Fred C Trump

Fred C. Trump, one of the last of New York City's major postwar builders, died in June 25 1999 at a hospital in Queens. He was 93 and lived in Jamaica Estates, Queens. Although Mr. Trump was stricken with Alzheimer's disease six years ago, he still retained his title of chairman of the board of Trump Management, a title he held since the company was formed in the mid-1960's. Frederick Christ (pronounced Krist) Trump was born in New York City in 1905. From World War II until the 1980's, Mr. Trump would tell friends and acquaintances that he was of Swedish origin, although both his parents were born in Germany. at 15, he started his own construction business while continuing his high school education. He knew he was too young to build entire houses, so he thought of building housing for the new mode of transportation then sweeping the nation; after all, those newfangled automobiles needed garages. Too young to sign checks, he became partners with his mother, Elizabeth: they called their company E. Trump & Son. His mother, who was a dynamo in her own right, was the partner who signed the checks. Their business was a success, and one of the things he did with his earnings, his sons said, was to help send his younger brother John to Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, then to Columbia for his master's and then to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received his Ph.D. In World War II, Mr. Trump built barracks and garden apartments for the Navy in Chester, Pa., Newport News, and Norfolk, Va. When the fighting was over and apartments for returning servicemen and their families were in short supply, he branched out into middle-income housing; he built Shore Haven in Bensonhurst in 1949 and Beach Haven near Coney Island the next year for a total of 2,700 apartments. In 1963, he put up the 3,800-apartment Trump Village in Coney Island -- five years after his contemporary, Sam LeFrak, began Lefrak City in Queens. In 1936, Mr. Trump married Mary McLeod, who had come to this country when she was 19 from Stornoway, Scotland. Miss McLeod had two sisters who lived in New York; shortly after she arrived, her sisters took her to a dance, where she met Fred Trump. They had five children. In addition to his wife and his sons Robert and Donald, he is survived by two daughters, Maryanne Trump Barry of New York City, who is a Federal judge, and Elizabeth Trump Grau of New York City. Another son, Fred Trump Jr., died in 1981. Both his brother John and his sister, Elizabeth Trump Walters, are dead.