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Mediterranean Quarterly 13.2 (2002) 96-107



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The Other Aristotle Onassis:
A Visionary Builder of Foundations

Stelio A. Papadimitriou


In modern times, and with the expansion and development of the world economy, some people have accumulated, through their business, substantial wealth. A number of these people, when approaching the end of their biological lives, suffer the awkward feeling of the final winner in the well-known monopoly game. When it is won, a hollowness in the stomach and an emptiness in the soul follows. The business will finish. There will be no more players to play. The game, which was, after all, the source of the pleasure, will soon be over, and this leaves the player with a feeling of lonely triumph and sadness. In the game of life, the players love it. They wish it to continue, not only during their lifetime but also after they are gone. If they pass their business to physical persons or to an impersonal state, the game will no longer be "their" game. It will be the game of others or perhaps of no one. The only way they can continue to play their game, which is their business, is through a legal entity, a foundation, which is not an heir or a physical person who may have little in common with the founder, nor is it a faceless and indifferent state. This legal entity can take the place of the founder in the business; it can embody his vision and can personify him to a large extent.

In addition to people who have a strong desire to preserve in a subtle way their "business" and their "wealth," there are also those who wish to serve not their own material interests after they are gone but charity and humanity at large through public benefit projects. These people can and sometimes do create foundations. They endow them with their business, so that the business [End Page 96] itself may continue its operation after their demise. Out of its profits, charity or public-benefit endeavors will be served.

These foundations, whose substantial assets are invested in various sectors of the economy, are called collectively the Third Sector, because they are not owned or administered by the state and likewise are not part of the private sector, because they have no owners to own and direct them for their private interests. In lieu of the state or stockholders, foundations have beneficiaries or charitable or other public-benefit purposes. These purposes, being the wishes of the founder, become the masters of these foundations, which administer substantial wealth in accordance with the preordained directives of their respective founders after they die or even during their lifetime.

One such person whose personal circumstances at the end of his life made him particularly sensitive to matters such as these was the well-known shipping magnate, Aristotle Onassis, who died some decades ago.

Most, if not all, know the spectacular rise and the equally spectacular fall of this great man. Some hated and envied him for his meteoric rise and his successful and colorful life. Many admired him. All commiserated on his tragic fall and for the almost complete loss of his family. He was a private hero of modern society who, at some point, became bigger than life and offended the gods with his success. He was thus "guilty" of hubris as he rose above the acceptable limits of normal mortals.

The gods passed a cruel judgment on him. He saw in the span of the last two years of his life the loss of his dear son in a plane crash, the fall of his ex-wife, the woman he loved most, and thereafter her death. He saw his daughter unhappy and drifting in the seas of her passions. He saw himself old and tired and seriously ill. He heard the heavy footsteps of death approaching to claim him. He felt that he should not give away his business and his wealth to a specific person or to the state. He thought that there was no individual able to...

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