Wall Street and Later Years
In the 1920s, Durant became a major "player" on Wall Street and on Black Tuesday joined with members of the Rockefeller family and other financial giants to buy large quantities of stocks, against the advice of friends, in order to demonstrate to the public their confidence in the stock market. His effort proved costly and failed to stop the market slide. By 1936, the 75-year-old Durant was bankrupt.
After the fall of Durant Motors, Durant and his second wife lived on a small pension provided by Alfred P. Sloan on behalf of General Motors. He suffered a stroke in 1942, which left him "a semi-invalid", and managed a bowling alley in Flint, Michigan until his death in 1947. He was buried in a private mausoleum at the Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York. Durant was inducted into the Junior Achievement U.S. Business Hall of Fame in 1996.
Durant Park in Lansing, Michigan is named after him.
Read more about this topic: William C. Durant
Famous quotes containing the words wall street, wall, street and/or years:
“I think we will live through his term, Archie, and I’ll tell you something, old man, if they don’t stop hammering me, first Bryan for not enforcing the Anti-Trust Law and Wall Street for enforcing it, they may succeed in electing me to another term whether I want it or not.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
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And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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—For the State of Vermont, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)