ARBOR INVESTMENTS GROUP
Eugene and Marcia Applebaum
“It’s a good Horatio Alger story —
somebody who started with one drug
store and ended up with a
monster company.”
— EUGENE APPLEBAUM
remembers vividly from childhood. In 1948,
around the time Israel gained statehood, he
and his mother walked many blocks from
their home on Broad Street (near Dexter) to
catch a glimpse of David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s
first prime minister.
“Hundreds of thousands of people were on
the street; Ben-Gurion was passing in a con-
vertible. That was all part of the solidarity of
the neighborhood we all lived in … It was a
very big event,” he recalled in the oral history.
As a boy, Applebaum attended the Fresh
Air Society day camp for three years as a
scholarship student, with his parents paying
$3 a week rather than the full $21. He really
enjoyed camp and went, also on scholarship,
to Fresh Air’s overnight Camp Tamarack.
“Camp was very personal to Eugene,” said
Steve Engel, Tamarack Camps executive direc-
tor. “Eugene called his time at camp some of
the best days of his youth. The Applebaum fam-
ily has supported Tamarack Camps for many
years. Most recently, in 2016, the Applebaum
family dedicated a new Applebaum Village to
celebrate Eugene’s legacy.”
Although Applebaum didn’t know it then,
many of his childhood friends would remain
friends for life, also growing into leadership
roles in the Jewish community and becoming
major philanthropists as well.
For example, in kindergarten at
Winterhalter Elementary School, he met
David Hermelin, one of his closest lifelong
friends. At Durfee and Central High School, he
became good friends with Sidney Forbes and
Arthur Lieberman, among many others.
“Our parents were friends. We grew up
together in the Dexter area. He loved being
around people; he was very outgoing,” said
Lieberman, a doctor who lives in Birmingham.
He introduced Applebaum to his wife, Marcia.
“We all came from modest means,” said
Forbes of Bloomfield Hills, a luxury mall
developer and philanthropist. “Look, he was
a hard worker, as I was; we didn’t know where
life was going to take us. We didn’t know how
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December 21 • 2017
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