Charles Avnet

Origins and early life

Charles Avnet was born into a Jewish family in Russia in 1888 and emigrated to the United States, where he built his life and his business in New York.

Work and career

In 1921, at thirty-three, he began buying surplus radio parts and selling them from a small store on Radio Row in lower Manhattan, just as the first component shops were opening there, and sold about $85,000 worth of parts in his first year. When the Great Depression struck in October 1929 and left him in debt, he moved from retail to wholesale and paid off everything he owed. During the Second World War, with the building of home radios banned, he turned to military orders and in 1944 opened a plant on North Moore Street to assemble antennas for the armed forces, while his son Lester persuaded him that the future lay in electrical connectors.

In 1955 Charles and his sons Lester and Robert incorporated the business as Avnet Electronic Supply Company, with Charles as vice president and treasurer, and the company went public at the end of that decade. The company that bears his name, now based in Tempe, Arizona, grew into a global distributor of electronic components, standing between the makers of chips and the manufacturers who build them into finished products.

He was an observant Jew: Congregation Beth Sholom of Long Beach and Lido, where he served as a board member and treasurer, remembered his deep love of Torah and the fervour with which he stood at the Torah each Sabbath and festival.

Recognition

He was also one of the founders, a benefactor and long-time chairman of the board of the Mesivta of Long Beach, a yeshiva, and for many years honorary chairman of the Long Beach division of the UJA-Federation Joint Campaign. He died in December 1979, survived by his wife Celia, and was mourned at Beth Sholom; among his grandchildren is the film director Jon Avnet.