Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 179
By This is the grave of Malcolm Glazer.
Born in Rochester in 1928 to Jewish immigrant parents, Glazer grew up fairly poor, working in his father’s watch repair shop. Ambitious though, he took his watch repair skills, worked for the military, and saved his money. He then began investing in real estate. He became the suburban sprawl king of Rochester and then used his growing cash to go big. He started buying commercial real estate and then banks. He moved into buying health care facilities in 1973 and became a billionaire by the 1980s, largely through owning shopping malls. Other than real estate, he wasn’t someone who specialized in a single industry. Rather he was a broad-based capitalist.
In this, Glazer was just another rich guy and not very interesting at that. The reason he is known today is that he spent his money on professional sports franchises. In 1995, he bought the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, one of the most moribund franchises in professional sports. To his credit, he spent for the right coaches, including Jon Gruden, and the Bucs won the Super Bowl to conclude the 2002 season, defeating the vile Raiders. He then bought out the English soccer behemoth Manchester United by slowly buying up stock between 2003 and 2005. Fans of Man U were not happy, thinking he wouldn’t spend the money to keep the team at its usual level, and in fact there was so much debt that Ronaldo was transferred to Real Madrid in 2009. He had a major stroke in 2006 and running both of the teams fell to Glazer’s sons. The Bucs have been mediocre in recent years but Man U won five Premier League titles between 2007 and 2013.
Malcolm Glazer died in 2014. He is buried in Mount Hope Cemetery, Rochester, New York.
But before we let Glazer go, check out the inside of this grave.
What the hell is this shit? Malcolm Glazer’s grave is like one of those cliched inspirational posters in office buildings that I assume make workers want to kill themselves. This is how Glazer wanted to be remembered? He thought these sayings were some sort of sage advice? A real Emerson there! It’s a good reminder that the rich are just as dumb or at least banal as we are, just luckier.