Akin to Rockefellers and Mellons CNN His free-spending ways and roving eye for attractive young women made him a darling of the tabloids in his youth, and he was perceived as playing on the same field as the DuPonts, Rockefellers and Mellons.
Huntington Hartford, A & P. Heir International Herald Tribune Huntington Hartford, who inherited a fortune from the A. & P. grocery business and lost most of it chasing his dreams as an entrepreneur, arts patron and man of leisure, died Monday at his home in Lyford Cay in the Bahamas.
Huntington Hartford, Eccentric Playboy Boston Herald Huntington Hartford, the deep-pocketed A&P grocery heir who burned through most of a $100 million fortune in a series of fruitless business and cultural endeavors before his life unraveled, has died.
June 01, 2008
I've gone to my farm in Kentucky for the weekend. It's a great place to relax, do a little hard physical labor, and forget about the rest of the world. If you don't have such a place, I highly suggest you get one.
In the meantime, here's a little something that I found for you to read with your morning coffee.
See you on Monday.
J. Peterman
From the Times of London:
Huntington Hartford began life as one of the richest men in America but he wanted to be remembered for more than his money. In this he succeeded only insofar as he became celebrated for the ways he lost it - an extravagantly glamorous life with the stars of Hollywood's golden age, a disastrous investment in the Bahamas and a much mocked attempt, through his own magazine and museum, to establish himself as a leader of the American art world.
George Huntington Hartford II was named after his grandfather, who co-founded the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co in 1869. By the time of Hartford's birth in 1911, A&P was one of the most successful retailers in America. Hartford's two uncles took over the business, opening supermarkets across the US, but his father, Edward, refused to join them, playing the violin and making his own patented shock absorbers instead.
When his grandfather died in 1917, Hartford inherited an estimated $90 million. His gilded childhood was ruled over by his domineering mother, who was determined that Hartford take his place in high society. He was packed off to board at St Paul's in New Hampshire, a school modelled on Eton where the Wasp establishment disdained his new wealth - even eighty years later he railed against those "six horrible years".
After Harvard - where, to his mother's horror, he eloped with a dentist's daughter from West Virginia - he decided to join the family business. He expected to walk in at the top, but his uncles decided he needed discipline and sent him to count sales of bread and pound cake. He was appalled. "I had an income of over a million dollars a year," he said in 1991. "Can you imagine me sitting out with a bunch of clerks?" After six months he was fired for skipping work to watch the Harvard-Yale football game.
The Richest Man in the World PBS.org Andrew Carnegie's life embodied the American dream: the immigrant who went from rags to riches, the self-made man who became a captain of industry, the king of steel.
Paul Mellon's Legacy University of Virginia Paul Mellon was born in Pittsburgh on June 11, 1907, the son of financier and industrialist Andrew W. Mellon and Nora McMullen, his English wife.
A&P History A&P Web site With corporate headquarters in Montvale, N.J., A&P operates 456 stores in the United States under 6 retail banners which include conventional supermarkets, food and drug combination stores, discount food stores, and several in-store Health Clinics.
The Times article above didn't mention a couple of interesting facts.
He died May 19, 2008. He was 97. His trust fund, established by his grandfather, still paid him $500,000 per year. He was living on a Caribbean island in luxury. Not bad for a guy who bragged at the age of 85, he'd spent over $400,000,000 on failed projects and pipe dreams during his life. That was his cash inheritance. All of it gone. Except for the trust fund pay-out.
At one point in his life, he was the majority stock holder in the Oil Shale Company. This eventually became Conoco-Phillips. He sold the shares when Oil Shale was bought out. The shares, if he'd kept them, would have been worth, at his death, multiple billions of dollars. He could have been Warren Buffet.
Being rich doesn't translate to being smart. (Anymore than being smart can make you rich).
When he inherited his wealth, he was the richest man in the world.
He was once evicted from a residential building for the wealthy in New York, because he and someone named Mrs. Kay tied up a secretary and shaved her head.
I think it was Noel Coward who said the "rich are not like you and me, they're different". How true.
Legend has it that the enormous retailer of A & P seriously considered buying out Stop & Shop. They opted against it when they realized this buyout might put in customers' heads the unfortunate hybrid name of Stop & P.
Well, legend has it...
Spinner said...
DPR, I love it! This also shows that most people simply can't just intuitively know how to manage money. Look at the appauling number of lottery winners that have to declare bankrupcy within a few years. They, like Hartford did not earn the money, it was given to them. None of them learned what it takes to make and retain that sort of fortune. I would say the grandfather was very smart in giving him a good lump of his inheritance in trust. He was obviously aware of Huntington's incompetence.
And look at what is going on today. We saw a tv ad yesterday that should have been outlawed. It was for reverse morgages for 62+ yo's. How awful! Those people are just preditors! A good class in old fashioned budgeting should be a requirement in every high school.
Oh yes, one lottery winner that did very well was the dean of finance at the Univ. of KY. I think he knew what to do with the windfall.
Well it appears that the three of you have successfully held the fort down, covered all the basis and have successfully extracted today's lesson. I doff my cap.
Our dearly departed Mr.Hartford II clearly demonstrates that common sense is not necessarily an inherited trait nor do windfalls make one any brighter in the long run.