Seeing Florida’s first television station, WTVJ, from its birth to maturity as the premier broadcasting medium in the state, the senior Ruwitch struck out on his own with a successful chain of legal newspapers (including The Miami Review, The Broward Review, and The Palm Beach Review). From there he would go on to establish the Francien and Lee Ruwitch Charitable Foundation, which provided funding for beneficiaries from UM to art museums to health research.

“He had such a diversity of interest,” recalls Rob Ruwitch. “He was always looking for a new, exciting deal. His philosophy was to expose yourself to whatever and whomever you can and a business venture may fall into place. He would talk to absolutely anybody; limiting your exposure, he felt, would limit your opportunity.”

It was exposure to business at an early age – at dinner table conversation, on Saturday visits to the office with Dad – that prompted Rob to get his business degree at the University of Miami. “The fact that I was always included in everything my Dad did gave me insight that a lot of people don’t have and an education that I probably couldn’t get elsewhere,” says Rob, now CEO of the J. R. Plastics Company, a manufacturer of plastic film from recycled post-industrial scrap.

His dad’s philanthropic bent lives on in him as well, through the Lee Ruwitch Endowed Scholarship Fund, established by Robert with his mother, Francien, to help South Floridians pursue their education at the School of Business.

“Education had always been a very, very important part of my dad’s life. As long as you’re willing to make the effort to do something for yourself, he’d be there to help,” he says.