Final Salute

Wallace Federate Forbes of Briarcliff Manor, NY, born May 16, 1928 in New York, last surviving son of Bertie Charles ‘B.C.’ Forbes, founder of Forbes Magazine. Upon the death of Mr. Forbes’ eldest brother Bruce C. Forbes in 1964, Wallace joined the magazine where he served as Vice President and Director of Forbes, and President of Forbes Investors Advisory Institute. He served alongside his elder brother, Malcolm S. Forbes, and until his departure in 1969, shared ownership with Malcolm, who died in 1990.

After leaving the company, Mr. Forbes served as president and CEO of Standard Research Consultants, formerly a subsidiary of Standard and Poor’s Corporation. He subsequently was a founder and partner-in-charge of Benchmark Valuation Consultants, which merged with KPMG Peat Marwick in 1987. Both firms specialized in the business valuation field. He has also served as a director of both public and private companies and of educational and other non-profit organizations, and authored or co-authored articles on the valuation of business enterprises and related subjects that have appeared in various business and professional publications, including Harvard Business Review, Business Horizons, Monthly Digest of Tax Articles, Management World, Family Advocate, YPO Enterprise, Chief Executive, and The Business Valuation Handbook.

In 1996, at the age of 68, he returned to Forbes to preside over the Forbes Investors Advisory Institute, remaining there until his retirement in 2016 at age 88. He referred to this as “early retirement.”

Mr. Forbes grew up in Englewood, N.J. as the youngest of B.C.’s five sons: Bruce, Duncan (who died in a car accident age 16), Malcolm, Gordon and Wallace. B.C. had emigrated nearly penniless from Aberdeenshire, Scotland, arriving at Ellis Island in 1904. He soon found success via his frank and generally first-hand chronicles on the “doers and doings” of New York’s then-booming, pre-Depression financial world. He founded the pioneering business magazine that still bears his name in 1917.

Wallace began working in the mail department at Forbes as a young teen and later graduated from the Lawrenceville School. After obtaining a degree in civil engineering from Princeton in 1949, he served five years in the Navy as a lieutenant in the Seabees, enlisting less than a year before the outbreak of the
Korean War. He was stationed in the Philippines and Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. He retained lifelong interests in both Princeton and the Seabees and regularly attended reunions.

Upon leaving the Navy, Mr. Forbes obtained his MBA from Harvard. While a student there he wed Betty Alden Goldsmith of Reading, MA, a graduate of Smith College, in 1955. The future Mrs. Wallace F. Forbes was a descendent of John Alden, who came to these shores on the Mayflower in 1620. It was while raising three children in West Newton, MA that Mr. Forbes’s eldest brother, Bruce, died in 1964 and Wallace relocated the family to Briarcliff Manor, NY, where he resided until his passing, at age 91. For several decades he was an active member of Scarborough Presbyterian Church. He and Betty Alden separated in 1978, but remained close friends after she relocated to Manhattan in 1979.

Mr. Forbes was always proud of his Scottish roots and prone to joking to family and friends that his renowned thriftiness came naturally, given his heritage. Despite smoking since entering the Navy age 21, he remained in excellent physical condition and was still driving himself to the gym daily and playing golf, weather permitting, until a few weeks before his passing. He was a devoted father and grandfather, and beloved by all who had the good fortune to interact with him. He is survived by three children, son Alden and daughter-in-law Cindy of Spokane, WA, daughter Alexandra, of Briarcliff Manor, NY, and son Bruce, of Rovaniemi, Finland; his partner of 36 years and husband since 2016, Thomas G. Lemens, four grandchildren, and former wife Betty Alden Forbes, of Briarcliff Manor, NY.