![]() Today, the company, which generates $30 million in annual revenues, is best known as the operator of the Sandia Peak and Santa Fe Ski Areas and the Sandia Peak Tram, the longest conveyance of its type in the world and a major attraction for New Mexico tourists. “The word was ‘we’ need to survive this, not ‘I’ have to.”Īnd survive they did. “We thought of it as a collective challenge,” Benny says. ![]() Despite the shock of losing their parents, the four pulled together to mount a ten-year battle to save the company. Benny was 27, Richard just 21, and the youngest sibling, Mary Pat (now deceased), was but 19. He had recently become engaged to be married. Louis, the oldest, was only 29 when the accident occurred. The Abruzzo brothers came into control of the company in the worst possible way in 1985, when their parents, Ben and Pat, were killed in a plane crash that also took the lives of four close family friends. His exploits in both arenas may be legendary, but they’ve been surpassed -both literally and figuratively-by the achievements of his sons, Louis, Benny and Richard Abruzzo, owners of the innocuously named Alvarado Realty Company in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Family business founders are often risk-taking entrepreneurs, but few can match the life-or-death exploits of Ben Abruzzo, who established a highly successful recreation and real estate business while making headlines as a record-shattering balloonist whose adventures captured the imaginations of millions of people around the world.
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