Growing Rich - Arabictrader.com

KIRK KAZANJIAN
Moore Cullom Davis, the offspring of the great insurance-stock investor
who has become a mutual fund superstar. Davis always hated
having such a long name. As a youngster, he shortened it to just
Shelby M.C. Davis. “Frankly, most people have always called me Junior
anyway, because when your dad has the same name, it’s hard to
get away from that,” he admits. But Davis has long been fascinated
by his namesake Senator Cullom, so much so that he traveled to
Springfield, Illinois, in college to do a research paper on him. “I found
people who knew the man, even though it had been 40 years since
he died,” he says. “I also dug around in the Springfield library, going
through a lot of older papers. I worked on this project for a good
couple of weeks.” The paper became his senior history thesis at Princeton.
Davis, who has one younger sister, was about ten years old when
his father decided to make the transition to Wall Street. “The first
thing I remember was that he was a very hard worker,” Davis recalls.
“When he finally agreed to let us build a swimming pool at our house
in Tarrytown, a small suburb north of New York City, he made me,
my sister, and my mom help him dig the hole. We eventually had to
hire a professional, because we ran into boulders. But that’s the kind
of guy he was. We also had planted a Victory Garden and raised
chickens and pigs, like a lot of other people during World War II.
People planted their own vegetables to save money and grow their
own food so the more commercial goods could go to the troops.”
Davis has fond memories of going into the campaign headquarters
of Governor Dewey on the night he lost the presidential race to Harry
Truman in 1948. “He was supposed to win that one, but managed to
snatch defeat from the jaws of victory,” Davis says. “My father was
working for Dewey when I was born in 1937, and Dewey was my
godfather. I met him a few times and got to know his sons very well.
One of them went to Princeton with me, and another married one of
my best friends from Tarrytown.”
LEARNING FROM A FATHER’S LEGEND
Davis started working with his dad at an early age. He accompanied
his father on visits with management at the various insurance companies
whose stocks he owned. One summer, the Davis family rented
a home in Madison, Connecticut, for a month. Davis tagged along
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