THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, April 11, 1996 TAG: 9604110325
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: Medium: 63 lines
As James W. Rouse confronted a challenge, a buccaneering half-grin spread across his face.
The light of battle dawned in his pale blue eyes. His hands, right one chopping, left one reaching, entreating, both embracing, cradling, could have been an orchestra leader's. His voice coaxing, laughing, he was the great persuader.
All that life force, stilled by his death Tuesday at 81, changed America's face. Much of the way, Rouse was calling the change, then racing to respond to what he had begun by shaping new creations to counter his earlier ones, so far ahead of other change-bringers he was contending with himself.
He devised and built four enclosed suburban malls before other builders. As the malling of America vitiated core cities, Rouse turned to breathing life into downtown festival market places.
Next, he recruited thinkers and, choosing their best ideas, built from scratch the town Columbia amid Maryland's green hills. Each community's center was a school. Walking tree-lined streets alongside lakes and parks, one felt civilizing calm.
Then, retiring from Rouse Co., he set out to help smaller projects, and he and his wife, Patty, began the charitable Enterprise Foundation to uplift the poor.
Sustaining him were, first, work; then faith. Within five months, at 16, he lost both parents and their home on Maryland's Eastern Shore.
He once said, ``I can remember thinking at the time, `This is tough, but it's good for me.' ''
Hitch-hiking cross country, he shipped steerage to Hawaii to join his sister and her husband. He attended the University of Hawaii, worked through the University of Virginia, then the University of Maryland law school in Baltimore.
He parked cars to earn 25 cents an hour, $13.50 a week. Of that, $5 went for law school; $2.50 for room. and $6 ``to eat and raise hell on.''
Three years after graduation, he founded a mortgage banking firm. Norfolk's Dr. Mason Andrews recalls hearing Rouse's first wife tell how Rouse vowed to help the needy. ``How can a mortgage banker do that?'' she asked.
``I have to succeed in business so people will listen,'' he replied.
Rouse, Andrews said, had irrepressible optimism about the human spirit. He helped the Rev. Gordon Cosby's Church of the Savior turn Washington's slums into shelters that restored ravaged lives.
Rouse said each person is God's instrument in creation: ``One can see oneself most properly as a co-creator with God in all that one does in life - in the physical environment, in the building of institutions, in relations with others.
``That's a very purposeful, emancipating theology. Life becomes so simple in those terms. And if you don't believe you have to succeed, you need only to do your best.'' ILLUSTRATION: James W. Rouse devised and built four enclosed suburban malls
before other builders.
KEYWORDS: BIOGRAPHY DEATH by CNB