R. J. Reynolds Jr.

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

His political career included serving as treasurer of the National Democratic Party under President Roosevelt and as Mayor of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. 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, pilot, aviator, and philanthropist.[4]

In 1934, he acquired Sapelo Island on the Atlantic coast of Georgia[5] and, following the death of Tillinghast L'Hommedieu Huston in 1938, the Butler Island Plantation[6]

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),[7][8][9] 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.[10] His first three marriages ended in divorce. His fourth marriage, in 1961, was to Dr. Annemarie Schmitt, a psychiatrist.[10]

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