Noting that a Forbes editorial commented that the only ways to get off its 400 list were to lose one's money, give it away, or die, Feeney wrote in a memo to his longtime attorney and adviser, Harvey Dale, that "Option (1) is unlikely, Option (3) is undesirable. That leaves Option (2)."
Feeney had already made his billion through his pioneering Duty Free Shoppers in airports and other sites around the world - and with his partners was in the process of making more through the DFS shops and other enterprises.
But what Forbes did not know was that Feeney was already giving away his fortune through his highly secretive Atlantic Foundation.
It did, however, hint at his frugal lifestyle. As Feeney once put it, "If I can get a watch for $15 that keeps perfect time, what am I doing messing around with a Rolex?"
Feeney was born in Newark in 1931, the son of blue-collar Irish-American parents. After service during the Korean War, he attended Cornell University, attracted by its hotel management school. Graduating in 1956, he ended up in Europe, where he found his first opportunity - selling liquor to US sailors stationed on the French Riviera. Following the fleet to a new base at Barcelona, he looked up a fellow hotel school alumnus, Robert Miller, who was working on the reception desk at a hotel there. Their meeting, O'Clery writes, "marked the start of one of the most profitable partnerships in international business history" - what eventually became Duty Free Shoppers.
DFS was initially a catalog store, displaying luxury goods that could be delivered - duty-free - to American tourists upon their return home. It later expanded to sell goods directly.
O'Clery recounts, at times a bit breathlessly, the wild entrepreneurial ride enjoyed by Feeney and his partners. It came to an end in 1996 when a buyout proposal came from a French firm, just as Feeney was seeking to devote himself entirely to philanthropy.
A year later, responding to inevitable interest in the breakup of a multi-billion-dollar enterprise, Feeney went public - characteristically in a pre-arranged call to a New York Times reporter from a pay phone at the San Francisco airport.
