JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

BLANK, ARTHUR M. (1942– ), U.S. entrepreneur, philanthropist.
Born in Queens, N.Y., Blank received an accounting
degree from Babson College and worked as an accountant before
joining a small pharmaceutical company started by his
father. When the company was bought by Daylin, Blank became
an executive at a Daylin drugstore unit. He then moved
to the Handy Dan Improvement Centers, a division of Daylin,
where he met Bernard *Marcus. In 1978, Blank and Marcus
were fired by Daylin over disagreements about the small
chain’s future and decided to go into the home-improvement
business. After surveying four cities, they settled on Atlanta
as the place with the right market and real estate conditions
to test their theory that consumers would flock to huge stores
offering a broad selection of home improvement products, low
prices, and hospitable service. They opened three Home Depot
stores in 1979, employing 200 workers, and had $7 million in
sales. They lost nearly $1 million. But their fortunes changed
and the company went public in 1981. Their goal was to encourage
creativity from everyone from sales people to managers,
with stock options offered even to the lowest-level employees.
Their adversary was the lumberyard down the street,
not the boss. This familial structure, plus a ferocious sense
of competition, proved a winning combination. Eventually,
their muscle helped put Handy Dan out of business. By the
end of 1998, Home Depot had grown to almost 800 stores,
had 157,000 employees, and recorded more than $30 billion
in sales. Home Depot became the do-it-yourself giant, providing
everything from screws to electrical wiring for American
fixer-uppers. It also opened stores in other countries, in
Canada and South America.
Blank served as chief executive from May 1997 until
December 2001, when he turned over day-to-day management
to an executive from General Electric. During Blank’s
tenure, Home Depot sales more than doubled and the company’s
stock price almost tripled. Blank said he planned
to devote more time to his family foundation and to his wife,
who was expecting twins. In December 2001, Blank also
completed a deal to buy the Atlanta Falcons professional football
franchise for $545 million. Blank and Marcus became
philanthropic leaders in Atlanta and Blank was chairman
of the local Chamber of Commerce. When he retired, his
stock holdings were estimated at $1.6 billion. His foundation
gave away $100 million from 1995 through 2002. His
philanthropies ranged from a new venue for the Atlanta
Symphony Orchestra to restoring green space in the inner city
to helping such nonprofits as Outward Bound and Zoo Atlanta.
About 90 percent of the funds the Blank Family Foundation
gives away goes to youth projects, but other causes
also receive support. The foundation gives to many Jewish
organizations. The Home Depot company has spawned as
many as 1,000 millionaires. One former executive vice president,
Ronald M. Brill, who helped start the company, gave $1
million for an endowment at the Atlanta Jewish Community
Center in 1999.
[Stewart Kampel (2nd ed.)]
blank, maurice
BLANK, LEON (1867–1934), Yiddish actor. Born in Lithuania,
Blank and his family subsequently moved to Romania.
He sang in synagogue choirs as a child but was attracted
to Yiddish theater. He reached the U.S. in 1886, as
a stowaway with Mogulesko’s company. He started out as a
member of the chorus but soon turned to acting. As a singer
and a dramatic reader, Blank made a number of recordings
in Yiddish.
His appearance in the play David’s Fidele (“David’s
Violin,” 1897) brought him recognition and started him on
a successful career. Blank was one of the founders of the
Hebrew Actor’s Union in 1899. In the 1920s he starred in
many of Jacob *Gordin’s plays at the National Theatre, Liberty
Theatre, and Public Theatre in New York. For a short period
he was a member of a Yiddish theater company in Philadelphia,
but he spent most of his time on the road, performing
across the U.S. Despite offers from Broadway and Hollywood,
Blank remained attached to the Jewish theater. His
memoirs were serialized in Der Forverts (Oct. 5, 1928–Jan.
29, 1929).
[Ruth Beloff (2nd ed.)]
BLANK, MAURICE (1848–1921), Romanian banker. Born in
Pitesti, Romania, Blank was one of the first Romanian Jews
to receive diplomas in economics and finance at the Vienna
and Leipzig universities. He went to work in Bucharest in
the banking house of Jacob Marmorosh, who later invited
him to become a partner. Marmorosh, Blank and Company
became Romania’s largest bank after the Romanian National
Bank. Blank made important connections with East European
financial institutions and was instrumental in developing
his country’s economic relations with the rest of Europe, particularly
after Romania became independent in 1878. His bank
shared in developing many of the country’s industries, helped
to introduce steel trains, and made possible the financing
of the great tunnel project at Barbosi. Blank was involved in
Jewish and general communal affairs, giving generous support
to cultural institutions and founding theaters and publishing
houses. His son ARISTIDE BLANK (1884–1962) became
general director of the bank on his father’s death and was
also a supporter of many Jewish and general causes. He published
a number of studies on finance, and some plays in
Romanian and French. Aristide Blank was also a promoter
of Romanian culture: he financed the publication of books
on history and archaeology, bought the Adevarul and Dimineata
dailies, and supported the Popular Theater of Bucharest
and the Romanian school in Paris. He also founded
the nonprofit Cultura Nationala publishing house, which
published books in the fields of literature, the humanities,
and social sciences, with the aim of encouraging writers and
promoting good literature. He also financed the translation
of the Bible into Romanian by the writer-priest Gala Galaction.
In 1950, ruined and persecuted by the Communist regime,
Aristide Blank left for Paris, where he lived in poverty
and died.
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 3 739