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Duty-Free King Quietly Gives Away $8 Billion

VOA Student Union

   Among the celebrity philanthropists who donate extreme amounts of money
   to education and lifting others, Chuck Feeney's name is not as
   well-known as Bloomberg, Gates or Buffett.

   Those billionaires -- Michael Bloomberg, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett
   -- are highly recognizable names of great wealth, and their efforts are
   well-known.

   But Feeney, 89, has donated more than $8 billion in the past 38 years
   more quietly, espousing the slogan "Giving While Living" through his
   [1]Atlantic Philanthropies (AP) organization, "to advance opportunity
   and promote equity and dignity."

   His intent has been so successful that he has depleted the wealth he
   accumulated in his lifetime, and his foundation closes this year.

   Feeney was born and raised in an Irish-concentrated neighborhood in
   Elizabeth, N.J., a working class town that personifies industrialized,
   smokestack New Jersey. He served as a radio operator in Japan during
   the Korean War, and then went on to Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.,
   through the GI Bill, a government program that rewards military
   personnel for their service by paying for their education.

   Feeney was the[2] first person in his family to attend college. After
   graduating in 1956, Feeny and classmate Robert Miller started a luxury
   retail shopping business -- [3]Duty Free Shoppers -- that populates
   airports around the world with high-end goods.

References

   1. https://www.atlanticphilanthropies.org/
   2. https://www.atlanticphilanthropies.org/videos/video-secret-billionaire-chuck-feeney-story
   3. https://www.dfs.com/en/new-york

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