Memory of Kirk Kerkorian to be honored in USA with special requiem services

LA CRESCENTA, JUNE 19, ARMENPRESS. The Armenian nation mourns the loss of philanthropist and national benefactor Kirk Kerkorian, who passed away on Monday, June 15, 2015. By the ordinance of His Eminence Archbishop Moushegh Mardirossian, Prelate, requiem prayers will be offered in all Prelacy Churches in the USA on Sunday, June 21st. As Armenpress reports citing “Asbarez,” His Eminence Archbishop Mushegh Martirosyan will hold a requiem service in the Holy Trinity Church in Fresno. The Western Prelacy of the Armenian Apostolic Church of America made the following statement:

“We invite our faithful people to join us in remembering this great humanitarian and praying for the rest of his soul. May his memory remain ever blessed.”

Kirk Kerkorian, an eighth-grade dropout who traded his way to a $15-billion fortune and for a time was the richest person in Los Angeles, died at the age of 98. As Armenpress informs citing LAtimes, Kerkorian’s death was confirmed Tuesday by Anthony Mandekic, the CEO of Kerkorian’s company, Tracinda Corp. He said Kerkorian died Monday evening at his home in Beverly Hills of age-related causes."He was the most brilliant person I've ever run across, and so respectful of everyone," Mandekic said. "He gave everything he could, right to the end. We have lost such a great icon. He was truly something special."

Kerkorian took an unlikely path to tremendous wealth. He didn't invent a ubiquitous product, like software entrepreneur Bill Gates, or specialize in one industry, like entertainment czar Sumner Redstone, or patiently nurture the same holdings for decades, like investment master Warren Buffett. Instead, Kerkorian bought and built and sold and bought again. He bought MGM Studios three times, always to his benefit, if not the studio's.He accumulated large chunks of Chrysler Corp. when the automaker was considered all but defunct in the early 1980s, selling as it recovered. He did the same with a beleaguered General Motors in 2005, less successfully but still profitably. Kerkorian instinctively sensed the promise of Las Vegas on his first visits immediately after World War II, when it was an isolated desert town with only one luxury hotel, mobster Bugsy Siegel's Flamingo. He eventuallyacquired many of its most famous properties, including the Bellagio, the Mirage and the MGM Grand.

“I've had more people tell me, did you envision this or that?” Kerkorian told The Times in a rare interviewin 2005. “I just lucked into things. I used to think that if I made $50,000, I'd be the happiest guy in the world.”

He openedthe first MGM Grand in Las Vegas in the 1970s, the world'slargest resort hotel at the time, and years later, he built another MGM Grand, then also the world's largest.Jim Murren, chief executive of MGM Resorts International, said in a statement Tuesday that the company was "honoring the memory of a great man, a great business leader, a great community leader and an innovator."

Kerkorianalways tried to act with a minimum of flamboyance. He never would have named a hotel after himself, the way his Las Vegas rival Steve Wynn did.When he wasn't making deals, his great joys were playing tennis with friends, and going with the masses to the movies at local theaters in Century City and Westwood.

Kerkorian rose from hard-scrabble poverty to comfort to extreme wealth, powered by little more than energy and guts. He might have called himself lucky, but like most successful entrepreneurs, he made his own way. Kerkor Kerkorian, later Americanized to “Kirk,” was born in Fresno on June 6, 1917. He was the fourth and last child of immigrants from Armenia. The boy's formal education ended in the eighth grade at a school for delinquent kids at 6th and Main streets in downtown Los Angeles. Despite all his achievements and wealth, this bothered him until the end of his life.