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No Golf, No Fishing. Throughout his long lifetime, Alfred Sloan was certainly the exemplar of his own advice. His total dedication was to General Motors. He never smoked, seldom drank, disliked partygoing, scoffed at golf and fishing as wastes of time, rarely read anything other than corporate reports. He and his wife, Irene Jackson Sloan, had no children, lived quietly in their apartment on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue. The Sloans gave to charities with magnificent openhandedness; their philanthropy over the years has been estimated at more than $300 million, including $18 million to M.I.T. and $31 million to the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan, where Sloan died.
To his last day, General Motors remained Sloan's primary interest. As its honorary chairman, he scrupulously attended all board meetings. Troubled by deafness in his later years, he took to conducting conversations by note writing. Not long ago, a journalist scribbled out a question: What is the U.S. stock with the most promising growth prospect? Without hesitation, Sloan answered: "General Motors."