Donald Joel Aronow

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Donald "Don" Joel Aronow (born March 3, 1927 in Sheepshead Bay , Brooklyn , New York City , † February 3, 1987 in Miami , Florida ) was an American designer , constructor , operator and racing driver of racing boats , including the Magnum Marine , Dozi and Cary .

He also designed and built the boats for other racing drivers and private customers. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi , Charles H. Keating , Robert Vesco , Malcolm Forbes , George HW Bush and Lyndon Johnson were among his clients.

Life

Don was the youngest son of Herman and Ruth Aronow. His two older sisters Sylvia and Lillian also belonged to this Russian-Jewish emigrant family. His father first ran a gas station , then a taxi company , which fell victim to the Great Depression . Don rose to be a top athlete at Madison High School , served as a lifeguard on the beaches of Coney Island , and continued his school career at Brooklyn College . Don stopped attending school in 1945 to join his country's merchant navy and was also deployed overseas in the final months of the war. In 1947 he returned and obtained a technical degree and then worked as a teacher himself for a while.

The returning veterans triggered a building boom in some cities, from which his father- in -law's architectural office in New Jersey also benefited. He took up his work there. In 1953 he founded his own office, which quickly grew to be the largest in the United States and made him a millionaire .

In 1959 he went to Miami and got into racing boating, from which his new profession as a racing boat operator and driver was formed until 1962 when he founded Formula Marine, which he transferred to Alliance Machine Corp. sold by Merrick Lewis of Dayton, Ohio .

In 1964 he founded Donzi Marine, which and whose boat he developed into an international trademark and immediately sold on to Teleflex Inc. in mid-1965. In 1966, a new venture followed with Magnum Marine, with which he won his first championship in the racing boat series in 1967 and left there in 1969.

With the help of Elton Cry's, he finally built his first own cigarette-shaped boat with the Cary . Together with his mechanic and co-pilot Norris "Knocky" House, he won his second championship within three years. In 1970 he founded his own racing team, sold and bought it back in the late 1970s, only to part with it in 1982.

His new racing boat brand "The Cigarette" became in principle a trademark of Don Aronow himself. He now founded a very successful national racing team, from which the Racing Team America developed. A new type of catamaran boat was used, which was later also used by the United States Coast Guard in order to be able to keep up with the fast smuggled boats on the coasts . However, smugglers also appreciated these new Don Aronow boats and used them in particular for drug smuggling. In legal races, these Don Aronow boats have won over 350 races.

On February 3, 1987, Don Aronow was shot in his car on NE 188th Street in Miami.

Criminal case

Shortly before his murder, Aronow had a meeting with Bob Sacenti and Ben Kramer, the part owners of Apache Power Boats. When Aronow then rolled past a blue Lincoln parked on the opposite side after only a few meters in his car , according to a witness testimony, the driver opened fire. Another witness tried to follow the now fleeing perpetrator vehicle, but was shaken off.

Due to the popularity of his speedboats for illegal smuggling operations, it initially made sense to look for a motive for the murder here. Only about ten years later did the case move when two suspects denied the act. In 1995, professional criminal Bobby Young admitted to being involved in the incident but had nothing to do with the actual murder. Meeting participant Ben Kramer came into the crosshairs as the mastermind . Aronow had a business clash because he was the buyer of the racing team, which Aronow had later bought back. No charges were brought against Kramer; he was serving a life sentence anyway. a. since 1988/89 for drug smuggling and illegal arms trafficking . In 1990 he tried to escape from prison in a spectacular way with the help of a helicopter , but failed with this attempt.

Movies

  • 2018: Speed ​​Kills; Action film with John Travolta as Ben Aronoff
  • 2009: Thunder Man: The Don Aronow Story; documentary

literature

  • Aronow, Michael: The King of Thunderboat Row , Write Stuff Enterprises 1994. ISBN 0945903227 .
  • Burdick, Thomas and Mitchell, Charlene: Blue Thunder: How the Mafia Owned and Finally Murdered Cigarette Boat King Donald Aronow , 1990. ISBN 0671663216 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ "How a Kid From Brooklyn Put Go-Fast Boats On The Map" by Capt Ken Kreisler Power & Motor July 2000
  2. ↑ Ap: Donald Aronow, Boat Designer and Chamion Racer, Shot to Death . In: The New York Times . February 4, 1987, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed February 20, 2020]).
  3. ↑ Thomas Burdick / Charlene Mitchell Blue Thunder: How the Mafia Owned and Finally Murdered Cigarette Boat King Donald Aronow. Simon & Schuster, October 1990, ISBN 0-671-66321-6 .
  4. ^ A b David Ovalle: Kramer's Conviction Upheld in Aronow Murder . In: Miami Herald . December 8, 2010. Retrieved May 28, 2014.
personal data
SURNAME Aronow, Donald Joel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Aronow, Don
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American racing boat driver, writer and designer
DATE OF BIRTH March 3, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH Sheepshead Bay , Brooklyn, New York City, United States
DATE OF DEATH 3rd February 1987
Place of death Miami , Florida, United States