[29][30] From 1918 to 1923, Fred attended Richmond Hill High School in Queens,[31] while working as a caddy, curb whitewasher, delivery boy, and newspaper hawker.

Interested in becoming a builder, Fred put up a garage for a neighbor and took night classes in carpentry and reading blueprints; he reputedly studied plumbing, masonry, and electrical wiring via correspondence courses,[32] although other biographical sources limit his construction education to the period after high school when he was also working in the field.

[44] Investigative journalist Wayne Barrett posits that Trump exaggerated the length of his career in 1934 while arguing in federal court why he should deserve a dissolved company's mortgage servicer.

Trump planned to build 700 houses there, which would have been both his and the state FHA office's biggest project to date, but following the attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States's declaration of war on Japan, the project was dissolved in favor of defense housing at the East Coast's naval nexus, Hampton Roads's Norfolk, Virginia, where Trump was already working on an apartment complex.

[54] Congress added a provision to the National Housing Act generating mortgage insurance for defense apartments, through which Trump was allowed to own the properties he built for war workers.

[54] He also built barracks and garden apartments for U.S. Navy personnel near major shipyards in Norfolk and Newport News, Virginia, as well as Chester, Pennsylvania.

From 1947 to 1949, he built Shore Haven in Bensonhurst, which included 32 six-story buildings and a shopping center, covering some 30 acres (12 hectares) and procuring him $9 million in FHA funding.

[74] He built more than 27,000 low-income apartments and row houses in the New York area altogether, including Brooklyn (in Coney Island, Bensonhurst, Sheepshead Bay, Flatbush, and Brighton Beach) and Queens (in Flushing and Jamaica Estates).

[4] On July 1, 1965, Trump purchased Coney Island's recently closed Steeplechase Park for $2.3 million, intending to build luxury apartments.

[83][84] He reportedly sold bricks to ceremony guests to smash the remaining glass panels, which included an iconic representation of the park's mascot, the "Funny Face".

[89][90][91] In July 2016, the Coney Island History Project held a special exhibit for the "50th Anniversary of Fred Trump's Demolition of Steeplechase Pavilion".

[109][l] According to Trump construction vice president Barbara Res, Fred seated business guests in an off-balance chair and advised Donald to arrange his office so that adversaries could be forced to face the sun.

[97][121] In 1975, tenants of two of Trump's Norfolk tower complexes held a monthlong rent strike due to rodent and insect infestations, as well as problems with water heating, air conditioning, and elevator service.

[o] After a court date and a series of phone calls with Trump, he was invited to the property to meet with county officials in September 1976 and arrested on site.

In 1998, a year before Fred's death, while he was suffering from Alzheimer's disease and his son Robert had power of attorney, the notes were transferred to limited liability companies connected to Trump Organization subsidiaries.

[130] The Washington Post wrote that this "was designed to protect Donald Trump's inheritance from efforts to seize it by creditors and Ivana", whom he divorced that month.

[109] Trump finally fell ill with pneumonia and was admitted to Long Island Jewish Medical Center (LIJMC) for a few weeks, where he died at age 93 on June 25, 1999.

[130][135][138] In December 2003, it was reported that Trump's four surviving children would sell the apartments they acquired in 1997 to an investment group led by Rubin Schron, priced at $600 million;[152] the sale occurred in May 2004.

The 2016 leak of Donald Trump's tax information from 2005, which showed an income of $153 million, prompted The New York Times to investigate, leading to the 2018 exposé.

[109] According to New York State law, individuals can be prosecuted on the basis of intentional tax evasion if a fraudulent return form can be produced as evidence; the statute of limitations does not apply in such cases.

[164] Trump met his future wife, Mary Anne MacLeod, an immigrant from Tong, Lewis, Scotland, at a dance party in the early to mid-1930s.

[175][176] Partly due to the prominence of Jews in New York, he supported Jewish causes, with contributions (apparently starting in 1941 two weeks after the U.S. entered the war) convincing some he practiced Judaism.

[192][193][59] Trump was a teetotaler[v] and an authoritarian parent, imposing strict table manners and curfews, as well as forbidding cursing, lipstick, and snacking between meals.

"[204] Also in the 1950s, Fred became an admirer of Protestant minister Norman Vincent Peale, the author of The Power of Positive Thinking (1952), due to his businesslike approach to life and Christianity.

[221] Jerome Tuccille's 1985 biography of Donald Trump repeats Fred's fabrication that he was born in New Jersey and erroneously states that his middle name was Charles (not Christ).

[16][x] In his 1993 biography of Donald Trump, Harry Hurt III asserts that Fred was a philanderer, with his alleged Floridian affairs leading him to be known as the "King of Miami Beach".

[224][225] According to Hurt, after Donald decided to accompany Ivana to her father's funeral in Czechoslovakia (amid their pending divorce), Fred told a longtime secretary and personal confidant, "I hope their plane crashes.

[13] In May 2016, in an article about Donald Trump's pseudonyms, Fortune reported that his father had used the false name "Mr. Green" to anonymously inquire about property values.

[229] In October 2016, in response to numerous Freedom of Information Act requests, the FBI released a small file it had on Fred; it includes a 1986 news article concerning political donations by Trump Management, an amply redacted 1991 memo implying the bureau received intel regarding ties to organized crime, and a background report on Trump Construction Corp.[4] In 2018, writing for New York magazine in response to the New York Times exposé, Jonathan Chait opined that many of Fred's contributions to Donald were by definition criminal in nature.

[236] In late 2016, Nell Scovell wrote about an unsuccessful attempt to visit Trump's grave in Esquire, noting that an online photograph implied it to be surprisingly modest.