William Bartholomay (age 91) - Bartholomay made his fortune as an insurance executive who, at 34, became a baseball owner when he joined a consortium buying the then-Milwaukee Braves. Although the team was doing well in Wisconsin, Bartholomay believed that the future of the sport was in the American south. In 1966, he moved the team to Atlanta, where it became a mainstay of the new Turner Broadcasting Network in the mid-70s. Bartholomay died of a respiratory illness on March 25, 2020.
James Beggs (age 94) - Beggs was a VP at General Dynamics and an undersecretary in the Department of Trasnportation under the Nixon administration. Ronald Reagan tapped him to lead NASA in 1981, a position he held until resigning after the Challenger disaster in 1986. Beggs died April 25, 2020.
Bill Braum (age 92) - Kansas native Bill Braum grew up in a dairy family and stayed in that business until his death, In 1968, he started the chain of Braum's Restaurants in Oklahoma. By 2020, the chain had grown to more than 300 stores in four states. The restaurants are best known for their brand of ice cream, which is sold only within the chain. Bill Braum died on March 23, 2020.
Joe Coulombe (age 89) - The California native began a retail career with the Rexall drug chain in 1958. The company put him in charge of their fledgling convenience store chain, Pronto Markets, which Coulombe bought in 1967, changing the name to Trader Joe's. He sold the chain, which now has more than 470 stores nationwide, to the founder of Aldi in 1979. Coulombe, who continued to act as CEO until 1988, passed away on February 28, 2020.
 |
Georges Duboeuf (age 82) - Duboeuf, principal of the wine merchants Le Vins du Georges Duboeuf, was popularly known as "The King of Beaujolais" in his native France. Although raised on a vineyard of Chardonnay grapes, a young Georges assembled a Beaujolais syndicate and the die was cast. Duboeuf succumbed to a stroke on January 2, 2020. |
 |
Bernard Ebbers (age 78) - Ebbers, a Canadian by birth, was co-founder and CEO of the infamous WorldCom. He began his telecom career as an investor in LDDS in 1983, after which the company changed its name to WorldCom. The company cut a wide swathe through the industry, gobbling up MCI and making a run at Sprint. In 2002, the company collapsed under a wave of investigations for accounting irregularities; eclipsed only by the Madoff debacle in its size. Ebbers died February 2, 2020. |
S. David Freeman (age 94) - Freeman, an electrical engineer by trade, picked up a law degree in his late 20s and became an attorney for the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). He eventually headed that agency, as well as the LCRA in Texas and the public utilities of NYC, Sacramento, and LA. He also served as an energy policy advisor to presidents Johnson and Carter, especially on renewables. Freeman suffered a heart attack and died May 12, 2020.
Earl Graves, Sr. (age 85) - Graves was an entrepreneur, philanthropist, and publisher. He founded Black Enterprise magazine and was the chairman of his eponymous company. He sat on the Small Business administration during the Johnson administration. The business school at his alma mater, Morgan State University, is named for Graves. He died April 6, 2020, of Alzheimer's Disease.
Samuel Horchow (age 91) - Horchow founded the mail-order business that still bears his name in 1971, a luxury mail-order business that was the first of its kind without a brick-and-mortar store. He sold the company to Nieman-Marcus seventeen years later. He then turned to theatre, becoming a Broadway producer, winning a Tony his first time out for Crazy for You base on George Gershwin's musical Girl Crazy. Horchow died of Cancer May 2, 2020.
Leila Janah (age 37) - Janah, a graduate of Harvard, founded two firms: Samasource, a not-for-profit digital training center intended to help lift clients out of poverty through education; and LXMI, a luxury skin care brand. Janah died of a rare cancer January 24, 2020.
Frederick R. Koch (age 86) - The eldest son of Fred C. Koch, Koch was one of four bothers who inherited Koch Industries from their father. Fred and brother Bill divorced themselves from their political activist brothers Charles and David, and Fred became a well-known philanthropist and art collector instead of Libertarian gadfly. Frederick Koch died February 12, 2020.
Irwin Molasky (age 93) - Molasky dropped out of college to work in construction in California before moving to Vegas in 1951. That's where he and three other men founded a real-estate development company. The Molasky group developed commercial and resort properties throughout the Southwest an built the first hospital in Las Vegas. Molasky was also co-founder of Lorimar Productions and was instrumental in the development of UNLV. He died July 4, 2020.
Carolyn Reidy (age 71) - Reidy's career in publishing lasted from her first days at Random House in the early '70s until her death. During her years at Random House, she headed up the Vintage Books and Avon Books imprints. She joined Simon and Schuster in 1992, eventually becoming CEO in 2008. Reidy died of a heart attack on May 12, 2020.
 |
B. Smith (age 70) - In her modeling days, Barbara "B." Smith was the African-American woman to make the cover of Mademoiselle, and was famous as a model and occasional television guest. She was more recently known for her eponymous east-coast chain of restaurants and cookbooks based on their recipes. Smith succumbed to early-onset Alzheimer's disease on February 22, 2020. |
Sy Sperling (age 78) - "I'm not only the Hair Club president, but I'm also a client!" was Sy Sperling's pitch for the company he founded, Hair Club for Men. Sperling founded his company based on a hair weaving technique in the 1960s, and went nationwide with his signature television commercials in 1982. Sperling sold the franchised business in 2000. No word on whether he used some of the $45 million to pay his hair club dues. He died February 19, 2020.
Jack Welch (age 89) - "Neutron Jack" Welch took over General Electric in 1981, and immediately adopted a "shareholder value" program. While he increased the company's book value by 200% in the next 20 years, he reduced the company's workforce by some 100,000 employees. For his troubles, he received a severance package of some $417 million. Welch shuffled off this mortal coil on March 1, 2020, to the delight of tens of thousands of former GE employees.
Arne Wilhelmsen (age 90) - The Harvard-educated Wilhemsen leveraged his shipping company, Anders Wilhelmsen, to co-found Royal Caribbean Cruise Line in 1968 with two other shipping magnates. The company went public in 1993, leaving the Norwegian a billionaire. Wilhelmsen died April 11, 2020.
| Forrest Wood (age 87) - Wood is often cited as the developer of the modern bass boat, a style he pioneered with the company he founded in 1968, Ranger Boats. The company was, for decades, the official sponsor of the Bassmaster Classic fishing tournament. The tournament renamed itself the FLW Tournament in 1996, drawing its name from Wood's initials. He passed away on January 24, 2020. |  |
No comments:
Post a Comment