In 2012, Benson purchased professional basketball’s New Orleans-based team, then called the Hornets, for about $338 million from the National Basketball Association, which had taken temporary custodianship of the team in 2010. The team adopted the name Pelicans in 2013, after Louisiana’s state bird, the Brown Pelican.
“During his tenure, he hosted two highly successful All-Star games, rebranded the franchise and installed a first-class organization,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said in a statement. “He was a dear friend to me and so many others in the sports world, and the loss of his authentic and unique presence will leave an enormous void.”
Thomas Milton Benson Jr. was born on July 12, 1927, in New Orleans to Thomas and Carmelite Benson and raised near the city’s historic French Quarter.
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He cut short his studies at Loyola University New Orleans to join the U.S. Navy during World War II, serving on the USS South Dakota, a battleship, during preparations for an invasion of Japan that never came to pass. After the war, he went to work. Loyola gave him an honorary degree in 1987.
At 19, he joined the accounting division of Cathey Chevrolet in New Orleans. After eight years of work, he was asked to take over an ailing dealership in San Antonio, according to a 1987 Los Angeles Times profile. He became the owner of that dealership, which he called Tom Benson Chevrolet. Others followed.
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In 1966 he borrowed $1 million to buy 25 acres in north San Antonio, betting correctly that it was next in line for a spurt of commercial growth.
Benson’s first wife, the former Shirley Landry, and second wife, the former Grace Trudeau, died. In 2004 he married the former Gayle Marie LaJaunie Bird.
Benson’s 2015 announcement that he would leave his estate, including his sports teams, to wife Gayle opened a prolonged court battle with his original intended successors -- his daughter, Renee Benson, and her two children. Eventually the sides settled, with Benson giving most of his business and real estate interests, but not the sports franchises, to his daughter and grandchildren, according a 2017 Times-Picayune article.
Two other children of Benson predeceased him.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.