Shepard Broad OF BLESSED MEMORY
Presented by The Foundation of the Greater Miami Jewish Federation
Shepard Broad OF BLESSED MEMORY
Business pioneer, Zionist, philanthropist, visionary…these are all words that have been used to describe Shepard Broad. Born in 1906 in Pinsk, Russia, into an Orthodox Jewish family, Shmuel Bobrowicz (Szmuel Bobrowice) lost his mother at age three and became an orphan at 10 when his father died just prior to World War I. He and his younger brothers survived the German occupation of his city and the
hostilities between the Poles and the Bolsheviks that followed. His American uncle offered to sponsor his entry into the United States, arranging for steerage passage from Antwerp via Warsaw. To get there, the 13-year-old boy set off on a perilous adventure and at one point jumped a freight train in the dark, only to be thrown off at daybreak by a railroad official. He finally made his way to Antwerp and, after a three-week voyage, arrived in New York, where he lived with his Uncle and Aunt. After giving the young nephew a new name, Shepard Broad, the uncle enrolled him in school. Because he spoke only
Yiddish, Broad was assigned to a third-grade class. Within a year, however, he was able to attend high school; seven years after he spoke his first word of English, he had earned a law degree from New York Law School. “When you’ve got no money and nothing except a rather decent head on your shoulders, the
thing to do is to use your head,” he said. A visit to Miami in the late 1930s introduced him to the area’s pleasant climate and myriad business opportunities. Returning to New York, he told his wife, Ruth, that they should move to Miami. Her response: ``You’re crazy. You don’t throw away bread to look for cake.’’ But they did, and they moved to South Florida in 1939, where he became known for his real estate savvy as both an attorney and investor. Shepard built and developed the Town of Bay Harbor Islands, where he served as mayor for 26 years. The Shepard Broad Causeway spanning Biscayne Bay is named in his honor. He founded American Savings & Loan Association of Florida, which became one of the largest and premier banking organizations in Florida. In 1946, he founded the law firm of Broad and Cassel. In 1979, Shepard was awarded the Horatio Alger Award for Distinguished Americans.
Shepard upon his arrival in Montreal from Europe in August 1920 with his sponsor and HIAS volunteer, Adolph Stark, who found Shepard in detention in Quebec City.
During Shepard’s lifetime, he was a generous supporter of Israel and the Miami Jewish community through the Greater
Miami Jewish Federation, and is a Past President of Temple Beth Sholom. He was the major contributor that enabled the relocation of the Nova University Shepard Broad School of Law to the university’s main campus. Barry University named their performing arts center in honor of Shepard and Ruth and renamed their planned giving society to The Shepard Broad Society to honor him for his vision and commitment to higher education. He also created the Ruth K. Broad Biomedical Research Foundation at Duke University in the late 1980s to honor the memory of his wife, Ruth, and to advance the understanding of neurodegenerative diseases – particularly Alzheimer’s disease. Amidst all of his accomplishments Shepard said that “working secretly for Israel was the important thing he ever did.” In 1945, Broad received a top-secret letter from the American Zionist leader Rudolf Sonneborn. Sonneborn had agreed with David Ben Gurion — who would become Israel’s first prime minister — to organize a group of American men who could help Jews in Palestine form a Jewish state. “My grandfather was one of those men,” said John Bussel, Shepard’s grandson, and President of the Shepard Broad Foundation. The group convened just once, in Sonneborn’s New York apartment. “Ben Gurion was there, and would later say that the State of Israel was born in that meeting,” Bussel said. “The Jews of Europe had lost everything. The only ones who could help were in America.” Broad raised funds to buy two American cargo ships, and docked them in the Miami River. He told authorities they would sail to South America to bring bananas back to the United States. “What they really did was head east and pick up
Holocaust survivors from Europe and brought them to British Mandate Palestine,” said Bussel. “Many people here have no idea that Miami played such an important role in making this miracle of a country possible.” About 5,000 Holocaust survivors were on Broad’s three ships, the Hatikva, Geula, and the The Jewish State. Yet due to British restrictions on Jewish immigration at the time, they were considered illegal migrants. The British sent one of Broad’s ships back to a refugee camp in Cyprus. Jewish immigration only became legal once the British Mandate ended and the State of Israel declared independence on May 14, 1948. Shepard Broad passed away on November 6, 2001. His legacy continues through the Shepard Broad Foundation and his two children (Morris Broad, of blessed memory, and Ann Bussel), five grandchildren and nine great grandchildren.
Temple Beth Am AND Rambam Day School
Presented by The Foundation of the Greater Miami Jewish Federation
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