Billionaire Philanthropist Sheldon Adelson Dead at 87

Sheldon Adelson, who rose from selling newspapers on Boston street corners at age 12 to one of the most successful luxury resort developers, philanthropists and political influencers of his generation, died Monday night at his home in Malibu, California. He was 87.

Adelson founded and served as Chairman and CEO of Las Vegas Sands Corp., the world’s largest gaming corporation, from its inception in 1988. He had been on medical leave from the company since Jan. 7 to resume his fight against non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which he had battled since 2019.

“It is with unbearable pain that I announce the death of my husband, Sheldon G. Adelson, of complications from a long illness,” his wife, Dr. Miriam Adelson, said in a Tuesday statement provided by Las Vegas Sands.

Adelson’s funeral and burial will be held in Israel.

Adelson was born in 1933 and grew up in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, the son of Sarah (née Tonkin) and Arthur Adelson. His father’s family was of Ukrainian Jewish and Lithuanian Jewish ancestry. His mother immigrated from England, and Adelson claimed that his grandfather was a Welsh coal miner. His father drove a taxi, and his mother ran a knitting shop.

He began his business career at the age of 12, when he borrowed $200 from his uncle (or $2,740 in 2017 dollars) and purchased a license to sell newspapers in Boston. at age 16 in 1948, he then borrowed $10,000 (or $102,349 in 2017 dollars) from his uncle to start a candy-vending-machine business. He attended the City College of New York, but did not graduate, and attended trade school in a failed attempt to become a court reporter, then subsequently joined the army.

After being discharged from the army, he established a business selling toiletry kits, then started another business named De-Ice-It which sold a chemical spray to help clear frozen windshields. In the 1960s, he started a charter tour business. He soon became a millionaire, although by his thirties he had built and lost his fortune twice. Over the course of his business career, Adelson created almost fifty of his own businesses, making him a serial entrepreneur.

{Matzav.com}