Sam Zell

Sam Zell’s storied real estate career began while he was a student at the University of Michigan; he managed student housing and founded Equity Residential. By the time of his death on May 18 at 81, he was recognized as a titan in the real estate and investment fields.

Some of his proudest investments were in the world of Jewish education. Two schools in Chicago bear his parents’ names: Bernard Zell Anshe Emet Day School and Rochelle Zell Jewish High School. These gifts were made through the Jewish United Fund/Jewish Federation of Chicago Centennial Campaign.

“Sam was brilliant–a legend in the worlds of real estate, finance, and investment,” said Dr. Steven B. Nasatir, JUF Executive Vice Chairman. “He was also a literate Jew, whose support for Jewish learning and community was similarly legendary, strong, and ever-present.”

Zell was born in Chicago, but his story starts in Poland. His parents, originally named Berek and Ruchla Zielonka, fled with his young sister, in August 1939–one day before the Nazi invasion.

The Zielonkas spent nearly two years going through Lithuania and Russia, and then to Japan. They traveled on visas supplied by Chiune Sugihara, a Japanese diplomat who saved thousands of Jews.

Four months after they arrived in the U.S., Shmuel was born on September 28, 1941. In the early 1950s, they became Bernard, Rochelle, and Sam.

As a teen, Zell attended Camp Ramah in Wisconsin. The camp “had a very big impact on my life,” he told this publication in 2017. “It was an environment where everybody, including the younger people, was given a lot of autonomy,” he said, also crediting the camp with fostering his leadership skills.

Zell attended high school in Highland Park, then graduated from the University of Michigan in 1963. He started Equity Group Investments in 1968; he was still chairman when he died.

His firm eulogized Zell as a “a self-made, visionary entrepreneur. He launched and grew hundreds of companies during his 60-plus-year career and created countless jobs. Although his investments spanned industries across the globe, he was most widely recognized for his critical role in creating the modern real estate investment trust, which today is a more than $4 trillion industry.” Zell is considered a pioneer of REITs, real estate securities that trade like stocks.

Zell’s business career had huge peaks and valleys. He sold Equity Office Properties Trust in 2007–in the largest leveraged buyout in corporate history–for more than $35 billion.

That same year, he bought the Tribune Company and its assets, which included television stations, newspapers–including the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times–and the Chicago Cubs. However, the Tribune Company went into bankruptcy a year later, costing him hundreds of millions of dollars.

In 2017, he published his book, containing both his life story and some hard-won advice: Am I Being Too Subtle? Straight Talk from a Business Rebel.

Zell was generous with his wealth, and funneled much of it into education. He supported programs at University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, and at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya, the Israel Center for Social and Economic Progress, and Reichman University in Israel. In 2016, the Zell Entrepreneurship programs at University of Michigan and Northwestern joined the IDC alumni group, which produced hundreds of alumni from a dozen countries.

Zell also knew how to enjoy life. He hosted motorcycle rides in many countries for his “Zell’s Angels,” skied challenging courses, and hired Elton John to play at his birthday party.

“Growing up as the kid of an immigrant, things were a lot different in my house,” he said. “And whatever else I might claim to be, I for sure claim to be different.”

Zell was married three times. His survivors include his wife, Helen, two sisters, Leah and Julie, and three children–Matthew, Kellie, and JoAnn–as well as nine grandchildren.

(With reporting by Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA, and Chrstine Sierocki Lupella, a past staff writer for Jewish Chicago.)