Luigi Mangione Kills His Family's Legacy
Examining the crime from the perspective of generational wealth and privilege
We’ve never had a killer1 quite like Luigi Mangione. By gunning down one of the senior executives of United Healthcare, Luigi has become both a symbol and an unleasher of intense rage against the American health insurance industry. Some have called him a hero. Quite a few have noted he’s “hot.”2 There was a brief boom in Luigi merchandise.
Luigi can also be characterized as a member of the elite sector of society. His wealthy family is well-known in Maryland, and he’s a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania.3 He was no slacker. He was at the engineering school, well known at Penn for being its most academically rigorous course of study.
Luigi’s grandparents Mary and Nick Mangione Sr. were successful Maryland real estate and healthcare entrepreneurs who built up from nothing a sizeable fortune. They were prolific philanthropists who gave gifts large enough to place their names on various facilities in local hospitals and universities.
Mary and Nick Sr. were also prolific progenitors. They had ten children who in turn have thirty-seven grandchildren, including Luigi.
I’m a new grandfather4 and take great delight in “meeting” the next generation of my family. That’s why I’ve thought about Luigi and his family through the lens of generations past and future and of family legacy.
Wealth is part of the Mangione legacy. Part of my family’s legacy too. But a legacy of wealth without a family culture of ethics, justice, and good works is hollow.
And a single terrible act of violence that seizes the imagination of the public can destroy a legacy.
Damages
Before Luigi’s crime on December 4th, the Mangione family was known in Maryland for their business success, their wealth and their philanthropy. That had been their legacy.
Given the inexhaustible fascination with Luigi’s crime, the meaning of the Mangione name has suffered a sea change.5 Instead of wealth and philanthropy, the name will now be shackled in peoples’ minds to the crime.
Perhaps the public nature of their philanthropy will be erased. Institutions might not want to be associated with the Mangione name; the family might agree to take their name off facilities as a favor to the institutions that their patriarch and matriarch supported.
What about the rest of this enormous family. For the second generation, Luigi’s father and his nine siblings and their spouses, what does Luigi’s crime do to their quality of life? I imagine friends would be sympathetic but there might be an undercurrent of unease, even blame. An assumption that there was something abnormal about a family “with everything” that would produce a killer. I admit that these uncharitable thoughts have entered my mind.
And for the third generation, for the other thirty-six to whom Luigi was either a sibling or first cousin, will the effect be more diffused because of their large numbers or sharper because they are younger and less established? Will any of them change their names?
I think about marriage prospects. If one of my children brought home a Mangione relative as a possible marriage partner, my reaction, irrational but real, would be negative.
From my perspective, Luigi Mangione’s extended family is also a victim of his crime. Luigi has thwarted the fondest dreams and generational ambitions of his grandparents Nick Sr. and Mary. It’s for the best that they did not bear witness to it.
I think of how I would feel in the role of a patriarch whose grandchild became infamous in the way that Luigi has. I think it would destroy me.
An impassioned God
In the reading of the Ten Commandments, in Exodus 20:5, an impassioned or jealous God warns that He will visit the guilt of fathers upon the third and fourth generations of children, meaning for a long time. If there is a generational stain that travels forward, then logically it should also travel backward. 6
In that same verse, God promises to reward good behavior for a thousand generations. An illustrious ancestor is revered and can improve the status of their descendants. So too, the triumphs or good works of a child or a grandchild are sources of pride to their parents and grandparents. Again, the effects of good behavior travel up and down the generations.
How wealth factors in
The Mangione family name may carry with it a presumption of great privilege, but Mary and Nick Sr. also created a huge family.
Financially speaking, the number of their descendants is daunting. I wonder how you divide a fortune among ten children and thirty-seven grandchildren. We don’t know how the grandparents’ fortune was shared. It’s possible that Luigi and the thirty-six other members of his generation have the presumption of wealth without the reality.
In addition to the difficulties of maintaining generational wealth with so many descendants at hand, there’s also the question of how the founding generation set up access to money for successive generations. Access to wealth could have been delayed until a certain age or severely restricted or simply not granted.
Luigi or family members may have had some issues with paying for their healthcare. Or being reimbursed for it. We don’t know any details. But the very wealthy usually do not have a financial issue with healthcare, regardless of how obstreperous insurance companies may be. See my post from last week about privileged healthcare.
When the “be fruitful and multiply” commandment is followed so profoundly by a family like the Mangiones, you understand the logic of the British tradition of primogeniture where title, estate, and most of the fortune was passed down from eldest son to eldest son, thereby keeping everything undivided and intact. For the British aristocracy, legacy meant preserving a certain standard of life even if it meant depriving all but one child of that standard.
While Mary and Nick Sr. started with nothing, their substantial, well-known, and self-publicised success means that none of their ten children or thirty-seven grandchildren will ever be able to claim their own success as entirely their own. That’s not a terrible thing to do to your descendants, provided that you actually do pass on a head start in life.
And a head start can mean many things. Not only money and an education but undivided attention to each child when needed. I wonder about the dynamic within a family that did not intervene in the life of a child who was in great physical pain and who left social media clues of his mental distress.
When you bring up your children with a privileged lifestyle, I think it’s only fair to provide them with the head start you received if you’re able to do so.7
That’s a piece of generational foresight I learned from my parents and grandparents.
Legacy and illustrious ancestors
I have two “ancestors,” Nate and Samuel, who I admire greatly and consider illustrious in very different ways. (I wrote a post about the history of my family’s generational wealth that features Nate and Samuel.)
My maternal grandfather Nate created a great fortune from oil and then stocks. He gave me most of my financial head start. He was still living when we had our first two children, and I recall him saying in his distinctive oilman twang, “I see you building up your kids. I like that.” What he meant was that we had started giving our children gifts of money up to the then tax free amount.
Grandpa Nate inspired in me a desire to be wealthy and to extend the generational wealth he had created. I thought of him after my father once told me I’d never get credit for my successes because of my head start.8 That comment actually added fuel to my financial ambitions as it set the bar higher for earning my success. That was lucky as I could have “given up” and gone in the opposite direction.
There have been many times when I wish Nate could see that I have extended what he gave me down to successive generations. That would have made him happy.
The other illustrious ancestor is my great-grandfather on my father’s side, Samuel Rottenberg. He came to America with nothing just like Nick Mangione did. Samuel did not build a great fortune but he was prosperous enough to provide a good home and good educations for a large family.
More importantly, he lived a life of significant and successful Tzedakah (justice). He was a key founder of the Brooklyn Jewish Center which provided an extensive range of services to the community. His legacy is one of giving and of prioritizing ethical behavior.
There have been many times, especially lately, when I‘ve wished he could see our efforts at carrying on his legacy of Tzedakah.
I know I put Nate and Samuel on a pedestal, excusing any indiscretions and focusing on their virtues.
I’ve created their personalities from a mix of memories and writings, seasoned by my imagination. I’m fine with that.
There is something bracing and ennobling in judging your actions by whether your illustrious ancestors would be proud or ashamed of how you conduct your life.
A reminder that I donate all subscription revenues to The Robin Hood Foundation and that this month I am matching one for one any paid subscriptions. A $30 subscription means $60 goes to Robin Hood and could pay for over 70 meals at a food pantry.
Given the evidence, I’m going to dispense with qualifying Luigi as “accused” or “alleged.” No one disputes that he shot the victim.
Related to pictures of Luigi’s handsome face and sculpted body, my daughter taught me a new phrase––“thirst trap.” Apparently not a desert but rather a picture that is sexually alluring.
We are a UPenn family. My two grandfathers, my uncle, and my three children and me are all alumni. It’s safe to say you will see no signs on Locust Walk pointing you to the Mangione auditorium.
We have two grandchildren and three children.
The most famous use of “sea change” is from Shakespeare’s The Tempest and refers to a theoretical drowning.
Note that this guilt is spiritual and reputational, not legal. In a later part of the bible, Deuteronomy 24:16, there is a clarification that “Parents shall not be put to death for children, nor children be put to death for parents…”
I know that passing on wealth is a key factor in perpetuating inequality, which I have repeatedly said has gone too far. My hypocrisy in this is based on the primal, parental urge to do what’s best for my children. In most things, the parental imperative will win out.
He may have said “full credit” but I don’t recall that qualification.
I always like your writing and sharing your self reflection. But I hope you might rethink this statement: If one of my children brought home a Mangione relative as a possible marriage partner, my reaction, irrational but real, would be negative. I would not want my DNA mixed with theirs.
I wonder how the news would have characterized this kid if he was black or brown.