Ken Hendricks, 66, a high school dropout who became a billionaire roofing company executive and one of the nation's richest people, died Friday after falling through a roof under construction at his home in Rock, Wis.
Hendricks, who was the 91st richest man in the United States with a net worth of $3.5 billion in September, according to Forbes magazine.
He grew up working side-by-side with his father, a Janesville, Wis., roofer. He started his own roofing business at age 21.
Tired of dealing with multiple suppliers, he and his wife, Diane, started a national supply chain in 1982. ABC Supply Co. -- based in Beloit, Wis., about 60 miles southwest of Milwaukee -- has 6,000 employees in 390 locations nationwide. It does about $3 billion in business a year.
Inc. magazine named Hendericks its 2006 Entrepreneur of the Year. Editor Jane Berentson described him as "a scrappy, Midwestern dirt-under-the-fingernails type of guy."
Hendricks was unfazed by his wealth. "It doesn't make any difference to me: I can't spend it," he said in an interview with Inc. magazine in September 2006. "I'd have to sell the company, and I'll sell the company over my dead body."
J. Russell Coffey, 109, the oldest known surviving U.S. veteran of World War I, died Thursday in North Baltimore, Ohio. The retired teacher was one of only three remaining U.S. veterans from the "war to end all wars." Coffey never saw combat because he was still in basic training when the war ended. The other two are Frank Buckles, 106, of Charles Town, W.Va., and Harry Richard Landis, 108, of Sun City Center, Fla., according to the Veterans Affairs Department.
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