Dorchester Illustration of the Day no. 1749
Sheldon Adelson grew up on Erie Street in Dorchester, and is now one of the wealthiest men in the world. He made money from American International Travel Service, which became the largest travel agency in New England. He invested in trade shows for computers and made a huge success out of Comdex. He then moved to Las Vegas and transformed the Sands Hotel into The Venetian Casino. More recently he has opened the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore.
Adelson and his wife Miriam have a long history of philanthropy and are donors to many pro-Israel causes, helping to fund travel to Israel by young Americans. In 2006 Mr. Adelson contributed $25,000,000 to the organization Birthright Israel, which finances Jewish youth trips to Israel, and in 2007, he pledged another $25,000,000 to the program, allowing for approximately 20,000 people to take part. He and his wife also donated $25 million to Yad Vashem—the largest donation received by the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem by a single donor.
About a year ago Adelson visited Boston to scout out the possibilities for casinos in Massachusetts, but all the news this year is about his support of Newt Gingrich’s candidacy for the Republican nomination for President.
Sheldon Adelson was born in 1933 into a neighborhood of Jewish immigrants on the west side of Dorchester, not far from Franklin Park and Grove Hall. An earlier son of Jewish immigrants, the author Theodore White, also born on the same street, offered this description: “it was then a bustling market street ancillary to the main shopping artery of Dorchester/Blue Hill Avenue. Storekeepers had transformed Erie Street from the quiet residential neighborhood my grandparents had sought as Jewish pioneers in the district into a supermarket bazaar.”
Check out Sheldon Adelson in Wikipedia and take a look at the article by Farah Stockman in the Boston Sunday Globe, March 18, 2012, “Sheldon Adelson, Dorchester is Calling.”
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