Biography
Weinberg was born in 1908 in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His father Joseph Weinberg came to Baltimore, Maryland in the US, and sent for his family in 1912.
One of his earliest ventures was selling souvenirs for celebrations at the end of World War I. He dropped out of school at age 12 and worked in his father's car repair shop.
During the Great Depression of the 1930s, he and his brother William would buy properties at depressed prices, fix them up, and resell them for a profit. Throughout his career he was known for being a keen judge of undervalued assets, and having the patience to wait for their values to increase. In Honolulu, Hawaii, he repeated this with the Fifth Avenue Coach Company, in Scranton, Pennsylvania and Dallas, Texas. He started buying stock in the Honolulu Rapid Transit Company in 1955, eventually gained control, slashed costs, and then sold it at a profit to the City & County of Honolulu (it is now known as TheBus) in 1971. In 1968 he moved to Hawaii where he died November 4, 1990. His investments included Amfac, Inc., Maui Land & Pineapple Company, Alexander & Baldwin, and other real estate ventures.
In 1932 he married Jeanette Gutman (1910–1989). In 1984, he had donated funds to aircondition all of Israel's nursing homes.
His wife having predeceased him, on his death in 1990, he was survived by son Morton Weinberg, and left $3 million to his grandchildren. His will left the remainder, almost US$1 billion of property, to the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation they had founded in 1959..
Read more about this topic: Harry Weinberg
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