Emigrant To Millionaire: Eli Saleeby Dies At Age 98

BY ROSE POST
SALISBURY POST

Elias Alexander "Eli" Saleeby, 98, a penniless Lebanese emigrant who came to America to seek his fortune and became one of Salisbury's most generous philanthropists, died just after 10 p.m. Monday at Rowan Regional Medical Center.

His death was no surprise. He had suffered with cancer for 10 years and had been seriously ill for the

last few months.

The funeral will be conducted Wednesday at 2:30 p.m. at Summersett Funeral Chapel by Dr. Robert M. Lewis, pastor of First Presbyterian Church. Entombment will follow at Rowan Memorial Park.

Saleeby's death, like his illness, saddened not just old and valued friends but also casual acquaintances who remember a happy, ebullient man, a legend of personal generosity in ways large and small.

His large gifts - about $1.5 million each to Catawba College, Rowan Regional Medical Center, the Baddour Center for mentally handicapped adults in Senatobia, Miss., and the East Rowan YMCA - will change lives.

But his small gifts are the stuff that stories are made of.

He kept large bags of potatoes in his garage, anxious not to let anyone leave his home at 1633 Statesville Blvd. without a gift of fresh produce from his Saleeby Produce Co. on East Council Street.

"And when you'd leave," says longtime friend Wilson "Bill" Smith, "he'd say, -Wait, I'm going to give you some potatoes.'|"

Likewise, he kept the trunk of his car filled with potatoes so no one he knew could pass him on the street without suddenly finding his arms full of potatoes.

Or bananas. Or oranges. Or apples.

Glenn Ketner remembers that he'd come into his office loaded with two bags of whatever he had at the produce company at the time - for everybody in the office.

Or - if he ran into a friend in a grocery store with a child in tow - he became Santa Claus.

"Want some candy?" he'd ask - and dash off to buy it. Not a piece of candy or a single bar. A box of 24 bars of candy.

He made the money he gave away working hard at his own business and by helping friends open a new business, Food Town, that was to become Food Lion.

Saleeby left his native Lebanon to come to the United States in 1920, but he struggled to establish himself in several communities before his cousin, the late A.B. Saleeby, encouraged him to come here in 1931 with a good offer. He'd give him a place to live, he said, and help him get started in a fruit and vegetable business.

Eli Saleeby's own favorite story was probably related to that precarious beginning.

Not long after he opened his business, he needed to borrow $600 to pay for a load of lemons, but all Salisbury banks turned him down.

Someone suggested he go to Jake Fisher at that little bank across the railroad tracks in Granite Quarry.

He went and got the money and remained a customer of F&M Bank - and a friend of Jake Fisher and his growing family - for the rest of his life, never forgetting that the Granite Quarry banker trusted him when nobody else did.

Paul Fisher, son of Jake Fisher and chief executive officer of the bank, heard the story time and time again.

"He'd be at our door every Christmas," Fisher says, "with a box of apples, a box of oranges, a box of everything ... We - all seven of us children - thought he was Santa Claus.

He was a little round man anyway. He didn't dress up. He just showed up."

He was F&M's longest full-time customer - and his business prospered.

So did Food Lion's.

Glenn Ketner Sr.'s Ketner Supermarkets were faithful customers in the early days of Saleeby Produce - and brothers Ralph and Brown Ketner and produce manager Wilson Smith became good friends. So when they were raising money for their new business, Eli Saleeby was one of those friends who bought 100 shares of stock for $1,000.

And years later he and his wife, Rose, spread that good fortune in many directions, giving generously to his family in Lebanon, to nieces and nephews, and to the community.

In 1988, they gave Catawba College a gift which created the Saleeby Dining Room in the Cannon Student Center and was named for the Saleebys. And they gave the college another $1.5 million recently in the form of a charitable remainder trust with the college as beneficiary.

It establishes the Elias Alexander and Rose Baddour Saleeby Endowed Chair in the Ketner School of Business and the Saleeby First Family Scholarship.

He intended the gift to honor friends at Catawba and help present and future students.

They gave stock valued at $1.5 million to Rowan Regional Medical Center's Campaign for Tomorrow, which was earmarked for the construction of the new Wilson L. Smith Family Outpatient Center.

That gift, Saleeby said, "was in memory of our many friends and neighbors who have meant so much through the years. This is a wonderful country filled with wonderful people. We felt the medical center was our best opportunity to reach out and help so many different people for so many years to come."

Another similar gift went to continue the special activities at the Baddour Center at Senatobia, Miss., that they and Rose Baddour Saleeby's family established in 1978.

And they gave 180,000 shares of Food Lion stock to the forthcoming East Rowan YMCA.

At the time that gift was valued at $1.3 million.

By the time work starts on the Y in the spring, Paul Fisher expects it to be worth $2 million - and he had to listen to the story of the $600 loan for a load of lemons again when the Saleebys made the gift in honor of his father.

"I feel," Eli Saleeby concluded when he told it that time, "that I finally paid off that debt."

After 77 years in business and 67 years in Salisbury, he retired in May 1997.

And he left his imprint far beyond his business and his joyous gift-giving.

He was a director emeritus of F&M Bank and belonged to the First Presbyterian Church, the Chamber of Commerce and the Salisbury Civitan Club. The Civitans recently honored the Saleebys as Distinguished Citizens of the Year for their ability to resolve human needs and problems in this community and through gifts which have distinguished them in achieving the goals of Civitan builders of good citizenship.