Lewis E. Lehrman, who as a young man helped expand a family-owned Pennsylvania grocery business into Rite Aid, for years of the nation’s largest drugstore chain, and then used his personal fortune to mount a strong, but losing bid to become governor of New York in 1982, died on March 11 at his home in Greenwich, CT. He was 87.

Mr. Lehrman left the presidency of Rite Aid in 1977 at the age of 39, although he remained a company director until his run for governor. In later years, he was a managing director of Morgan Stanley, and in 1991, he established his own investment firm, L.E. Lehrman & Co.