Word: trumps
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...rules of the game were learned long ago in Queens, N.Y., where Trump's grandfather, a hard-drinking Swedish immigrant, left his son Fred an orphan at eleven. Fred soon began building middle-class houses, and eventually he put up some 24,000 apartments in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island, including a 23- room spread where he and Mary Trump raised their five children. Young Donald was no more than five when Fred began taking him to inspect building sites, and at 13 he was driving a bulldozer. "I learned a lot from him," says ( Trump. "I learned about toughness...
...older brother, Fred Trump Jr., rebelled against carrying on the family business. He became an airline pilot, took to drink and died of alcoholism in 1981 at the age of 43. "He was a really wonderful guy who didn't particularly like this business," says Trump. "It was a sad thing. It is something I have never been able to figure out. It was one of the most difficult things I've had to deal with...
...first major coup came in 1976, when he persuaded the bankrupt Penn Central Railroad to sell him for $10 million the dilapidated Commodore Hotel adjoining Grand Central Station. It was typical of the kind of deal that Trump now calls "my favorite art form." An unknown and unwealthy hustler of 30, he had to persuade some bankers to lend him $80 million (he did) and some politicians to give him a $120 million tax abatement (he did). It did not hurt that Fred Trump was a regular contributor to the Brooklyn Democratic machine, or that Governor Hugh Carey and Mayor...
...took four years, but the glittering Grand Hyatt Hotel that opened in 1980 established Trump as a man who could get things done. It also brings in, he says happily, an annual profit of $30 million. Most of Trump's other projects are essentially more of the same -- more bargaining, more building, more bucks...
Sometimes Trump shows an absolute genius for combining profits with publicity and doing good deeds in the process. Consider the Wollman ice- skating rink in Central Park, which city authorities had closed down in 1980 for a $9 million refurbishing. Somehow they managed to spend $12 million on preliminary maneuvering without anything whatever to show for it. Looking down at the mess from his skyscraper windows, Trump was displeased. Offering to do the job himself on the original budget within three months, he completed it for $750,000 less -- and now operates the rink at an annual profit...