Raymond “Chip” Mason often worked from sunrise to sunset, and sometimes well into the night, but Sunday evenings were for family.

Most people knew Mason as founder of the Baltimore-based investment firm Legg Mason and a local leader who championed economic growth and community engagement. But his wife and six children knew him as the home cook who added a little bacon to his spaghetti and often whipped up a dish he called “Maryland chicken.”

“He always made sure that we did that, and that was definitely a way for all of us to be together,” said Pike Howard, Mason’s stepson. “I think it was a great way for him to finish the week and recharge for, certainly, what was a demanding schedule every week for him.”

It was no small feat to grow Legg Mason from a tiny brokerage firm he launched at age 25 to one of the largest investment houses in the country by the end of his tenure in 2008. But industriousness was in his blood, and it’s the legacy he now leaves behind.

Mason, also the namesake of the business school at the the College of William & Mary, died Friday in Naples, Florida. He was 88.

Mason spent 43 years scaling up Legg Mason through strategies that left an imprint on the financial industry. Following his retirement, Mason told the Daily Record in 2019 of his career: “Hard work is the only thing that I know that delivers.”

At its peak, the business accumulated $830 billion in assets. Mason led the business through a philosophy of growth and mergers that also attempted to preserve the independence of the firms acquired.

Legg Mason became one of the largest employers in the city and earned Mason the nickname “Mr. Baltimore,” according to Baltimore magazine, which described him as a “shrewd businessman and a nice guy.”

He was born Sept. 28, 1936, in Lynchburg, Virginia, where he spent his early years. His father died when he was a young boy, so his mother moved Mason and his sister to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

Brimming with steel workers, it’s where Mason first learned the value of hard work and hustle, his stepson said. He often told stories of his stint as the neighborhood paperboy.

“It was a very humble childhood,” Howard said. “Money was tight, and I think that forged his ability to deal with adversity and have a real fortitude that would stick with him from that point forward.”

Mason graduated from William & Mary in 1959 before going to work for a family member’s brokerage in Lynchburg. It was a good fit, and three years later, he started his own firm, then known as Mason & Co.

His colleagues at the time were his former college classmates, and the office setup was a few desks and a stock ticker, the telegraph receiver used to transmit financial information before the age of the internet.

One of the long-standing, unofficial mottos of the firm is “No chalk on your shoes,” Howard said. In other words, act ethically, and play inside the boundary lines.

“Chip was a beacon of consistency in terms of integrity,” Howard said.

During his tenure at the firm in the late 1960s, Mason returned to William & Mary as a hands-on presence to help establish the business school. He served on its foundation board, and the school was named after him in 2005.

“Mr. Mason devoted himself to preparing students to launch their own inspiring careers in business,” William & Mary President Katherine A. Rowe said in a statement after his death. “He gave us a model for entrepreneurial-minded leadership that transforms the status quo.”

In 1970, Mason & Co. merged with the firm Legg & Co., bringing Mason to Maryland. The company went public in 1983, raising $14 million — equivalent to more than $45 million today.

Mason immediately fell in love with Baltimore, especially the Orioles, and spent the following decades serving on the boards of various local and state organizations.

Mason chaired the board of trustees at the Johns Hopkins University, the Greater Baltimore Committee and the United Way of Central Maryland. He supported the Baltimore Museum of Art and the National Aquarium, and spoke in favor of keeping the Orioles in Baltimore after murmurs spread of the team’s ownership eyeing a sale.

He also chaired other financial groups, including the Security Industry Association and the National Association of Securities Dealers.

His work at Legg Mason brought him professional success, and it also introduced him to his love of nearly four decades. Legg Mason acquired a New Orleans-based brokerage company in the 1980s, and along the way, an employee suggested that Mason meet a friend named Rand.

They hit it off immediately, and Rand moved up to Baltimore County with her two sons, Pike and Hayward. Mason had three children — Paige, Pamela and Carter — from a previous marriage, and the couple later welcomed a daughter, Morgan.

The pair balanced each other out, Howard said. While Chip Mason took his life and his work very seriously, Rand Mason was a fun-loving woman who cracked jokes and could talk to anyone.

“She got him to loosen up and enjoy the moment, because there was a lot on his brain a lot of the time,” said Howard, Mason’s stepson.

Mason loved spending time with his kids — and later his 11 grandchildren — and they took many family trips together. He’d offer them bits of life advice that Howard called “Chip-isms.”

There are four that stand out to him: Be totally honest, treat everyone with respect, give your best every day, and think about how you’d feel if your actions ended up in tomorrow’s newspaper.

Mason followed his own advice. By 2005, Mason “cemented the company’s standing as one of the elite fund managers in the world,” according to SmartCEO, by acquiring an arm of Citigroup through a $3.7 billion asset swap, which doubled the firm’s money and made it the fifth-largest money manager in the country.

In a Baltimore Business Journal profile of Mason after the deal, the financier was lauded for his “ethical compass” in an industry where scandals seemed to topple many of his leading competitors.

It was the reputation Mason held within the firm, too, said Tim Scheve, who worked at Legg Mason for more than two decades. Mason, an innovator and entrepreneur at heart, could be a demanding boss — he wanted his employees to work diligently and make smart decisions. But he always delivered those expectations directly, respectfully and with his signature charm, Scheve said.

Mason also had a big space in his heart for philanthropy, and he especially enjoyed supporting Catholic charities, Scheve said. His faith was important to him, and he had a soft spot for nuns.

One afternoon, Mason walked into Scheve’s office and told him to give $100,000 to a nun working on a community service project. Scheve did, but a few weeks later, Mason came back and said, “I thought I told you to give $100,000 to that nun.”

It turned out that Scheve had mistakenly given the money to a different nun working on a different community service project. Scheve asked if he should ask for the money back, and he recalled Mason replying, “No! We’ll go to hell for that.”

So both nuns got $100,000 for their projects that year.

Mason stepped down as chairman and CEO of Legg Mason in 2008, and soon after he retired to Florida with his wife.

Mark Fetting, the firm’s former president of asset management, succeeded Mason as head of the firm but stepped down four years later as the business struggled. Fetting died this month at age 70.

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