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1674-5 Mitchell Wolfson SAT JAN 29 1983 ED: BRWRD SECTION: FRONT PAGE: lA LENGTH: 1398 LONG ILLUST: photo: Mitchell Wolfson SOURCE: HERALD STAFF DATELINE: MEMO: MITCHELL WOLFSON, 82 , DIES OF HEART ATTACK Mitchell Wolfson, the man who shaped Miami-based Wometco Enterprises Inc. into one of the world' s leading leisure-time industries, died Friday evening at Mount Sinai Hospital of a heart attack. He was 82 . Wolfson had been hospitalized Thursday after complaining of chest pains. The bespectacled Wolfson was active until the end -- both in the company that entertained millions and in the civic endeavors that laid equal claim to his energies . Wolfson served as chairman of the board of trustees for Miami-Dade Community College from 1960 to 1980 . In 1981, the college honored his 20-year commitment to its growth. He also was a founder and served as chairman of the Miami Off-Street Parking Authority. The board manages the downtown Gusman Cultural Center at 174 E. Flagler St. The reason for the incongruous pairing is that millionaire philanthropist Maurice Gusman said that he would donate money for the facility only on the condition that Wolfson manage it. The hard-working businessman also found time to serve as a trustee of Mount Sinai Hospital, where he died Friday night. His other civic activities included membership on the Orange Bowl Committee and the Florida Thoroughbred Breeders ' Association. He was a former director of the United Way of Dade County and a former director of the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce. A heart attack last year had sidelined him for a time, but he returned to the company he founded to run it on a day-to-day basis. Wometco' s holdings included WTVJ Ch. 4 , which, when Wolfson opened it in 1949, was Florida' s first television station. Its first home was a back room of the old Capitol Theater that launched Wometco in 1925. Wometco also owns five other television stations, about 100 movie theaters, a growing cable-television operation, the Miami Seaquarium, the Key West Conch Train, a vending-machine operation, a video-game operation, soft- drink bottling companies and other properties. Wolfson, began his working career in 1919 , when Miami was a town of 9, 000 . He once said of Miami, "I have seen every sidewalk go down and every street light go on. " His company was born in 1925 during Florida' s boom but weathered both depression and war to expand and prosper. "No matter what the economic climate, " he told stockholders gathered at Wometco' s Byron-Carlyle theater in Miami Beach in 1975, "people continue to watch TV, buy a Coke and go to a movie. " He liked to say that Wometco "has been through every kind of recession and depression, and we 've always come out stronger than we were before. " Wometco' s economic strength seemed unassailable, with Wolfson as its chairman and president. Wolfson attributed his success to discipline, loyalty, curiosity and a slogan borrowed from Teddy Roosevelt: "Don' t stand on the shirttails of progress, yelling 'Whoa. ' " The company, whose shares were traded publicly on the New York Stock Exchange, earned a record $24 . 4 million in 1981 . After suffering a heart attack early last year, Wolfson appointed Charles J. Simons, a career executive with Eastern Air Lines, as acting president of Wometco. Simons ' specific assignment was to search for a president to succeed Wolfson, who had decided that it was time that he relinquished some of his duties. Simons was out of the country Friday. Wometco' s NYSE symbol, "WOM, " went on the Big Board in July 1965 . The first 100 shares bought by the corporation were promptly presented to the University of Miami -- a token, Wolfson explained, of its continuing commitment to that institution. In addition to being the chairman and president of Wometco, Wolfson was chairman of Wometco Cable TV, a director and a member of the executive board of the National Association of Theater Owners and an advisory director of American Bankers Life Assurance Co. of Florida. His activities brought him countless accolades for both his civic work and his broadcasting achievements. Unity was what Wolfson had in mind when he served with other community leaders on the Metro Charter Board and signed the document that inaugurated countywide government, warning then that its goal should be "federation rather than conformity. " Supported racing A thoroughbred fancier whose office was decorated with the framed yellow and white silks of his Pebble Hill stable of race horses in Ocala, he actively worked to maintain the vitality of the state ' s racing industry. "I 'm a doer, " Wolfson once said, when asked about his civic involvement. "I want to get things done. If I can't accomplish anything, I get off the board. " Political candidates sometimes sought his blessings, even though he last served in public office in 1943. Before then, Wolfson served three terms as commissioner and mayor of Miami Beach. He resigned as mayor to join the Army during World War II . He treasured his wartime rank of colonel and said that his pride typified his gratitude to the nation that made his kind of success possible. Wolfson traced his interest in civic activities back to his father, who served as a Key West commissioner while developing his dry goods business in the city where Mitchell Wolfson was born Sept. 13, 1900 . Wolfson' s boyhood ambition was to become a doctor, and he enrolled at Columbia University to study medicine. But when his two brothers went to France in World War I, his mother wrote, "Mitch, come home. " As Wolfson related later, "I went. " The two brothers in the service pleaded -- in letters the family would laugh over later -- for their mother to let young Mitchell become a doctor, "because he' ll never become a businessman. " The elder Wolfsons moved their business from Key West to Miami in 1917 and started the son as "the lowest of the low, " an assistant shipping clerk. Seven years later he had worked himself up to treasurer. But by then, he had teamed up with his brother-in-law, Sidney Meyer, a dentist, to form the Wolfson-Meyer Real Estate firm. By the time the two opened the Capitol Theatre at 300 N. Miami Ave. , complete with a $60, 000 Mighty Wurlitzer organ and air conditioning, they called their company the Wolfson-Meyer Theatre Co. , a name they would shorten into the acronym Wometco. It was Meyer -- who died in 1967 -- who persuaded movie magnate William Fox in the firm' s early years to provide their Capitol Theater with a feature film each week, plus short subjects and newsreels, for $52 , 000 a year. Wolfson had said that Wometco now often pays more than that for a single film. Theaters expanded During the next two decades, the entrepreneurs expanded their theaters throughout Miami, Miami Beach, Coral Gables, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach. During the 1930s, Wometco' s Lincoln 'Theatre in Miami Beach hosted more premiers than any theater outside California. Stars such as Bing Crosby, Clark Gable, Al Jolson, Jimmy Stewart and Carmen Miranda brightened the openings. Wolfson successfully gambled in 1949 that Miami was ready for television, although city viewers could claim fewer than 1, 000 sets, compared with more than a million today. WTVJ' s "Theater of the Air" expanded quickly from its initial two hours of nightly telecasting and, in 1952 , the Capitol Theater was transformed into WTVJ' s home and Wometco' s corporate headquarters. Wolfson' s office featured four color sets so he could keep an eye on his own station' s programming and that of his competitors. But he insisted that the fantasy people needed in the theater had no place in their news broadcasts. "A newscaster may get away with slanting something around her now and then, " he said, "but not often. " Wolfson was openly proud of his company' s success, but modest when speaking of his contributions to it. "We ' re not as smart as we ' re being given credit for, " he told one interviewer. "One of our strong points has been being in this expanding leisure business. Even Wolfson bobbled a few. In 1969 he joined with Jackie Gleason to form a Wometco subsidiary called Jackie ' s International to operate family-type restaurants and snack bars. Warnings that the food-franchise business was overcrowded proved accurate, and all five restaurants were quickly closed. But Wolfson never worried long about temporary setbacks. "As long as we keep our products affordable, expendable and enjoyable, " he would say, "I think we ' ll maintain a strong position. " He is survived by a daughter, Frances W. Cary of Miami Beach; a son, Mitchell Jr. of Miami Beach; and five grandchildren. Funeral arrangements for Wolfson were incomplete. ADDED TERMS: obituary END OF DOCUMENT.