Herman I Merinoff

Herman I. Merinoff ransformed his family's liquor distribution business into a company with more than $3 billion in annual revenue. Mr. Merinoff was co-chairman of the Charmer-Sunbelt Group of Manhattan, one of the region's three major liquor distributorships. He joined the family liquor distribution business in 1959 with a plan to expand it beyond the city. Along with his wife, Susan Kletz Merinoff, whom he married in 1965, Mr. Merinoff endowed a research center at the North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, N.Y., near the couple's home in Lake Success, called the Susan and Herman Merinoff Center for Patient-Oriented Research. Mr. Merinoff also served on the state commission overseeing the 1964-65 World's Fair in Queens. Herman Irwin Merinoff was born on Oct. 28, 1928, in Manhattan, a son of Charles and Gertrude Merinoff. He was graduated from the Fieldston School, Syracuse University and Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the law review. After law school, Mr. Merinoff joined the Manhattan firm of Chadbourne, Parke, Whiteside, Wolff & Brophy, then became an assistant federal prosecutor in Manhattan. When Mr. Merinoff joined the family business, it was called the Blue Crest Wine and Spirits Corporation and operated mostly in New York. Mr. Merinoff expanded it to 16 states and the District of Columbia. In addition to his wife, Mr. Merinoff is survived by two sons, Charles, of Hawthorne, N.J., and Spencer, of Bay Harbor Islands, Fla.; three daughters, Linda Merinoff Bogrow, of Westport, Conn., Cathy Ellen Onufrychuk, of Fairfax Station, Va., and Barbara Albert, of Penn Valley, Pa.; a sister, Ruth Ann Drucker of Kings Point, N.Y.; and 10 grandchildren.