George C. Wortley

George Cornelius Wortley (December 8, 1926 – January 21, 2014) was a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from New York.

Wortley was born in Syracuse, New York and graduated from Syracuse University in 1948. Wortley was a brother of the Gamma-Iota chapter of the Kappa Sigma Fraternity. He was elected to Congress in 1980 and served from January 3, 1981 until January 3, 1989. He was the leading minority member of the House Banking Finance and Urban Affairs Committee and was actively involved in working with European, Latin American and Pacific Rim leaders on financial and development bank matters. He also served on the House Ethics and Select Aging Committees.

He was instrumental in the development and passage of legislation enacting the first program to provide Reverse Mortgages to seniors.

He was a Director of Dierman, Wortley & Zola, Inc. (DWZ) and Washington Solutions, consultants on public policy and financial strategies. He also served on the Advisory Board of National Security Studies, a U.S. Department of Defense Executive Development program. He served as a Senior Policy Advisor with The Carmen Group and the Financial Institutions Services Corp. (FISC).

Prior to his government service, he was President of the Manlius Publishing Corporation, a publisher of seven weekly newspapers in Upstate New York. He continued in that capacity until their sale in 1992. He was a member of the Advisory Board of the Bank of New York for five years and its successor, Norstar Bank. He has served on numerous civic, state and national boards and foundations. He also served on the board of Project ACTA, as well as the Kings Point’s Government Affairs Council. His business and Congressional responsibilities took him to 35 nations.

He served in the Merchant Marine Reserve and the United States Naval Reserve during World War II, with sea duty in the North Atlantic, Pacific and Philippine theaters of operation.

Wortley died at a hospice in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in 2014. He was 87. He was later buried at the Congressional Cemetery in Washington.