In Memoriam

 

Merv Griffin, 82, TV personality and real estate investor. Famous for helming The Merv Griffin Show from 1962 to 1986 and for creating Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune, Griffin invested his TV profits in real estate. His company, the Griffin Group, built a large portfolio of resorts, including the Beverly Hilton Hotel.

Leona Helmsley, 87, hotelier, in Greenwich, Connecticut. Leona took charge of husband Harry’s company, Helmsley Hotels, in 1980, dramatically improving occupancy rates at the company’s 30 properties. Along the way, the tabloids dubbed Helmsley “the queen of mean,” thanks to her famously explosive temper. In 1989, she was convicted of evading $1.2 million in federal income taxes and served 18 months in a federal prison. Helmsley spent her later life out of the public spotlight--until her death, that is, when it was revealed that she left $12 million to her fluffy white dog, Trouble.

Arthur Jones, 80, inventor of the Nautilus exercise machine, in Ocala, Florida. Unimpressed with the barbells at a YMCA in Tulsa, Jones cogitated on the problem, ultimately inventing the Nautilus. It hit the market in 1970, just as fitness clubs began to pop up all over America. In 1986, Jones sold Nautilus for $23 million. In retirement, he amassed a menagerie of animals, including elephants and crocodiles, and developed Jumbolair, a private residential community for aviation enthusiasts (including John Travolta) that boasts its own landing strip.

Russell W. Kruse, 85, auctioneer and owner of Kruse International, in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Regardless of where he was working, Kruse serenaded his home state by singing “Back Home in Indiana” before every auction. He capitalized on a mellifluous voice to build a company that popularized the antique car auction in America, and moved $200 million in real estate and nearly $300 million in oil industry equipment per year. The Kruse family sold the company twice--once to eBay for $150 million--only to buy it back each time.

Albert J. Langer, 94, famed deli owner, in Agoura, California. The son of Russian immigrants, he opened Langer’s Delicatessen-Restaurant in Los Angeles in 1947. The deli’s trademark hand-cut pastrami sandwich on hot rye bread (with mustard, of course) developed a cult following, drawing crowds to Langer’s even as the deli’s MacArthur Park neighborhood was beset by poverty and crime in the 1980s. In an ode to Langer’s published in The New Yorker, Nora Ephron hailed the pastrami sandwich as “a work of art.”

Jim Moran, 88, auto dealer, in Hillsboro Beach, Florida. Moran turned his $360 investment in a gas station near Chicago into JM Family Enterprises, an $11 billion automotive empire that includes the world’s largest private Toyota distributorship. His breakthrough TV ads--which hailed him as “Jim Moran the courtesy man”--helped to invent the vocabulary of car dealership commercials, a feat that landed Moran on the cover of Time magazine in 1961.

Jan Nathan, 68, publishing entrepreneur, in Hermosa Beach, California. In 1983, Nathan left her job as president of a company that published in-flight magazines to start a consulting practice for trade associations. One of her first clients was a group of small presses that wanted to organize a book conference. She subsequently launched the Publishers Marketing Association, which helped thousands of small book businesses adapt in the Barnes & Noble era.

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