Peter Buck Net Worth & Biography

Peter Buck was one of the co-founders of the successful American sandwich chain known as subway. His investment in the company was a $1,000 loan he gave to his friend’s son as a contribution that was used to start a single sandwich shop. That small shop eventually grew into the world’s biggest fast-food chain and handed Peter Buck his multibillion-dollar fortune. Mr. Buck died in a hospital on Nov. 18 2021 in Danbury, Connecticut, at the age of 90. Full details of his biography and net worth is available below.

Early Life

He was born on Dec. 19, 1930, in South Portland, Maine. His parents, Ervin and Lillian Buck, ran a large farm in Maine and he and his brother, David, helped plant, cultivate and pick celery, lettuce, squash, and other crops. Their mother later became a journalist and was an employee at The Portland Press Herald.

Peter was the first person in his family to attend college. He studied economics and science at Bowdoin, earning his degree in 1952. He later attended Columbia University where he earned a doctorate in physics.

Professional Life

Mr. Peter Buck was a nuclear physicist by training. He was helping to develop nuclear power plants in 1965 when his friend’s 17yearold son named Fred DeLuca approached him for advice on how to finance his college education. Dr. Buck, who had memories of an Italian sandwich business that his family had patronized when he was just a boy growing up in Maine, suggested to Fred that he open something similar. The doctor drove the young DeLuca to Maine and took him to the sandwich purveyor of his youth, Amato, which now has franchises throughout Northern New England. Buck gave the lad a $1,000 loan, and within the next two weeks, DeLuca had opened Pete’s Super Submarines — named after Mr. Buck, who became his business partner — in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

Mr. Fred DeLuca, a native of New York, made radio advertisement for what he called “Pete’s Submarines”. It turned out that his intended audience thought he was saying “Pizza Marines”. For clarity’s sake, the partners renamed their business in 1968 to Subway. The sandwiches had long been called “subs” due to the bread shaped to resemble a submarine, though they are known in various other parts of the country as grinders, po’boys, heroes, or hoagies.

The two business partners soon started opening restaurants in other parts of the United States. Today, Subway has more than 40,000 restaurants worldwide. Though in recent years, a few thousand of its shops have closed, Subway is still the largest food chain in the world by number of outlets. Only McDonald’s and Starbucks are ahead in terms of revenue.

Mr. Buck was hired by General Electric at its Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory in Schenectady, New York in 1957, where he performed tests on atomic power plants that were needed by Navy submarines and surface ships. He joined the United Nuclear Corporation in White Plains, New York in 1967 and later worked at Nuclear Energy Services in Danbury. While immersed in high-level calculations for nuclear power plants, he was also helping to build the sandwich business. He donated his own kitchen table to the first shop of the outfit at a strip mall in Bridgeport.

Personal Life

Buck married Haydee Piñero in 1955. He met her through a relative. She was the daughter of Jesús T. Piñero, the first native governor of Puerto Rico. Their three children together are: Christopher, and Kenneth and Cynthia, who both predeceased him.

When his first marriage ended in divorce, he married Carmen Lúcia Passagem with whom he had a son named William. They were married for more than 20 years until she died in 2003.

Buck, who always had an interest in aviation, owned and piloted a glider for many years. He remained an active member of the Valley Soaring Club and the Soaring Society of America.

Dr. Buck was a major philanthropist, especially concerned with areas of education and health care. Despite his affluence, the late physicist mostly kept a low profile and mainly moved around driving an old car.

A long-time resident of Danbury, Connecticut, Mr. Buck died d in Danbury on the 18^th of November 2021, a month before he turned 91. His business partner, Mr. DeLuca, died in 2015 at age 67.

Peter Buck Net Worth: Salary, Income Sources, Assets

As of the time he died in November 2021, Peter Buck had a net worth of $3 billion dollars, all earned from his career as a physicist and investor. His $1000 gamble in the subway pizza shop paid off, and by the early 70s, they had 16 locations all over Connecticut. Today, Subway is one of the largest sandwich chains in the world with a reported over 36,000 shops in 99 countries.

Mr. Buck was the seventh-largest landholder in the United States (as listed by The Land Report). His holdings included more than 1.2 million acres of timberland in Maine, in addition to assets scattered across the country.