(l-r) Tunky Riley, Secretary Riley, Trude Heller, Madeleine Albright, and Max Heller
Fellows in Residence
Max Heller
Former Mayor of Greenville, SC
Max M. Heller, the former mayor of Greenville who has played a key role in the economic development of South Carolina over the past three decades, has been named the first Richard W. Riley Institute Fellow in Residence.
As a Riley Fellow, Heller spent a number of weeks on campus speaking in classes and to groups of students. He presented two public lectures, participated in a political oral history project and met informally with students and faculty.
Max Heller is a native of Austria who left his Nazi-occupied homeland in 1938 and came to Greenville to work as a stock boy at Piedmont Shirt Company. He founded Maxon Shirt Company in 1948 and retired in 1969 to devote his time to public service. In 1971, after two years on the Greenville City Council, he was elected to the first of two consecutive terms as mayor of Greenville. He was a candidate for the United States House of Representatives in 1978.
A former chair of the State Development Board, he has played a leadership role in civic and community organizations. He received the 1970 Man of the Year Award from the National Council of Jewish Women, the Distinguished Service Award and the Greater Greenville Ministerial Alliance, and the Human Relations Award from the Greenville Human Relations Commission. A former chair of the Greenville Chamber of Commerce and a past member of the Furman Advisory Council, he is a recipient of the Whitney Young Humanitarian Award from the Greenville Urban League. Furman awarded him an honorary doctor of laws degree in 1975 and the Bell Tower Award in 1998.
Max and his wife, Trude, who received an honorary degree from Furman in 1999, have three children, 10 grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.