Julius Westheimer

Who was Julius Westheimer?

Julius Westheimer was a financial advisor from Baltimore, Maryland. He is best known for his radio and television work, having dispensed financial advice on WBAL Radio, WYPR, WMAR, WBAL-TV and PBS' Wall $treet Week, and in columns in the Baltimore Sun, Baltimore Evening Sun, and Daily Record newspapers.

Westheimer was born on September 6, 1916, the son of Milton F. Westheimer, a Baltimore investment banker, and Helen Gutman Westheimer. In his youth, he published a neighborhood newspaper in Pikesville, Maryland, and he later edited the campus newspaper at Dartmouth College, where he earned a bachelor's degree in political science, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and graduated with honors in 1938. In his youth, he lived in his uncle's house at 1714 Eutaw Place in Baltimore.

He began work in the toy department at Macy's in New York for $35 per week. Following World War II, during which he served in the Army Air Corps, he returned to Baltimore to work at Gutman's, the department store founded in 1877 by his grandfather, Julius Gutman. Westheimer eventually became the company's president. In an interview with the Baltimore Jewish Times, he later confessed that he "despised every minute of it." Feeling that he "just wasn't cut out for the retail business," he merged Gutman's with the Brager-Eisenberg department store, and left to begin a career in investment banking.