Private equity pioneer and Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival F. Warren Hellman passed away on Sunday, December 18. Hellman died from complications from treatment he had been receiving for leukemia. He was 77.

An article in San Francisco’s Bay Area Citizen says, “At 26, he became the youngest-ever partner at Lehman Brothers, the now-defunct financial services firm; in 1973, at 39, he was named president and head of investment banking. In 1977, he co-founded the venture capital firm Matrix Partners, an early investor in Apple, Continental Cable (now Comcast) and Stratus Computer. In 1984, Hellman launched Hellman & Friedman LLC, a private equity firm that has raised over $25 billion in capital.”

Hellman used his billions to raise money for a myriad of causes. A life-long bluegrass aficionado, Hellman also founded the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in 2001. The annual, free music festival drew thousands of fans to Golden Gate Park each summer thanks to a lineup that mixed traditional bluegrass with folk, rock, Americana, indie, jam and other music icons.

Hellman regularly played banjo at the festival. The Bay Area Citizen goes on to say, Doctors had told Hellman that the illness could be neutralized, and he postponed chemotherapy treatments this fall to appear with his band The Wronglers at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, his lavish annual gift to the city, and to tour with one of his idols, Jimmie Dale Gilmore. With typical humor, Hellman joked in recent weeks that he had changed his name to Luke Emia. He referred to his dreaded chemo medication as Retuxif-ck.”

A memorial service will be held Wednesday December 21 at 1pm at Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco, and will be followed within a few weeks by a community celebration of Warren’s life.
A message on the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival’s website says. “In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to the San Francisco Free Clinic , The Bay Citizen and the San Francisco School Alliance . Also, consider a donation of blood or platelets to your local blood bank. In San Francisco and the Bay Area, Blood Centers of the Pacific provides this gift of life to those in need. Yes, the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival will go on! Next year’s dates are October 5, 6, & 7, 2012.”