Basic HTML Version
The way he put it, it made perfect sense.
You can’t take it with you. You can’t give
it all to your kids as they may “spend it all
in a year”. And much like Rockefeller and
Sage did a century before him,
Hisham
Jaroudi ‘62
decided to simply give it back.
“IC is what formed me, it’s what made
me, it’s what taught me the principles I
needed in this life,” he said.
And so it is that IC is proud to announce
that the first of the three up and rising
new elementary school buildings is now
the Hisham Izzat Jaroudi building.
The man behind the building is a 68-
year old with gray hair, a wide grin and
twinkling eyes. Some may know him as
an architect, others have heard of him
as the president of the Sporting Club
in Manara (al Riyadi), some may know
him as a board member in the Makassed
Philanthropic Islamic Association, some
may remember him as a close associate of
former Prime Minister Rafik al Hariri,
others may remember him as the closest
friend of Saeb and Tammam Salaam, and
some may simply know him as the loving
father of alumni members: Tammam,
Nadia and Thuraya.
At heart, he is what he always has been.
“I’m from the middle class,” he chuckled.
In fact, he refuses to be anything else. His
principles in life are simple: work hard,
be ethical, take risks, be positive, depend
on yourself, love your work, don’t be shy,
dream and no matter what you do, “don’t
put cash in your kids hands or they’ll end
up failing”, he said. “Give them a solid edu-
cation and let them make their own way.”
He has an uncanny memory for details.
He remembers every teacher and every
classmate.
There was English teacher, Charles
Addington, who upon hearing his class
complaining about the country was quick
to admonish his students. “It’s not the
country,” he said. “It’s you who make it
good or bad.”
And there was Toufic Attaya, then
elementary school principal, who showed
the young Jaroudi and the rest of the six-
year-olds a piece of candy wrapper that he
saved from the day before. “I could have
thrown it out in the street,” he said. “But I
didn’t. I put it in my pocket so I can throw
it in the trash.”
Jaroudi even recalls his first lesson of
modesty when he saw then IC president,
Leslie Leavitt, stoop to pick up the trash
in the playground.
And there was of course, Shafic Jeha, who
“taught me all I know about my civic and
moral duties towards my country,” said
Jaroudi. “I cannot refer to him as anything
but my ‘great teacher.’”
But his favorite IC recollection was when
Arabic teacher, Alfred Khoury, praised his
50-page analysis.
“You are the hope of the future. On your
shoulders, nations will be built,” had writ-
ten Khoury.
Jaroudi took the words to heart and
while he didn’t build nations, he certainly
launched a successful career.
Jaroudi’s beginning was a modest one. His
father, a merchant in Foch Street, grilled
his five children in ethics and conduct. He
strongly believed in a solid education. He
saved every lira and showed up every so
often to school with a wad of cash in his
pocket. Slowly and surely, he would count
the pile of cash and hand it to the school.
“You’re a good man,” Jaroudi once heard
then IC president Thomas Schuller say to
the father, “a good man”.
It deeply affected Jaroudi. Until this day,
The man behind the building
4
WINTER
2010
L to R: A young Hisham Jaroudi with brothers Nabil and Usama