In his second stint at Republic Aviation, Raphael managed Project FIRE, which developed the reentry data needed to design the heat shield on the Apollo space vehicle. Raphael was at Cape Canaveral for the first launch. "I couldn't watch the trajectory through my tears," he recalls.

Fairchild Industries lured Raphael to Maryland in 1966 to head its space and electronics-systems division. He masterminded Fairchild's campaign to win a $100-million government contract - then quit the day it came through. He had seen the handwriting on the wall: The day the contract ended, so would the job of many employees. Raphael wanted to direct an operation that created jobs rather than eliminate them.

Raphael left Fairchild for Atlantic Research in 1970; soon he engineered the leverage buyout that gave Atlantic Research independence from its parent company.

Raphael took Atlantic Research from a $17 million-division of the Susquehanna Corporation with 300 employees to an independent company in Alexandria with 6,000 employees. By the time he retired in 1986 to become dean of the School of Business Administration at George Mason University, Atlantic Research had annual revenues of $400 million.

When university president George Johnson approached him to head the GMU business school, Raphael was skeptical. "I haven't seen a classroom since I taught at Pratt 35 years ago," he said. But Johnson convinced him to take the job, and Raphael steered the B-school to its first national accreditation. He also created the area's first executive-MBA program.

He has contributed to countless causes. "Dying broke is nothing to be ashamed of if you have resources you can give to your community and your family," he says.