R. J. Reynolds Jr.

Richard Joshua Reynolds Jr. was an American entrepreneur and the son of R.J. Reynolds, founder of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company.

Biography

Reynolds was an American businessman, politician, activist and philanthropist.
In 1934, he acquired Sapelo Island on the Atlantic coast of Georgia and, following the death of Tillinghast L'Hommedieu Huston in 1938, the Butler Island Plantation
Reynolds was appointed treasurer of the Democratic National Committee in early 1941 before being elected mayor of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, a few months later. He took a leave of absence from his mayoral duties and resigned his treasurer post in 1942 when he began military service as a lieutenant at the Naval Combat Intelligence School in Quonset Point, Rhode Island.
As a businessman, he did not work at R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company except as a young teenager and was involved in creating Delta Air Lines. He was also a yachtsman, pilot, aviator, and philanthropist.

Family life

Reynolds had four sons with his first wife, socialite Elizabeth McCaw Dillard: Richard Joshua Reynolds III, John Dillard Reynolds, Zachary Taylor Reynolds, and William Neal Reynolds. From his second marriage to the Hollywood stage and movie actress, Marianne O'Brien, his sons were: the activist Patrick Reynolds, and Michael Randolph Reynolds. His third marriage was to Muriel Marston Greenough, the younger sister of Anthony Heselton Marston, who was a major Canadian industrialist. His first three marriages ended in divorce. His fourth marriage, in 1961, was to Dr. Annemarie Schmitt, a psychiatrist.

Death

Reynolds was diagnosed with emphysema in 1960 and died four years later in Switzerland.