Moving Metal

FLORENCE NEILAN: NEVER FINISHED

F lorence Almeta Gimbel Neilan was born in Los Angeles in 1914. She remained with her mother after her parents divorced, but May Neilan Gimbel had trouble making ends meet, so Florence endured living with relatives and seldom saw her brother Bill, who had stayed with their father. In 1928, May Gimbel died and Florence moved in with her uncle Thomas Neilan and his wife Mae, even- tually taking their last name as her own. In the late 1930s she started her own life as a stenographer in the Los Angeles area. In 1945, Florence joined the U.S. Foreign Service. She reported to Washington, D.C., for training on April 12, the day that Franklin Roosevelt died. Her job included issuing visas, and she spent most of her time abroad in Chile, Algeria, and Tunisia. Florence left the Foreign Service in 1951 after her Uncle Tom’s health began declining and settled down back in Los Angeles. According to family members, Florence was an exceptionally independent woman and happy to hold a job in office or secretarial work. But she was old fashioned in the sense that she generally deferred to men in business and financial management matters.  In 1961, she inherited a large portion of Reliance stock and was able to support herself on the dividends.  Shaped by an impoverished childhood, Florence counted her pennies and rented the same apartment for years, despite becoming ever wealthier as Reliance’s largest stockholder. Tom Gimbel knew his thrifty aunt well. “Florence would always tell you like she saw it,” he recalled. “She was always fun and people never suspected that she was rich.” To occupy her time, she flew or drove to various places to visit longtime friends. Florence was also a member of multiple bridge groups and played regularly each week. Gimbel used to ask her what she spent her

days doing and she invariably answered, “I don’t know, but it is never finished.”   Finally, even Florence Neilan realized that things were nearly finished. In 2006 she transferred her 8.4 million shares of Reliance stock to the newly created Florence A. Neilan Trust, with her nephew Tom Gimbel as trustee. She died on May 16, 2009, at age 94.

Tom and Florence Neilan during the 1930s

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