good body and a good mind. I went to MIT. I’ve done well in my business. I want to give something back.”
