About Richard Mellon Scaife
Richard Mellon Scaife (; July 3, 1932 – July 4, 2014) was an American billionaire, a principal heir to the Mellon banking, oil, and aluminum fortune, and the owner and publisher of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. In 2005, Scaife was number 238 on the Forbes 400, with a personal fortune of $1.2 billion. By 2013, Scaife had dropped to number 371 on the listing, with a personal fortune of $1.4 billion. During his life, Scaife was known for his financial support of conservative public policy organizations over the past four decades. He provided support for conservative and libertarian causes in the United States, mostly through the private, nonprofit foundations he controlled: the Sarah Scaife Foundation, Carthage Foundation, and Allegheny Foundation, and until 2001, the Scaife Family Foundation, now controlled by son David. == Early life == Scaife was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Alan Magee Scaife, the head of an affluent Pittsburgh family, and Sarah Cordelia Mellon, who was a member of the influential Mellon family, one of the most powerful families in the country. Sarah was the niece of former United States Secretary of the Treasury Andrew W. Mellon. She and her brother, financier R.K. Mellon, were heirs to the Mellon fortune that included Mellon Bank and major stakes in Gulf Oil and Alcoa aluminum. Scaife attended high school at Deerfield Academy in Deerfield, Massachusetts where he almost didn't graduate after getting caught drinking off campus at the age of 14. He was expelled from Yale University in the aftermath of a drunken party in which he launched an empty beer keg down a flight of stairs, injuring a classmate.
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