Career
In 1928, Webb began his namesake company which was a construction contractor. He received many military contracts during World War II, including the construction of the Poston War Relocation Center near Parker, Arizona. Poston interned over 17,000 Japanese-Americans and at the time was the third largest “city” in Arizona. Webb was associated with Howard Hughes and played golf with Hughes, Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, and Robert and Barry Goldwater.
A lifelong baseball fan, in 1945, Webb and partners Dan Topping and Larry MacPhail purchased the New York Yankees for US$2.8 million. After buying out MacPhail in October 1947, Webb and Topping remained owners of the Yankees until selling the club to CBS in 1964.
In 1948 Webb was contracted to build 600 houses and a shopping center called Pueblo Gardens in Tucson, Arizona. This was a prelude to Sun City, Arizona, which was launched January 1, 1960, with five home models, a shopping center, recreation center and golf course. The opening weekend drew 100,000 people, ten times more than expected, and resulted in a Time magazine cover story.
Webb also developed a chain of motor hotels under the “Hiway House” name, 'formal' hotels called "Del Webb's Towne House", and built the Las Vegas Flamingo hotel for Bugsy Siegel. He later owned his own casinos, the Sahara and The Mint in Las Vegas, and the Sahara Tahoe at Stateline, NV.
Webb was elected to the Gaming Hall of Fame in 2000. The Del Webb Middle School, named in his honor, opened in Henderson, Nevada in 2005.
Webb died at age 75 in Rochester, Minnesota, following surgery for lung cancer, less than two months after Topping’s death.
A charitable foundation named for him funds medical research in Nevada, Arizona and California.
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Famous quotes containing the word career:
“Work-family conflicts—the trade-offs of your money or your life, your job or your child—would not be forced upon women with such sanguine disregard if men experienced the same career stalls caused by the-buck-stops-here responsibility for children.”
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (20th century)
“Each of the professions means a prejudice. The necessity for a career forces every one to take sides. We live in the age of the overworked, and the under-educated; the age in which people are so industrious that they become absolutely stupid.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“Whether lawyer, politician or executive, the American who knows what’s good for his career seeks an institutional rather than an individual identity. He becomes the man from NBC or IBM. The institutional imprint furnishes him with pension, meaning, proofs of existence. A man without a company name is a man without a country.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)