Forbes.com staff, 10.01.02, 5:29 PM ET
NEW YORK - Philanthropist Walter H. Annenberg, who ranked No. 34 on the 2002 Forbes Richest Americans list, died today at his home in Pennsylvania after a brief bout with pneumonia. He was 94.
Walter Annenberg
The University of Pennsylvania dropout inherited debt-ridden Triangle Publications from his father in 1942, when he was just 32. As the only son among Moses Annenberg's eight children, he managed to turn around Triangle, the moribund publisher of The Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily Racing Form, positioning it for a dynamic period of growth and expanding the business with the addition of wildly successful magazines such as Seventeen and TV Guide. He sold the Inquirer to Knight-Ridder (nyse: KRI - news - people ) in 1970 and then the rest of the company to Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. (nyse: NWS - news - people ) for $3 billion in 1988.
Annenberg, whose estate is estimated at $4 billion, was a close friend and political ally of several presidents, beginning with Dwight Eisenhower and extending to Ronald Reagan. Nancy Reagan described him as one of former President Reagan's "closest friends for half a century." Richard Nixon appointed him ambassador to Britain in 1969, a position that he held for five and a half years.
Topping the list of his extensive philanthropic work are the endowment of journalism schools at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Southern California, and the donation of a highly prized collection of modern art worth more than $1 billion to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. Annenberg was also a benefactor to the United Negro College Fund, the state of Israel and numerous hospitals and schools.