John C. Bierwirth, Leader of Grumman in Time of Uneasy Transition, Dies at 89 John C. Bierwirth, who led the Grumman Corporation, one of the nation's largest aircraft makers, through challenging times in the 1970s and "80s, died on Sunday at a hospice in Freeport, on Long Island. The cause was congestive heart failure, his family said. He fought off takeover attempts and bankruptcy but failed in his quest to diversify the company with civilian products, like the disastrous Flxible city buses. As president, chief executive and then chairman of Grumman from 1972 to 1988, Mr. Bierwirth presided over a sprawling company with a storied past. It produced some of the Navy's most renowned warplanes, including the F6F "Hellcat" in World War II, and it built the lunar module that landed on the moon in 1969. It was also Long Island's largest employer, with more than 23,000 workers, one that used to dispense free Christmas turkeys to its employees at its plant in Bethpage. Long Island business and civic leaders variously called him a "giant" and "an almost mythical figure" who for a time owned an old-fashioned Checker cab to provide more leg room for his lanky frame. During his tenure Grumman's assets grew to $800 million in value, from $100 million; it won coveted aerospace contracts, like one for NASA's space station; and it developed some of the American military's most technologically sophisticated aircraft, including the F-14 Tomcat fighter. He spoke of "marrying electronics with computer programming, then putting wings on it." Mr. Bierwirth was nonetheless unable to achieve his goal of building a new sort of Grumman, one divided evenly between military and nonmilitary work. Efforts to branch into civilian products like shipping containers and solar energy panels in addition to the Flxible buses were also unsuccessful. The buses received unwanted attention after a Grumman subsidiary sold 850 of them to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in the early 1980s. When many were found to have cracks in the undercarriages and steering columns, the M.T.A. withdrew the entire fleet. The transaction is still remembered as one of the authority's biggest contracting fiascoes. Grumman lost $134 million on the bus venture before selling it in 1983. Ten years earlier, however, Mr. Bierwirth, who was Grumman's president at the time, drew praise in the industry for saving the company from financial failure and the loss of thousands of jobs. Cost overruns on its 1969 contract with the Navy for 336 F-14 Tomcat fighters had soared to $7 million a plane, but Mr. Bierwirth persuaded the Defense Department to cover some of the losses. Some senators and House members complained that the Pentagon's redoing the contract amounted to corporate welfare. Senator William Proxmire, Democrat of Wisconsin, said that Grumman's request to be covered on its losses amounted to blackmail. As Mr. Proxmire put it, there was an implicit threat in the move: "weapons essential for national security will not get built" if the contract was not modified. Mr. Bierwirth also helped lift the company when he sold 80 F-14s to the Shah of Iran, who gave Grumman a loan as an advance payment toward the cost of building them. In 1978, Mr. Bierwirth again drew criticism when he decided to sell one of Grumman's most profitable units, its business jet division, maker of the Gulfstream, after minority shareholders demanded that Grumman either give them more say in the division's management or buy them out. The decision to sell came after a confrontation between Mr. Bierwirth and the shareholders at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in Manhattan during a howling blizzard. He explained the sale by saying the company needed the cash. Three years later he interrupted a vacation on the Mississippi riverboat Delta Queen to fend off a surprise takeover bid by the LTV Corporation. Mr. Bierwirth and his board rejected the conglomerate's offer and led the fight when LTV pressed on as a hostile suitor. One of Mr. Bierwirth's tactics was to appeal to the intense loyalty of Grumman's employees by asking them to buy company stock to prevent LTV from getting it. Their response was enthusiastic - likened by him to "an old-fashioned barn-raising."