Chuck Feeney

Feeney was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, on April 23, 1931, during the Great Depression, to Irish-American parents. His mother was a hospital nurse, and his father was an insurance underwriter. His ancestry can be traced to County Fermanagh in Northern Ireland. As a youth, Feeney worked selling Christmas cards door-to-door, as a golf caddy, and shoveling snow from driveways. He served as a U.S. Air Force radio operator during the Korean War and began his career selling duty-free liquor to U.S. naval personnel at Mediterranean ports in the 1950s. Feeney graduated from the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration in 1956. He was a member of Alpha Sigma Phi and an honorary member of the Sphinx Head Society. ==Career==

The concept of "duty-free shopping"—offering high-end concessions to travelers free of import taxes—was in its infancy when Feeney and his college classmate Robert Warren Miller They later expanded to selling cars and tobacco DFS began operations in Hong Kong, later expanding to Europe and other continents. A breakthrough came in the early 1960s when DFS secured a concession for duty-free sales in Hawaii, allowing the company to market its products to Japanese travelers. DFS eventually expanded to off-airport duty-free stores and large downtown Galleria stores, becoming the world's largest travel retailer. By the mid-1990s, DFS was distributing profits of up to $300 million a year to Feeney, Miller, and two smaller partners. Laura Bird wrote in The Wall Street Journal: "The rich returns came about in large part because DFS, like most other retailers in Asia, took a far higher markup on Western luxury items than was the case in Europe and the U.S. In New York, a retailer might price a designer handbag at 2.2 or 2.3 times the wholesale price. But in Asia, the retail price was a standard three times wholesale." In 1996, Feeney and a partner sold their stakes in DFS to the French luxury conglomerate Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy. Atlantic made $1.63 billion from the sale. ==Philanthropy==

In 1982, Feeney created Atlantic Philanthropies and, in 1984, secretly transferred his entire 38.75% stake in DFS, then worth about $500 million, to the foundation. Feeney expanded Atlantic's assets with investments in Facebook, Priceline, E-Trade, Alibaba, and Legent. Through Atlantic, he also donated around one billion dollars to education in Ireland, mostly to third-level institutions such as the University of Limerick and Dublin City University. a grant-making charitable body which aims "to make integration, not separation, the norm in our education system". Queens University Belfast also received grants of more than £100m, More controversially, Feeney gave substantial personal donations to Sinn Féin, a left-wing Irish nationalist party that has been historically associated with the IRA. In his letter to Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, the founders of The Giving Pledge, Feeney wrote, "I cannot think of a more personally rewarding and appropriate use of wealth than to give while one is living—to personally devote oneself to meaningful efforts to improve the human condition. More importantly, today's needs are so great and varied that intelligent philanthropic support and positive interventions can have greater value and impact today than if they are delayed when the needs are greater." He gave away a final $7 million in late 2016, to the same recipient of his first charitable donations, Cornell University. Over the course of his life, he gave away more than $8 billion. At its height, Atlantic had over 300 employees and 10 offices across the globe. Over the years, Atlantic warned about phishing emails claiming to come from the foundation or from Chuck Feeney himself, saying that they want to distribute money to "randomly selected individuals" worldwide and asking the recipient for personal details. On September 14, 2020, Feeney closed down the Atlantic Philanthropies after the non-profit accomplished its mission of giving away all of its money by 2020. ==Accolades==

Forbes magazine called Feeney the "James Bond of Philanthropy" due to the stealthy and successful manner in which he anonymously donated approximately $8 billion to various charities. He shunned publicity, although he cooperated in his 2007 biography, ''The Billionaire Who Wasn't: How Chuck Feeney Made and Gave Away a Fortune Without Anyone Knowing''. In 2010, he received the Cornell Icon of Industry Award. In 2012, all the universities of Ireland, North and South, jointly conferred an Honorary Doctorate of Laws on Feeney. During the same year, he also received Ireland's Presidential Distinguished Service Award for Irish Abroad. On June 6, 2019, which was the 160th anniversary of the establishment of the Australian state of Queensland, Feeney was made an Honorary Queensland Great for his contribution to the state. In 2012, he was awarded the UCSF Medal for outstanding personal contributions to the health science mission of the University of California, San Francisco. In 2015, he received the UC Presidential Medal from President Napolitano. To honor Feeney's contributions to the school, the UCSF Mission Bay campus announced in December 2023 the renaming of Campus Way, its major thoroughfare on campus, to The Feeney Way. This will include street signs, pavement markers, pole banners and a monument. In December 2020, Cornell University announced that it would rename East Avenue (a road that runs through the center of campus and sits alongside his alma mater, the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration) "Feeney Way" to honor his contributions to the university. In April 2023, the university announced that Cornell Tech campus central thoroughfare "Tech Walk", on Roosevelt Island in New York City, would become its second "Feeney Way". Fordham University presented Feeney with an honorary doctorate of humane letters in March 2022. He was appointed an Honorary Companion of the Order of Australia in August for his service to Australian health, education and research through the Atlantic Philanthropies. RMIT University presented him with an honorary doctorate of law in December 2022. ==Personal life==

Feeney was known for his frugality; according to a New York Times article in 2017, "Until he was 75, he traveled only in coach, and carried reading materials in a plastic bag." He did not own a car or a house and wore a $10 Casio F-91W watch. He and Danielle divorced between 1990 and 1991. Feeney's second wife, Helga, whom he married in 1995, was his former secretary. Death Feeney died in San Francisco on October 9, 2023, aged 92. ==References==