7960440492?profile=originalCollector Jerry Reinert shows an etching by artist Winslow Homer.

Dale King/The Coastal Star

By Dale King


    Jerome “Jerry” Reinert loves beauty in all forms: the elegance of fine art, the face of his grandson while sitting on his lap and pulling at his 78-year-old grandfather’s handlebar mustache; the warmth of good friends and the satisfaction of a life well-lived.
    The walls of Reinert’s South Ocean Boulevard condo in Boca Raton offer a museum-like display of Winslow Homer etchings, four 350-year-old pen and ink drawings and two signed Marc Chagall lithographs, among others. The exhibit also includes a framed poster from the 50th year reunion of survivors from the ocean liner Andrea Doria.
    As a 21-year-old Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute graduate, Reinert was aboard the ill-fated ship July 25, 1956. At 11:10 p.m., in dense fog, the Italian liner was struck broadside by the Swedish ship Stockholm, just south of Nantucket Island. Eleven hours later, it sank in 250 feet of water.
    “If I was in my stateroom, I would have been killed,” Reinert said. At the moment of the collision, “I was in the first-class lounge with actress Ruth Roman and two or three women from New Orleans.”
    The ice-breaker-reinforced bow of the Stockholm knifed 30 feet into the starboard side of the Andrea Doria, killing about 50 people as they slept in their cabins. The nearly 1,700 remaining passengers were saved in an epic rescue, with the damaged Stockholm and the Ile de France pitching in.
    Reinert turned potential disaster into a night of heroism. He and three other men spent more than three hours rescuing children, carrying them down precarious rope ladders to waiting lifeboats.
    In 1960, he and his brother founded Reinert and Co. Inc., a stock brokerage company. Eventually, they bought a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, which Reinert purchased for himself when he and his brother parted company.
    He was married to his wife, Madeleine, for more than 31 years before her death from breast cancer. He lives with longtime companion Lois Friedman.
    The Andrea Doria survivor also spent years as a lecturer and adjunct professor at St. John’s University in Queens, N.Y., and at the New York Institute of Technology on the campus of Lynn University in Boca Raton. He has also been involved with many charitable organizations at RPI, in New York and for the Boca Raton Museum of Art and the Centre for the Arts in Boca.
    Collecting, Reinert says, “is an incurable disease.” Initially, he acquired antique American clocks. The family kept about 10 when he moved to Boca Raton in 1993. The other 53 were auctioned off by Sotheby’s.
    His extensive collection of art includes pieces that have increased in value “20 to 25 fold.” He has also collected antique watches and possesses original Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck watches.
    Even today, Reinert says the Andrea Doria disaster “changed my life. I realize you can do nothing about yesterday; the future is uncertain. We must live for today.”

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