Evelyn Danzig Haas

Evelyn D. Haas (1917 – February 3, 2010) was a San Francisco Bay Area civic leader and philanthropist. She was the co-founder of the Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. Fund which has contributed more than $364 million to Bay Area cultural, civic, and social service organizations. Biography Haas was born Evelyn Danzig in Elberon, New Jersey in 1917. She grew up in New York City and graduated from Wheaton College in Massachusetts. Her father was Jerome J. Danzig, founder of the bond-trading firm J.J. Danzig and former governor of the New York Stock Exchange. Her brother, Jerome Alan Danzig, was an adviser to Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller of New York and was married to tennis star Sarah Palfrey. Haas met her future husband, Walter A. Haas Jr., while he was attending Harvard Business School. They married and moved to San Francisco in 1940, where they raised their three children: Robert D. Haas, former chairman and CEO of Levi Strauss & Co.; Elizabeth Jane "Betsy" Haas Eisenhardt (married to Roy Eisenhardt); and Walter J. Haas, co-chairman of the Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. Fund and former chairman and CEO of the Oakland Athletics. Funeral services were held at Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco. Philanthropy Evelyn and her husband Walter founded the Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. Fund in 1953.