With
the Tuesday death of Marguerite "Wita" Jones Harbert, Alabama lost its wealthiest resident and only billionaire, according to
the 2014 Forbes list of people with billions of dollars to their names. The longtime Mountain Brook resident's passing at the age of 91 raises questions about who succeeds her as the richest person in the state, a messy quandary that may never have had as clear an answer as Forbes has long led many to believe.
In fact, there are several potential billionaire Alabama residents, and because details about their private finances are not publicly available, it is next to impossible to verify just how much money they have.
But it is highly likely that the Harberts will no longer be able to claim that the richest living Alabamian is a member of their privileged family tree. Harbert is survived by three children, six grandchildren and three great-granddaughters, "plus many loving nieces and nephews,"
her obituary in the Birmingham News and AL.com reads. But just who will be the benefactor of her fortune remains unknown beyond her inner circle, as her will is not yet available for public perusal at Jefferson County Probate Court.
A Birmingham native, Harbert was the lone billionaire in Alabama, Forbes claimed last year. A
2014 report on the world's super-rich by the wealth research firm Wealth-X listed her fortune at $1.8 billion.
The heiress of Birmingham-based Harbert Corporation magnate John Murdoch Harbert III, her husband of 43 years who died in 1995, Harbert left her brood a massive inheritance. If it were split equally between her three children, they would walk away with a cool $600 million each before taxes and fees.
A nine-digit bank account would keep anyone sitting pretty for generations, but it doesn't automatically guarantee a claim to the title of richest Alabamian.
In fact, one five-member clan has been identified as wealthy enough that any one -- or all -- of them could be in possession of significantly more than $600 million each.
Named by Forbes as
the 66th richest family in America, the Stephenses of Birmingham reportedly had a net worth of $4 billion as of last year. The Stephens fortune was amassed under the leadership of Elton Bryson Stephens, Sr., who in 1944 famously spent just $5,000 to embark on a business venture that would eventually become the massively successful company EBSCO Industries, which reportedly now does $2.4 billion in sales and employs nearly 6,000 people.
The family, which inherited Stephens's wealth after his death in 2005, has never before discussed its finances with the media. But Stephens's son, current EBSCO board chairman James T. Stephens, told AL.com in an email statement Friday that the Forbes figure was "grossly overstated," though Forbes has not amended or withdrawn its report.
"Virtually all of our personal assets are in our ownership of EBSCO of which we are proud and to which we are fully committed," the statement said. "Neither EBSCO or our family is worth anywhere near Forbes' estimate. We have no idea how Forbes could have so wrongly made this estimate. The editor has been contacted for making a correction to their data."
Elton Stephens, Sr.'s wife, Alys Robinson Stephens, passed away in 1996, leaving the couple's four children, Elton B. Stephens, Jr., James T. Stephens, Jane S. Comer and Dell S. Brooke, as the only remaining members of his nuclear family.
According to his will -- dated April 12, 1993, and filed with the probate court shortly after his death on Feb. 5, 2005 -- the Stephens patriarch named his four children as his heirs. He left nearly all of his sizeable fortune and much of his property to a foundation bearing his name, to be overseen by his children. He also left one of his grandsons a few hundred thousand dollars' worth of stock.
Though the Stephens family's denying the $4 billion figure leaves major questions unanswered, the Stephenses are clearly some of the wealthiest people in the state, and they should be on any shortlist of potential heirs to Harbert's title.
If the Stephens name rings a bell for many Birmingham residents, it's probably due to the visible results of the philanthropic work the family has done over the decades. The Red Mountain Expressway, Alys Stephens Performing Arts Center, and the 99,500-square-foot Elton B. Stephens Science Center at Birmingham-Southern College were all named in honor of the family's charitable work and donations.
Another potential candidate for the title of richest Alabama resident is Garry Neil Drummond, one of seven original heirs to the Drummond Co. fortune left behind by Heman Drummond when he died in 1956. Garry Drummond, the controversial current CEO of Drummond and one of only two Drummond heirs still living as of July 2013, reportedly owned all of the capital stock in the massive coal company by then,
Bloomberg reported, citing a report by business research outfit Dun & Bradstreet Corp. "If that's correct, Garry Neil is a billionaire," Bloomberg wrote.
Heman Drummond first worked in a mine himself before cobbling together several hundred dollars and launching his own company in 1935. That company now sells coal in over 30 countries and had $621 million in sales last year,
according to Hoover's.
If Garry Drummond truly is a billionaire, he would likely be the richest Alabamian, but he has not been identified as such by Forbes, and his personal finances, like those of other Alabama residents, are not available to the public.
Another Alabamian who has not been identified as a billionaire by Forbes -- long considered the leading authority on the topic -- is George Barber. In Birmingham his name is perhaps most commonly associated with Barber Motor Sports Park and Museum, home to the world's largest collection of motorcycles, to which he has contributed tens of millions of dollars.
But the former racecar driver is also undoubtedly one of the richest residents of Alabama, having succeeded his father at the helm of Barber's Dairy. In 1998, Barber
sold the dairy company -- which had sales of more than $200 million per year at the time -- to Dean Foods Company, and he has since turned his focus to the motorcycle museum and other pursuits. For years he has been referred to as a billionaire in news articles and other forums, but any definitive proof of the extent of high his net worth remains elusive.
So now that Harbert has passed away, there is no clear heir to the title of wealthiest Alabama resident. In fact, it has never actually been clear whether Harbert truly was the richest Alabamian, let alone the state's only billionaire.
Because private wealth is not a matter of public record, there's no telling if a sleeper billionaire is holed up somewhere in a rural Alabama cabin, or perhaps even sitting at the helm of one of the state's other successful companies. Determining the richest person in the state is simply not an exact science.
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