Leslie Gonda, a Hungarian Jew who escaped the Nazis under an assumed identity and went on to co-found an aircraft leasing firm with Steven Udvar-Hazy and then become a philanthropist, died March 16 at age 98, his family announced in an obituary notice.
According to the notice posted in the Los Angeles Times, Gonda was born Laslo Goldschmied in a Hungarian farming village in 1919. During World War II, the Nazis arrested him in Budapest and he spent two years in a labor camp. To escape, he chose a new name, Leslie Gonda, and used typewriters in a military office to forge new identity papers. He fled with his fiancé Susan to Switzerland in 1945; after the war, the married couple emigrated to Venezuela, then to Canada and finally to Los Angeles in 1963.
Several years later, Gonda joined his son, Louis, and fellow Hungarian emigre, Udvar-Hazy, to co-found International Lease Finance Corp., the first aircraft leasing company. The obituary describes Gonda as an “airplane peddler” and ILFC as a company that “transformed the global commercial airline industry as we know it.”
In 1990, insurance giant AIG bought ILFC; Gonda was granted 19.4 million shares of AIG as part of the transaction. That vaulted Gonda onto the Business Journal’s list of Wealthiest Angelenos in the mid-1990s; by 2007, the Business Journal estimated his net worth at $1.4 billion. The Gondas soon turned their attention to philanthropy, supporting medical institutions at UCLA, the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and Bar-Ilan University in Israel.
But Gonda took a huge financial hit when AIG collapsed in late 2008, making its shares almost worthless. That knocked him off the Business Journal’s list.
According to the obituary, Gonda continued to go to work each day, arriving at his desk by 7 a.m., until very shortly before his death.
Gonda’s wife Susan died in 2009. He is survived by son Louis, two daughters, six grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
No information on funeral services was provided in the obituary notice.
Economy, education, energy and transportation reporter Howard Fine can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @howardafine.
