An octogenarian billionaire scion of one of America’s wealthiest families has emerged as a major figure backing Donald Trump’s 2024 election campaign.
With a $50m (£39.5m) donation made on 31 May, 81-year-old Timothy Mellon has become the largest donor to the former president so far during this electoral cycle.
Mr Mellon, the heir to the Pittsburgh-based Mellon banking family, also has been the biggest donor to independent candidate Robert F Kennedy’s campaign.
The BBC has contacted Mr Mellon for comment about his political donations.
Known as a recluse, the Wyoming-based Mr Mellon avoids the spotlight and social circles of other US billionaires.
According to Forbes magazine, Mr Mellon is a descendant of Thomas Mellon, an Irish immigrant who amassed a fortune in real estate and banking after arriving in the US in 1818.
The Mellon family – which also included Mr Mellon’s grandfather Andrew, a former US treasury secretary – is today worth over $14bn (£11bn). Forbes estimates that that the Mellons are the 34th richest family in the US.
Born in 1942, Mr Mellon attended Yale University where he studied city planning. His father was a major donor at the school and provided the funding to establish the Yale Center for British Art – the largest collection of British art outside the United Kingdom.
In 1981, Mr Mellon formed Guilford Transportation Industries, a holding company named after his hometown of Guilford, Connecticut. It quickly bought up three major railways that stretched from Canada, through New England and into the mid-Atlantic region of the US.
The firm, which had maintained its chief focus on railroads, pivoted in 1998 when it bought the brand of the famed – but long bankrupt – Pan American World Airways.
Perhaps influencing the purchase, Mr Mellon had developed a love for flying around this time – logging more than 11,500 hours in the cockpit.
“As owner of the company [Pan Am] and with the skill necessary to do the job, he became a commercial pilot and quite literally kept the American institution that is Pan Am flying,” reads a synopsis for an upcoming autobiography due to be published in 2025.
