Nothing glamorous at all about it, but very profitable. Strip centers, warehouses, that sort of thing. Larry Keller: He made his money not building beautiful hotels, like Donald Trump, and resorts and golf courses, but commercial real estate. At first he was an outsider with his nose pressed against the window, but real estate savvy-cutting down and dirty deals-was his ticket to the waterfront life. It was just one of the ways he would reinvent himself.Īs a youngish man with money on the mind, the potential of south Florida drew him down to Palm Beach. He started his career as an engineer in Virginia, along the way changing his name to Keller. after the war and Fred grew up in a modest home on Long Island. And when he was about three or four, the family moved back to Germany and he was there for part of World War II. Larry Keller: He wrote in his memoir that his father was a member of the S.S.
Palm Beach journalist Larry Keller (no relation) found in his research that Fred had been born in Brooklyn, N.Y., to strict German parents by the name of Bohlander.