Early Life
Robert Maestri was born in New Orleans on December 11, 1889, the son of two Italians, Francesco Maestri and Angele (Lacabe) Maestri. He inherited his father’s furniture store at an early age, and quickly built it up into one of the city’s largest. After investing in real estate, Maestri was able to amass a considerable fortune. He also had political ambition, and after allying himself with governor Huey Long, he was appointed to head the state’s Conservation Commission, which allowed him to control production quotas in the state’s oil industry. He served as conservation commissioner from 1929 to 1936, and was a powerful member of Long’s inner circle.
Read more about this topic: Robert Maestri
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early and/or life:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“Well, it’s early yet!”
—Robert Pirosh, U.S. screenwriter, George Seaton, George Oppenheimer, and Sam Wood. Dr. Hugo Z. Hackenbush (Groucho Marx)
“There’s something tragic in the fate of almost every person—it’s just that the tragic is often concealed from a person by the banal surface of life.... A woman will complain of indigestion and not even know that what she means is that her whole life has been shattered.”
—Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev (1818–1883)