Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Dead Page: Rockwell's Boy Scout-- Benihana Chain Founder

ARTHUR ROBERT "BOB" HAMILTON

Died July 28th at age 82. He was the model for Norman Rockwell's Boy Scout paintings during WW II. He became an Eagle Scout at age 15. In Rockwell's 1944 painting, he was the teenager giving the Boy Scout Salute in "We, Too Have a Job to Do" urging the collection of rubber and growing victory gardens.



HIROAKI AOHI "ROCKY"

October 9, 1938- July 10, 2008

A former Japanese wrestler who founded the popular Benihana chain of Japanese steakhouses. He was also a thrill-seeker, offshore power boat racer, and inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in 1995.

He was born in Japan and moved to the US where he worked seven days a week on an ice cream truck he rented. He got an associate degree in restaurant management at NY City Community College.

In 1964 he used $10,000 that he save from his ice cream business and got his father to co invest in the first Benihana, a four-table place on West 56th Street.

Benihana is taken from the Japanese word for a safflower, suggested by his father who had seen one while walking through the bombed ruins of Tokyo at the end of WW II and came across a single safflower growing in the rubble.

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