A Head-On Battle For Former CEO

Fishman, who remains a big force in this week’s Travelers Championship golf tournament, has taken the opposite track.

As executive chairman, now in that wheelchair, using a non-invasive air ventilator almost constantly, Fishman still comes to the Travelers’ eighth floor headquarters on Lexington Avenue four days a week, and works from his New Jersey home on Fridays.

He will, once again, preside over the Travelers PGA tour tournament in Cromwell, metro Hartford’s biggest sports event not only as chairman of the title sponsor company in its 10th year, but also as co-honorary chairman of the tournament, along with a local ALS patient, Brian Savo.

Travelers CEO Jay Fishman Steps Down After ALS Diagnosis Travelers CEO Jay Fishman Steps Down After ALS Diagnosis People around Fishman, including Andy Bessette, the Travelers executive vice president for administration who’s the point man for the tournament, says he doesn’t focus on his decline, only on what he can do now.

One night in January, Fishman and Bessette sat in Fishman’s Hartford office on the second floor of the landmark Travelers Tower building, kicking around ideas for the tournament.

Fishman Googled the foundation and learned its money goes entirely to the Robert Packard Center for ALS research at Johns Hopkins, run by one of Fishman’s own doctors.

Selling 100 tables of eight seats at $10,000 each is no small task in a regional city that taps the same smallish pool of donors, but the PGA helped, Watson’s name helped, Fishman’s story helped and as of Friday, there were 115 tables booked including 10 at half-price for Travelers employees, where Fishman matched the cost.

That’s a credit to Fishman’s vision and leadership and Travelers’ commitment to details and excellence, said Dan Kleinman, a partner at Hinckley Allen and chairman of the Greater Hartford Community Foundation, which runs the tournament.