Wasserstein Haunts Harry & David in Buyout Doomed to Bankruptcy

Bruce Wasserstein, dead for two years, still casts a pall over the Rogue River Valley of southern Oregon.

There, in and around the town of Medford, more than 2,000 employees of Harry & David Holdings Inc., the century-old seller of mail-order pears and holiday fruit baskets, labor at a company that went bankrupt in March 2011 after private-equity firm Wasserstein & Co. loaded it with $200 million of debt that it couldn’t pay back -- even as Wasserstein’s firm took profits for itself.