Charles Rebozo

Charles Gregory "Bebe" (pronounced ) Rebozo (November 17, 1912 – May 8, 1998) was an American Florida-based banker and businessman who was a close friend and confidant of President Richard Nixon.

Early life

The youngest of 12 children (hence, the nickname "Bebe" meaning "Baby" in Spanish) of Cuban immigrants, Matias and Carmen, Rebozo owned several businesses in Florida, including a gas station and a group of laundromats, before he started his own bank, the Key Biscayne Bank & Trust, in Key Biscayne, Florida, in 1964. Rebozo regularly attended Key Biscayne Community Church, sometimes accompanied during later years by Nixon.

Friendship with Richard Nixon

Rebozo first met then-U.S. Representative Nixon in 1950 through Florida Representative George Smathers. Smathers had recommended Key Biscayne as a vacation destination to Nixon, who eventually established a residence there which was later nicknamed the "Winter White House" by journalists. While Nixon was vacationing in Key Biscayne, Smathers had Rebozo take Nixon deep sea fishing. Rebozo and Nixon then started a friendship that endured 44 years.

According to a November 27, 1975, article in The New York Times, a completed manuscript of a biography on Rebozo, which was scheduled to be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, was stolen from the home of Thomas Kiernan. In addition to Rebozo's biography, "several tape recordings of interviews and several research files, including one file containing all of Mr. Kiernan's book contracts and another containing all his royalty statements, were taken," the newspaper reported. Other news coverage at the time pointed out that the "thieves [had] ignored" jewelry and other items of value.

In 1974, Rebozo received a letter threatening his life.

Mobster Vincent Teresa admitted to laundering stolen money at Rebozo's bank.

Role in firing of NPS director George Hartzog Rebozo encouraged Richard Nixon to fire then-National Park Service director George Hartzog in retaliation for receiving "a ticket from a park ranger in Biscayne National Park for tying his boat illegally to an NPS administrative dock there." Nixon fired Hartzog in December 1972, despite attempts by Secretary of the Interior Rogers Morton to talk the president out of his decision.

Nixon opted to replace Hartzog with his office's head of travel arrangement Ron Walker, an "unqualified appointment" who openly admitted "that he did not know the difference between the National Park Service and the Boy Scouts." Former National Park Service director Jonathan B. Jarvis has credited Rebozo with indirectly bringing about an overly-politicized era of the Parks program administration that still exists to the present, wherein NPS directors are expected to resign with the election of each new president. He later married Jane Lucke, who survived him.

Death Rebozo died on May 8, 1998, of complications from a brain aneurysm.