Andrew Wray Mathieson rescued Jane A. Celender from assault, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, February 19, 1986. Mrs. Celender, 39, had just left a hockey game and was standing in a parking lot with Mathieson, 57, investment advisor, and his wife. A man armed with a gun approached them and threatened Mrs. Celender, who was Mathieson’s secretary. The man then fired at her, the bullet striking her purse. Mathieson immediately charged the assailant, who shot him in the chest at point-blank range. Continuing to the assailant, Mathieson tackled him, allowing Mrs. Celender to flee. The assailant shot Mathieson twice more, then retreated and fatally wounded himself. Mathieson was hospitalized for three weeks for treatment of wounds to his right hand, left arm, and right lung, a portion of which had to be removed.
60937 – 7080
60937-7080Obituary
Andrew W. Mathieson was paid by the Mellon family for years to dispense his able opinions about finance and philanthropy, but his true beneficiaries may have been the numerous nonprofit organizations and institutions he advised for free. The longtime executive of Richard K. Mellon and Sons and the Richard King Mellon Foundation served in volunteer positions with the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, Allegheny County United Way, the Women’s Center and Shelter of Greater Pittsburgh, the American Red Cross, St. Margaret Memorial Hospital, and Shady Side Academy, among others.
Until his death at age 72 in his Fox Chapel, Pa., home on Feb. 10, 2001, Mathieson was one of those quietly influential individuals whose assistance was deemed invaluable even if he sought no attention for himself. Mathieson had suffered from colon cancer for several years.
He was a player in the region’s decision-making from the time he left an executive position at Westinghouse Electric Corp. in 1963 to become the key investment strategist for the Mellon family. He became executive vice president of Richard K. Mellon and Sons, from which he retired in 1998, and served as trustee and treasurer of the Richard King Mellon Foundation for 30 years. Mellon and Sons provided investment advice to family members. Mathieson also was a director of Mellon Financial Corp. from 1981 to 1999. The Mellon family praised his financial skills in helping the foundation’s assets climb from $170 million to $1.5 billion during his tenure, enhancing its ability to support projects and causes throughout Western Pennsylvania.
Other entities to whom millions and billions of dollars might have seemed an unlikely concept appreciated Mathieson just as much, if not more so. Marty Friday, executive director of the women’s shelter, said Mathieson’s interest in the organization, starting in the early 1980s, gave it credibility it otherwise might have lacked in the corporate and philanthropic world. He advised the nonprofit group on a series of capital campaigns that helped it relocate and expand services, and he connected it with other individuals who could be helpful in the effort against domestic violence.
“I think he saw, before a lot of other people, how we were a young organization that could benefit enormously from help, that we needed his help, and that we listened to what he had to say,” Friday said. “He would say, ‘I always have an opinion, and very often it’s right.'”
Mathieson’s confidence in himself was no greater than the trust others could place in him. Never was that more evident than the night of Feb. 19, 1986, when he, his wife, Helen, and his secretary were leaving a Penguins’ game at the Civic Arena. His secretary was shot at and chased in the arena parking lot by her estranged husband. Mathieson, 57 at the time, chased the man and tackled him from behind.
In their scuffle, the assailant fired three shots that struck Mathieson, and he also wounded Helen Mathieson when she came to her husband’s assistance. The assailant got away from the couple and shot and killed himself. Mathieson spent months recovering from the wounds to his hand, arm, and lung. A year later, he received the Carnegie Medal.
The secretary, known at the time of the assault as Janice Celender, had her life, thanks to Mathieson and his wife, though she said Mathieson didn’t boast of that or of any public or private service. She later was known as Janice Crompton.
“He always tried to do what he could to make a difference and make someone’s life better, from the person in the parking garage on up,” Crompton said. “He was in a unique position with Mellon and its money to make a lot of things happen that other people wouldn’t have the opportunity to do.”
He was a graduate of Shady Side Academy and Bucknell University, playing tennis for both, before joining the first class of the Carnegie Mellon Graduate School of Industrial Administration. He earn