David Murdock, billionaire businessman who twice reshaped NC town, dies at 102

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a day ago

David Murdock, the billionaire businessman who reinvigorated the iconic Dole Food fruit brand, helped rebuild Kannapolis after the collapse of former textile giant Pillowtex, once owned a Hawaiian island and hoped to live to 125, has died. He was 102.
A high school dropout, Murdock made his fortune through a hardscrabble ladder of ever-growing business ventures. He started with a diner, which he turned into a homebuilding business in Arizona, which he turned into an office-building business, which he used to buy stakes in major corporations, which would turn him into a billionaire.
But for all his business success, late in life Murdock became intensely interested in health and wellness. In the 2000s, he financed the creation of the North Carolina Research Campus in Kannapolis to study agriculture and wellness in support of this mission.
The project, as well as other investments and philanthropy he made in the town, contributed to its recovery from the collapse of its textile industry, which he also had been a part of.
Murdock died Monday, Dole Food stated on LinkedIn, stating: 'David H. Murdock stood apart — a singular force in American business — a self-made billionaire, visionary entrepreneur, and enduring advocate for health, longevity, and innovation.
'As our guiding star from 1985 to 2020, Mr. Murdock transformed the global produce landscape through bold investments, science-driven leadership, and an unwavering belief in the power of nutrition,' Dole Food said.
The city of Kannapolis shared the following statement Wednesday with The Charlotte Observer:
'Mr. Murdock's investment in the North Carolina Research Campus was pivotal to the city's revitalization. The research, led by Duke, UNC-CH, UNCC, ASU, NC A&T, NC Central, NCSU, and UNCG, in the fields of health, nutrition, exercise continues to make a significant difference both in North Carolina and across the United States.
'Murdock's legacy of having eight universities in one location focused on these targeted scientific fields has been important in the understanding of how foods and exercise impact everyone.'
The X account called How many days until David H Murdock 125th birthday on Wednesday, created in April to countdown the days until he turned 125, simply posted 'RIP.'
Ventura County Supervisor Jeff Gorell in California said on X that Dole's philanthropy and health initiatives positively touched thousands of people. 'David helped me launch my local political career in 2004. His impact on Ventura County and the world will be forever felt.'
Murdock was listed at No. 979 on Forbes' 2025 World's Billionaires List with a net worth of $3.7 billion.
Born in Kansas City, Murdock grew up in Wayne, Ohio. He dropped out of high school at 14. After serving in the Army, he ended up homeless in Detroit at the age of 22, according to a 2011 profile of Murdock in the New York Times Magazine.
A fellow veteran offered to help, and Murdock would use that assistance to buy a diner that he hung out at, which he flipped for a profit, bought a car and drove out west. In Phoenix, Murdock built a business building cheap homes for Americans moving west after World War II.
The business eventually became a sprawling home and office building empire across the country, the funds of which Murdock used to buy up stakes in major U.S. firms.
Murdock first appeared in the Charlotte area in the 1980s, when he bought Cannon Mills in Kannapolis. He quickly turned around and resold it to an entity that would become Pillowtex, but held on to a house on Kannapolis Lake called Pity's Sake Lodge.
Ever since, he's had a close association with Kannapolis, investing millions in the town.
In 1985, Murdock purchased Castle & Cooke, the colonial Hawaiian company that owned Dole, the fruit company which had fallen on hard times.
He turned Dole around, which also coincided with a new personal obsession with living long life through a healthy diet.
The death of his wife Gabriele from cancer in 1985 was the spark: 'If I had known what I know today,' about wellness, he said to the New York Times Magazine, 'I could have saved my wife's life. And I think I could have saved my mother's life too.'
In turning around one of the world's biggest fruit and vegetable companies, Murdock began a parallel mission to finance research into long life through those same fruits and vegetables.
Murdock once stopped by a fast-food restaurant, the type of place whose food he abhorred, the (Raleigh) News & Observer reported. He told people there: 'I eat only fruits and vegetables, nuts. ... I'm 91 years old, and I'm as healthy as any one of you there. That should be a good example of proper eating: fruits and vegetables.'
That mission to tout healthy living ultimately would be conducted in a place that by the 2000s had grown to know Murdock well: Kannapolis.
After Pillowtex collapsed, Murdock bought the abandoned mill site in Cabarrus County that he once owned at auction for $6.4 million.
On it, he spent $500 million of his own money to build the North Carolina Research Campus, a center of scientific research looking into plants and wellness. Couldn't hurt the owner of a produce company, either.
He brought academics from across the state and country to the former mill site, which he turned into an opulent set of mock neo-Classical buildings. It helped diversify the economy of Kannapolis, and spurred on other development in the downtown area.
Twenty years ago, when Murdock first had designs to reinvigorate Kannapolis with his research campus, he invited a Charlotte Observer reporter to his Kannapolis mansion on Kannapolis Lake for a rare interview. The home was called Pity's Sake Lodge.
When asked why he chose Kannapolis as the site for his ambitious dreams of a research campus centered on health and nutrition, Murdock replied, 'You can't live in an area, if you have any kind of a heart and soul, and not feel you want to end up adding something to that area.'
He later added, 'I've tried to build the city up. I like creativity. That's the foundation of my entire business world, creating things.'
Murdock called Kannapolis his second home, and the project he was about to publicly unveil 'the love of my life.'
While sharing his vision, he also mixed a veggie smoothie that he insisted the Observer's reporter and reporter drink.
Murdock professed not to know his total wealth, saying he only worried about having enough in his wallet on trips, and keeping quarters in his car's ashtray to feed parking meters. Around Kannapolis at the time, in 2005, he drove himself around town in a 1982 burgundy Cadillac.
In public and private, he typically appeared in crisp, dark suits with monogrammed cuff links. And even his closest, long-time associates called him 'Mr. Murdock.'
Murdock remained involved in even the most minute detail of his businesses, from helping the caretaker at Pity's Sake Lodge with a sheep struggling to give birth to deciding which flowers to plant at his developments.
'They sometimes call me a dictator, you know, but..., ' he said with a smile and a shrug.
Murdock said he travels more than 200,000 miles a year, which enough to circle the globe eight times. And he's a self-described 'nut for coffee' who can down a dozen cups a day.
Associates said he also occasionally would offer up a hymn or showtunes.
Oh and that smoothie? It was a little heavy on the celery, but still fairly drinkable.
Near the end of his life, he shrunk his empire even as his ambitions for life stayed grand.
After nearly four decades overseeing Dole, he relinquished his leadership in the company when it merged with Irish firm Total Produce in 2021 to create Dole plc. That combined company is headquartered in Dublin, and has its U.S. headquarters in Charlotte.
Once the owner of much of the Hawaiian island of Lanai, Murdock sold that, too. In 2012, he sold it to fellow billionaire Larry Ellison for $300 million.
Murdock stepped back from his signature day-to-day involvement in the Kannapolis research campus in the 2010s as well.
In September 2023, Forbes estimated his fortune at $2.3 billion. But in 2024, Murdock's wealth shot up to $3.4 billion, according to the annual Forbes list of the world's richest people, making for a 48% rise. Murdock ranked No. 949 on the list of billionaires in April 2024.
A man who once told a magazine in the 1980s that 'All my life I've had one desire — to be No. 1,' turned into one who told the Observer iduring that 2005 visit to his home that 'I'm not a money-hungry man. I guess I satisfied that hunger quite a few years ago. My desire is to do things that are good for mankind.'
Former Observer reporters Hannah Lang and Austin Weinstein, and Observer archives, contributed to this report.