Norton Winfred Simon (February 5, 1907 – June 2, 1993) was an American industrialist and philanthropist. He was at one time one of the wealthiest men in America. At the time of his death, he had amassed a net worth of nearly US$10 billion. Simon was born to a Jewish family in Portland, Oregon. His father operated a wholesale goods store there. When Simon was sixteen years old, he relocated with his family from Portland to San Francisco following his mother's death. After dropping out of the University of California, Berkeley, Simon founded a sheet metal company before investing in an insolvent orange juice bottling plant in Fullerton, California. The company was renamed Val Vita Food Products Company, and, under Simon's supervision, expanded its product line to include numerous other fruit and vegetable products. The company was eventually sold by Simon to Hunt's Foods, after which Simon retired in 1969. He spent his later years serving in philanthropic and non-profit roles, acting as a regent on the boards of the University of California and Reed College, as well as the Los Angeles Music Center, the California School of Professional Psychology, and the Institute for Advanced Study. Simon amassed a significant art collection that is housed in the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California. After his death in 1993 Simon's second wife, actress Jennifer Jones, remained an emeritus director of the Museum until her death in 2009. Early life Simon was born in Portland, Oregon to a Jewish family, the eldest child of Myer and Lillian Simon (née Gluckman). He had two younger sisters, Evelyn and Marcia. Simon's San Francisco-born father was raised in Portland, where he eventually worked as a businessman operating his own wholesale goods store, Simon Sells For Less; Simon's mother, a native of Chicago, was raised primarily in Sacramento, California. In his youth, Simon's parents purchased a cottage in Seaside, Oregon, where he spent a significant amount of his childhood. His mother died in Seaside when Simon was fourteen of an acute digestive disorder related to type 1 diabetes. Following his mother's death, Simon's father lost the majority of his money during the Great Depression, which harshly impacted his goods store. When he was sixteen, Simon relocated with his father and siblings to San Francisco, where they moved into his aunt and uncle's home. There, Simon attended Lowell High School, graduating in 1923. In 1925, at his