Arbor Drugs founder
Eugene Applebaum
parlays business success
into community
philanthropy.

...

ALAN ABRAMS
Special to The Jewish News

E

ugene Applebaum built
Arbor Drugs into the
nation's eighth largest drug-
store chain before selling it
early last spring to CVS Corp., the
nation's largest drugstore chain, for
$1.48 billion. His stock holdings were
worth $396 million at the time of the
sale. Yet the odds are, unless you're in
the drugstore business, you still
wouldn't recognize his name.
Although that's exactly how he's want-
ed it, it may be about to change.
For Applebaum, there is clearly life
after Arbor. Not content to take his
profits and ride off into the sunset after
the sale — which made him the largest
shareholder in CVS — Applebaum is
doing his share to make this community
continue to grow. As a philanthropist
and Rind-raiser, chairing Wayne State
University's Preparing for Tomorrow
campaign, he is applying the same ener-
gy, drive and enthusiasm that allowed
him to build a 207-store chain with
7,200 employees from scratch within
the span of a single generation.
The 62-year-old, Detroit-born

1/15
1999

74 Detroit Jewish News

pharmacist is very much a man of his
community.
Indeed, asked to list his hobbies, he
replies his family, philanthropy, art, and
the City of Detroit. His broad defini-
tion of community encompasses far
more that any single neighborhood.
The boundaries of Mr. Applebaum's
Neighborhood include all of metro
Detroit. And at its hub is the campus of
Wayne State University, in Applebaum's
words, "the jewel of the city."
If you want to narrow the commu-
nity in which Applebaum grew up,
you'd have to focus upon the Russell
Woods section of Detroit. Applebaum
attended Winterhalter Elementary
School before moving on to Durfee
Intermediate, Central High School
and Wayne. He graduated from
WSU's School of Pharmacy in 1960.
One of Applebaum's childhood
friends was U.S. Ambassador to
Norway David Hermelin, and the two
have remained close ever since. Said
Hermelin, a former Arbor board
member, "I have known Gene since
kindergarten. He is one of those peo-
ple you grow up with that gives your
past a sense of quality. Gene always
had great instincts. He was one that

-,

"We hired a dot
Wayne State University
School of Pharrna(y
graduates as pharmacists
and executives.
It makes sense not only as
:i7C but as
goo

onploycrs to tisc pcopie
who come out of it

(the school)."

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