The Trumps: Three Generations of Builders and a Presidential Candidate by Gwenda Blair

Author:Gwenda Blair
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2015-10-06T06:00:00+00:00

To a family that had already known success, Donald Trump brought more. His first deal had been a remarkable triumph, and his second, Trump Tower, seemed likely to do even better. But as his star continued its meteoric rise, that of his older brother, Fred Jr., continued to fall. Fred Sr. “didn’t like wimps,” his nephew, John Walter, said later. “He thought competition made you sharper.” But it made Freddy miserable; before Donald came to Avenue Z, Freddy was in Florida. He failed there as an airline pilot and fishing-boat captain, his marriage collapsed, and he returned north to live in his parents’ home on Midland Parkway and to work on one of his father’s maintenance crews. He was unable to stop drinking, and reportedly his father found closets stuffed with empty liquor bottles. Neighbors spoke of seeing someone so thin and frail, he seemed a wraith.

In September 1981, Fred Trump Jr., a man who had long been living in the shadows, died at the age of forty-two. The cause was a massive heart attack, brought on by alcoholism so acute that it verged on the suicidal. Donald appeared shaken by his older brother’s death and would speak over the years of a deep sense of loss as well as a certain guilt for having benefited from seeing his brother’s mistakes. He would also speak, in a manner reminiscent of his reaction to the dedication of the Verrazano Bridge a quarter century earlier, of his renewed determination never to let people treat him as they had his brother. “Freddy just wasn’t a killer,” he told one reporter. To another he said, “I saw people really taking advantage of Fred, and the lesson I learned was always to keep up my guard 100 percent.”52

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.