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| Cigar Aficionado Hall of Fame Dinner | May 21, 1997 - New York City |
1997 Hall of Fame HONOREES
Edgar M. Cullman, 79, graduated from Yale University in 1940. Except for a stint in the U.S. Treasury Department during the Second World War, he's been in the tobacco business ever since. Cullman spent the late '40s and '50s learning his family's tobacco farming and investment banking business, and in 1961 he and a group of investors bought General Cigar Co. Macanudo and Partagas were launched in the '70s and have grown steadily since. In 1989, Cullman received a Commander of Distinction award from the Jamaican government. Cullman and his son Edgar Jr. took General Cigar public in February, and the company continues to expand.
Carlos Fuente Sr., 62, was 22 when he bought his father's Tampa, Florida, cigar business in 1957. The factory flourished in the '60s, but the inflationary '70s forced him and his son, Carlos Jr., to move production to Nicaragua. After the Sandinista revolutionaries burned that factory in 1878, Fuente went to Honduras. That factory also burned down, and in 1980 Fuente opened a factory in Santiago, Dominican Republic. He's been there since, and Arturo Fuente cigars have become one of the most sought-after brands in the United States.
Frank Llaneza, 77, began working for Villazon & Co. (which his father founded in 1920) in 1936, and assumed leadership of the company in 1953. Forced to innovate after the U.S. embargo was imposed on Cuba in the early 1960s, he developed new tobacco blends using Central and South American leaf. In 1963, with the help of Angel Oliva Sr., he founded the Honduras American Tobacco Co. Presently, he is president of Villazon and serves on the boards of the Cigar Association of America and Cigar Manufacturers Association.
After graduation from Case Western Reserve University and four years in the Air Force, Stanford Newman rejoined his father's M & N Cigar Manufacturers Inc. (now called J.C. Newman Cigar Co.) in 1946. He assumed leadership of the company in 1958. That same year, the company bought the Cuesta-Rey brand, which would become its flagship cigar. In the 1980s, he struck a deal with the Fuente family to distribute their Arturo Fuente line. Most recently, Newman, 80, introduced a line of Diamond Crown cigars and humidors with the help of his sons Eric and Robert.
In his teens and early twenties, Zino Davidoff worked the tobacco fields of South America and Cuba. He founded his first shop in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1929. The "Chateau" series of Hoyo de Monterrey cigars, which Davidoff launched in 1947, led to the creation of the Davidoff brand in 1969. In 1970, Davidoff sold his store brand to a Swiss importer, Oettinger Imex A.G., but continued to develop the Davidoff brand and leverage its prestige into other luxury products such as fragrance and Cognac. Davidoff died in 1994.
Angel Oliva Sr. emigrated from Cuba to Tampa in 1925, and nine years later founded the Oliva Tobacco Co. In the 1960s, he cultivated land for tobacco growth in the United States and Central America. In 1963, he received a Chamber of Commerce Service Award for expanding the boundaries of the tobacco market. Oliva died in 1996, at 89. Today his company provides the tobacco for Arturo Fuente, Punch and La Gloria Cubana cigars, among others.
Illustrations by Harry Aung
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