How I Built an Empire and Gave It Away

Joseph Zilber saw remarkable changes during his lifetime. Born in Milwaukee in 1917, he grew up behind the family grocery store in a tightknit Milwaukee neighbourhood, which was the center of his universe. Here, he learned his core values from his humble and hardworking parents Jewish immigrants from Russia. While still in grade school, he was hawking newspapers on the street corner and spending his hardearned profits on expanding his knowledge about the world and his city. As his world expanded, so did Joes vision of what he wanted to accomplish. He graduated from Marquette University Law School with honors and served in the United States Army in World War II. As the end of the war neared, he realised that millions of veterans would need a place to live when they returned home. To meet this pressing need he began building houses, hundreds of them, creating entire neighbourhoods in the Milwaukee area. The American Dream was in full bloom and Joe was in the prime of his life. He expanded his real estate activities to include office buildings, nursing homes, fitness salons, college dormitories, Florida condos, and Las Vegas hotels. You name it, he built it a heating plant in the Arctic Circle, no problem, a circular church designed by Frank Lloyd Wright (some problems), and 15 fake missile silos in a North Dakota farm field, made to fool the Russian satellites as they passed overhead. Joes strong moral compass led him to buy and destroy serial killer Jeffery Dahmers devices of madness, run massive newspaper ads after 9/11 telling the terrorists they would never win and saying to people young and old, by action and by deed that I care about you and your future."" As he approached his ninth decade, he looked into the future. With Vera, his wife of 61 years, they decided to give away their fortune to help rebuild their hometown and restore the American Dream to its most disadvantaged. They established the Zilber Family Foundation, which funded college scholarships, contributed to a new law school at Marquette University, and created a Graduate School of Public Health at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. To revive Milwaukees inner city, Zilber formed the Zilber Neighborhood Initiative, giving future generations a shot at reaching their full potential. In this insightful and entertaining book, Joe Zilber tells of his joys and heartaches, his hits and misses, the wisdom he gained along the way and the satisfaction he experienced by helping others to have a chance to succeed.