SOUTHFIELD, Mich. (AP) -NBA commissioner David Stern and former Detroit Pistons great Isiah Thomas were among hundreds of mourners who gathered Tuesday to remember the late team owner and philanthropist William Davidson.
“Your father was so unpretentious. You truly didn’t know how powerful he was,” Rabbi Joseph Krakoff said to one of Davidson’s children during the funeral service at Congregation Shaarey Zedek in Southfield.
Davidson, who served in the Navy near the end of World War II, loved his country, Krakoff said. He relayed the story of how when Davidson found out an employees was a reservist and had been called up to serve in Iraq, Davidson invited the man and his family to his office, where he told them he would hold the man’s job open and would pay his salary while he was in Iraq.
never worried. There were no obstacles for William Davidson.”
Pistons president Tom Wilson and former player and current team executive Joe Dumars were among the pallbearers.
Davidson died Friday at his Bloomfield Hills home at the age of 86.
Entertainment, comprising The Palace of Auburn Hills and DTE Energy Music Theatre.
Occasionally spotted courtside at Pistons home games, Davidson shied away from the limelight. He granted only a handful of interviews and turned down requests for dozens more while three of his pro sports teams won league championships over an eight-month span in 2003 and 2004.
Davidson was chairman and president of Guardian Industries Corp., a major manufacturer of glass products for the construction and automotive industries and fiberglass insulation products.
He also was an honored philanthropist, giving away more than $80 million in the 1990s alone.
“He was a wonderful philanthropist and good friend and an extraordinary individual,” Stern said. “On the NBA front, he was essential to our growth over the last 35 years.”
A burial was to follow at Clover Hill Park Cemetery in Birmingham.
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