R. J. Reynolds Jr.

Reynolds was an American businessman, politician, activist and philanthropist.

In 1934, he acquired Sapelo Island on the Atlantic coast of Georgia[4] and, following the death of Tillinghast L'Hommedieu Huston in 1938, the Butler Island Plantation[5]

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.[6][7] 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.[8][9]

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 (having the 125 ton ketch Aries built for him in 1952[10]), pilot, aviator, and philanthropist.[11]

Reynolds had four sons with his first wife, socialite Elizabeth McCaw Dillard: Richard Joshua Reynolds III (1933–1994), John Dillard Reynolds (1935–1990), Zachary Taylor Reynolds (1938–1979),[12][13][14] and William Neal Reynolds (1940–2009). 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 (1947–2004).[1] His third marriage was to Muriel Marston Greenough, the younger sister of Anthony Heselton Marston, who was a major Canadian industrialist.[15] His first three marriages ended in divorce. His fourth marriage, in 1961, was to Dr. Annemarie Schmitt, a psychiatrist.[15]

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

• Arca Foundation

• Z. Smith Reynolds Airport
• Winston-Salem Journal Series Death at Reynolda – Z. Smith Reynolds
• The Z Smith Reynolds Foundation
• Richard J. Reynolds High School
• R. J. Reynolds Memorial Auditorium