Tragic End
After Long Battle,
A Wall Street Star
Loses to Depression

For years, financiers Arthur Zankel and Sanford I. Weill discussed Wall Street and philanthropy at Manhattan's posh Four Seasons restaurant. But when they slid into their regular booth one afternoon in June, the discussion was anything but routine.

Mr. Weill, chairman of financial giant Citigroup Inc., says Mr. Zankel told him he was losing a long battle with depression -- a "blackness," he said, that was consuming him. For weeks, Mr. Zankel, 73 years old, had hid at home while fabricating trips and excuses to avoid business and social contacts, according to his wife. Even scheduling and showing up at the lunch had been a struggle.

"Nothing is working," Mr. Zankel said, distraught that medication, counseling, exercise and specialists hadn't helped lift his depression. A self-made man who had amassed a vast fortune, Mr. Zankel was losing hope that he could be helped, recalls Mr. Weill. After lunch, Mr. Weill, the major donor to New York's Weill Medical College of Cornell University, lined up top psychiatrists and physicians to try to save his friend.

But time ran out. Six weeks later, Mr. Zankel jumped to his death from the ninth floor of his Manhattan apartment building. A tearful Mr. Weill gave the eulogy at a packed memorial service attended by many of the nation's corporate leaders.

Advancements in the treatment of depression have helped millions and saved many lives. The disease, in its various forms, affects about 19 million Americans each year, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. But there are still cases that can't be cured, even for accomplished people who have access to all kinds of care and the strong support of a close-knit family. As he struggled sporadically with depression for 50 years, Mr. Zankel tried everything from hospitalization to hobbies to antidepressant drug combinations, but ultimately couldn't beat the disease.

During his career, Mr. Zankel made hundreds of millions of dollars by aggressively investing in companies from Citigroup to Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Co. He donated millions to charities, including New York's Carnegie Hall, which named a new venue after him in 2003. Though he hobnobbed with Wall Street titans, one son recalled at his funeral that Mr. Zankel also helped put a young man who shined his shoes through college and paid off a mortgage for his secretary.

He experienced depression initially in 1954, beginning a pattern of severe bouts of the disease, with long breaks in between, says his brother, Martin. Having risen from modest Brooklyn roots, Mr. Zankel was a successful student at Harvard Business School. Suddenly, he couldn't concentrate on his studies and felt oddly out of sorts. Martin remembers Arthur calling him at the time: "I'm panicking," he said.

The panic dissipated a few months later. Armed with his Harvard M.B.A., Mr. Zankel headed to Wall Street in 1955. He started at a securities firm and later set up shop at First Manhattan Co., an investment-advisory firm. His business grew, he became friends with Mr. Weill and, over the years, managed money for clients ranging from New York's Museum of Modern Art to "Green Acres" actor Eddie Albert.

By the early 1970s, depression struck again. With an official diagnosis, Mr. Zankel was admitted into Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan. It was a disaster. One night, despite being heavily medicated, he walked out of the hospital and wandered the streets for hours, his brother says. Mr. Zankel eventually called a business colleague, who arranged for him to be taken home to his wife and four young sons.

Calling the hospital a "nightmare," Mr. Zankel vowed to get better without hospitalization, his brother recalls. After a few months of psychiatric treatment, his depression lifted.

At work, Mr. Zankel was known for his blunt style and dry wit. Once, while meeting with an executive who sought an investment from him, Mr. Zankel was galled to learn that the man was cashing out his own stock at the same time, according to a person who was there. Mr. Zankel asked: "Did the quintuplets make it into Stanford or do you need to remodel the yacht?" Mr. Zankel didn't invest; he often said he preferred management with "skin in the game."

Without a clear trigger, Mr. Zankel's depression recurred around 1980, according to his brother and sons. A new psychiatrist suggested pursuing hobbies might help. Mr. Zankel loved bridge, so the doctor urged him to begin playing again. He also tried gardening and baking. When his children teased him after he baked a cake, they recall Mr. Zankel retorted: "It's a great way to relax." Eventually, his depression dissipated.

The next medical crisis wasn't his. In 1986, Mr. Zankel's wife of 30 years died from colon cancer. His son Jimmy, who was 15 and the only child living at home at the time, recalls that his dad stocked the refrigerator with smoked turkey and brought in fresh-cut flowers -- things that his mother had done. For the first time, Mr. Zankel started taking antidepressants, according to his brother.

Back to Himself

Within months, Mr. Zankel was back to himself at the office, says a person who worked with him. His business at First Manhattan was thriving. He also was advising Mr. Weill, who had been ousted as president of American Express Co. and was about to embark on building a second financial empire. In the late 1980s, Mr. Zankel joined the board of the company headed by Mr. Weill, which over time acquired brokerage firm Smith Barney, insurance giant Travelers and Citicorp, which became Citigroup. Mr. Zankel was his "most valued adviser," Mr. Weill says.

Citigroup wouldn't be the financial power it is "without Arthur's influence," says Mr. Weill, 72. He recalls that when he had a business problem he wanted to discuss, Mr. Zankel often said, "Let's take a walk," and they'd stroll near their weekend houses.

A few years later, Mr. Zankel suffered another brief bout of depression, but a new combination of antidepressants, in addition to regular visits with a psychiatrist, pulled him out of it, according to his sons and his brother. The Zankel family declined to provide the names of his doctors or medications.

In 1996, Mr. Zankel began dating Judy Francis, then a 49-year-old illustrator. One night, she says he confided in her, calling his past depression "grave." He recounted his episodes with the disease, she says, and told her that in the aggregate, they all lasted less than two years over his lifetime. She recalls thinking at the time that although depression had a big impact, it didn't dominate his life. The pair married in 1997 and bought an apartment on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue. In a bathtub installed to overlook Central Park, Mr. Zankel liked to take a morning bath while reading newspapers and financial documents, his wife says.

The next few years were Mr. Zankel's happiest, family and friends say. He and Judy Zankel engaged in an active social life. Mr. Zankel, a director on several charitable boards, gave the $10 million lead gift for a high-tech performance auditorium at Carnegie Hall, called the Judy and Arthur Zankel Hall. In 2000, he launched a private-investment fund focused on real-estate investment trusts. It recorded a 31% return in its first year.

Arthur Zankel's family: From left, sons Mark and Jimmy; widow Judy; and sons Kenny and Tommy.

Depression seemed gone until the summer of 2004, when Mrs. Zankel says her husband suddenly said to her, "I'm worried...I'm feeling depressed." When the couple went to their home in Cape Cod in July, the typically energetic Mr. Zankel became withdrawn for the rest of the summer, his wife says. His depression continued until Mr. Zankel's doctor tried a new regimen of antidepressants. At a party that fall celebrating his eldest son's marriage, he seemed like his "old self," his wife says.

But by the spring of 2005, business and society acquaintances started asking Mrs. Zankel if her husband was all right. She lied repeatedly, she says, telling them the pain medication from recent kidney stones was knocking him out. He attended functions only when he thought he could bear them.

It increasingly became apparent to those outside the Zankel family that something was amiss. Arthur Levine, president of Teachers College at New York's Columbia University, recalls that at a dinner, Mr. Zankel barely talked. On another occasion, trying to engage him, Mr. Levine phoned Mr. Zankel to tell him about the college's tutoring program for Harlem students, which he had funded. Mr. Levine excitedly conveyed the results of a recent study showing a large increase in the students' test scores. He recalls Mr. Zankel's reply: "Oh, thanks."

A few weeks later, Mr. Weill, Citigroup's chairman, called with a proposal. He told Mr. Zankel he was considering leaving the company he'd built and wanted to launch an investment fund "with you as my partner." Mr. Zankel passed, saying he would advise Mr. Weill, but he didn't want that kind of responsibility anymore, according to people familiar with the matter. (Mr. Weill didn't set up the fund; Citigroup's board resisted his departure before the expiration of his contract this year.)

In May, Mr. Zankel went on a long-planned trip to Tuscany with his family, including his four sons and two grandchildren. His sons -- who all recall him as an involved father who played sports with them as kids and remained a close friend and confidant as adults -- say he told them individually that he was depressed again. In Italy, he was distant and tired, say his sons, who pestered him to take day trips sightseeing or antique shopping with them. Mr. Zankel refused. He napped most afternoons.

When he returned to the U.S., Mr. Zankel knew he couldn't see anyone in his condition, his wife says. His friend, restaurateur Michael Weinstein, says Mr. Zankel called and told him: "Well, kiddo, we're going away for the summer, so don't try to call." Mrs. Zankel says she heard him lie to his secretary, telling her he would be out for a few weeks because he was having "a minor surgical procedure." He could focus only for a few minutes at a time, she says, and tried to give his best moments to his business partners on the phone or in notes scrawled on financial documents.

Reaching Out

Mrs. Zankel says her husband told her he was going to reach out to Mr. Weill for help. In June, during their lunch, Mr. Weill says he told Mr. Zankel he didn't understand this kind of depression. "It's not like you had a fight with your wife or lost money in the market," he recalls saying. "This depression of yours is more like a cancer, a physical thing."

Mr. Weill called Antonio Gotto, dean of the Weill Medical College. Dr. Gotto arranged for a leading psychopharmacologist, a specialist in drug therapy for psychiatric illnesses, to see Mr. Zankel. After establishing Mr. Zankel had no other medical problems except for depression, the doctor weaned him off all medication, did more blood tests and prescribed a single drug to treat him, his wife says. Mr. Zankel continued with his twice-weekly sessions with his longtime psychiatrist.

Still, Mr. Zankel often sat around at his apartment or his suburban home in Westchester County, N.Y. When faxed messages arrived from his office, he often threw them out, his wife says. In a pool at their home, Mrs. Zankel, who says she is a slower swimmer than her husband had been, was surprised when she found herself outpacing him. He became more listless, often staring blankly.

In June, Martin Zankel visited his brother, who stunned him with a warning: "I'm going to end it and you will be the executor," Martin says Arthur told him.

Arthur Zankel had updated his will two years earlier, giving the bulk of his fortune, totaling hundreds of millions of dollars, to charities. They include New York's Skidmore College, which two of his sons attended; the Nature Conservancy's New Hampshire chapter, where his son Mark is an official, and the Society of Illustrators, where Mrs. Zankel serves on the board.

"No, no, no, I expect you to outlive me," Martin recalls saying.

"Won't happen," he says Mr. Zankel replied.

Mrs. Zankel, 58, says she didn't believe her husband would act on the threat. But she stayed constantly by his side. She declined illustration jobs. For hours, she says she sat holding his hand, stroking his hair. "We just have to get through this one day at a time," she told him.

"I've ruined our perfect life," he told her one day, she recalls. She retorted: "You're just sick -- the doctor says you will get better." She says Mr. Zankel shook his head and said: "I don't believe it."

One afternoon in early July, Mrs. Zankel says he again discussed taking his life. "It's not true that suicide is a big 'screw you' to the people left behind," she remembers him telling her.

When she slipped out of the room, a worried Mrs. Zankel hid the car keys and his medicine, later doling out each dose.

He was sleeping more and told her he was "tired of fighting," Mrs. Zankel says. During his morning baths, he had trouble reading the newspaper, a favorite pastime. Unable to focus, he picked it up and put it down over and over, she says. Sometimes he would go hours without talking, though Mrs. Zankel was at his side.

His silence was broken by a sudden fascination with the back stairwell to their apartment building. Mrs. Zankel says he asked: "How high does that staircase go? It looks down on the courtyard, right?" Shaken, she emailed his sons and brother, telling them about her growing concern.

His son Tommy, a money manager, visited and engaged Mr. Zankel with talk about the stock market and earnings reports. It gave Tommy hope that his father wasn't so bad after all. But in the middle of the conversation, Tommy Zankel says his father's interest waned. He remembers his father said, "Everything aches."

That month, Mr. Zankel's wife, brother and sons exchanged more than 50 emails on his deteriorating condition. The big topic: forced inpatient care. Hospitalization is "incarceration" to him, his son Kenny, a San Francisco restaurateur, noted, remembering his father's escape from Bellevue decades earlier.

Martin Zankel says he argued: "Do you think a hospital orderly can outsmart Arthur?" The family considered alternatives to hospitalization. One new idea offered up but rejected: a treatment where the patient is put in a sleeping state for weeks until a new medication has time to kick in.

Around the same time, Mr. Zankel phoned his brother Martin. "I'm losing my mind," Martin recalls him saying. "I have no ability to reason. I can't live this way." Martin says he told him the feeling would pass.

In mid-July, Mr. Zankel's son Tommy came to see him. Tommy asked his father: "What would you tell me if I was feeling depressed?"

"Just hang in there," Mr. Zankel told him.

"I'm pleading with you to hang on, Dad," Tommy said.

"I promise I will," he recalls his father saying.

On July 27, Jimmy Zankel, a Food Network producer who was having an engagement party that weekend, visited his dad. He recalls that his father told him he planned to come to the party: "I intend to be there for better or worse -- most likely the latter...It's important to me."

On July 28, Mrs. Zankel accompanied her husband to his psychiatrist. After the session, she told him she wanted to speak alone with the doctor.

"Promise you won't move?" Mrs. Zankel asked her husband. He agreed, she recalls, saying he would read his newspaper.

When she emerged from the doctor's office 15 minutes later, Mr. Zankel was gone. Mrs. Zankel says she ran out onto the street. Perhaps he was getting a coffee? She called the doorman of their building, a brief cab ride away. "Has my husband come in?" she asked. Yes, he was upstairs, she was told. She said: Go upstairs and stay with him. "It's an emergency!"

By the time Mrs. Zankel raced to the apartment, it was swarming with police, she says. "Has anyone fallen out of the window into the courtyard?" she asked. The police told her nothing, she says.

She remembers rushing into the elevator to their apartment. No sign of him. Sprinting to the staircase at the back of their apartment, she climbed to a window and peered down into the courtyard. She didn't see her husband's body, but then her heart sank.

"Those are his shoes!" she screamed. "His shoes!"

Write to Monica Langley at monica.langley@wsj.com