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the lucky from the deserving, the fortunate from the hardworking, it seems natural to gravitate towards men who have stumbled into the public eye. After all, in America, the road to fortune generally makes at least one rest stop at fame. Regardless of their ability, men who manage to get free publicity – and transform it into money – have to be counted among the lucky.

Following that logic, though, the most fortunate man in America would probably be someone like Justin Bieber, a marginal talent who was in the right place at the right time, with the right asexual look that attracted the right group of pre-teens. Then again, Bieber's very public meltdowns suggests that "fortunate" may be a misnomer. For that matter, the Beeb's debatable chromosomal status could throw the whole "man" thing into question. Then there's the fact that, like it or not, Bieber has talent. By all accounts, the kid knows his do-re-mi's from his fa-sol-la's and his MTV's from his VH-1's. Twitter embarrassments notwithstanding, he has demonstrated that he has enough musical ability to draw a crowd and enough skill to keep them around.

Talent is, indeed, the fly in the ointment when it comes to luck. After all if the ranks of impoverished former lotto winners teach nothing else, it's that a lucky break is useless without the ability to make the money stick around. A millionaire one day and the pauper the next? Hey, it could happen…

The luckiest man in America, then, would have to be someone who chanced into a great situation and, through no fault of his own, managed to ride it off into the sunset. He'd have to be like Chauncey Gardiner, but with more economic security; Forrest Gump, minus the shot in the ass and the dead girlfriend.

He'd have to be someone like Frederick R. Koch.

The Koch name probably sounds familiar: Fred's three younger brothers, Charles, David and William, all have spots on Forbes' list of the world's richest people. Charles and David are especially prominent, as their libertarian leanings and extreme political activism have thrust them into the public eye.

Frederick, meanwhile, is the family slacker. While his three brothers studied engineering at MIT, he studied literature at Harvard. And while their graduate degrees in engineering further multiplied their earning power, he doubled down on the unemployability track, getting an MFA in playwriting from Yale. And, after college, the Koch kids moved even further apart. While Charles and David Koch poured their energy into turning the billion dollar Koch fortune into some real money, Frederick cashed out in the early eighties, walking away with $330 million and freedom from his family.

In some ways, this was a savvy move. In one swoop. Frederick managed to separate from a notoriously backbiting clan while giving himself a major windfall. Yet, even this bit of apparent skill and foresight was largely a matter of luck: 1983 was the year that Frederick's brother William corralled him into an ill-fated attempt to wrest control of the family business. Ultimately, the pair backed down – in return for a huge payout.

Since then, William Koch has proven himself in much the same way as his two more famous brothers. He donates heavily to mainstream Republican causes – he gave $750,000 to Mitt Romney's superPAC and helped bankroll John McCain. He controls the Oxbow Group, an energy development holding company that isn't all that far removed from the business that his father built. And, while he hasn't achieved the staggering wealth of Charles and David, he has amassed a tidy $4 billion, enough to put him on the Forbes list, even if he still has to sit at the kiddies' table at the Koch house.

Frederick, on the other hand, took the money and ran all the way to Europe, where he set about buying expensive manuscripts and pricey pieces of real estate. By 1986, he had became something of a reluctant hero in British preservation circles with his endowment of the Swan Theater, an historically-accurate reconstruction of a Shakespearian theater. At the opening ceremony, Queen Elizabeth thanked Frederick in her speech -- although, at his request, she avoided mentioning him by name.

Since then, the Frederick R. Koch foundation, Koch's charitable organization, has made major contributions to numerous libraries and research centers, including the Pierpont Morgan Library, the Frick Collection, the Carnegie Museum of Art, Harvard University's Houghton Library, and Yale's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. And Frederick hasn't neglected himself: in addition to his rare book spending sprees, he's bought up and restored an impressive collection of old and historic buildings, including Frank Woolworth's New York mansion, a British estate where Henry VIII once reveled, and a hunting lodge whose previous owners included Archduke Franz Ferdinand (the Hapsburg prince whose assassination sparked World War I).

But even for the luckiest man in the world, it helps to have a talent, and Frederick's greatest skill seems to be avoiding the media. When his name appears in print, it is almost always connected with the purchase of a new building, a gift to a major restoration fund, or the endowment of a new library. Then again, when it comes to avoiding the media, it helps if your interests -- like, say, rehabbing old buildings and buying old books -- aren't all that sexy.

It also doesn't hurt that, for tax reasons, Koch's spends at least six months of the year outside the US, far from the reach of the American media. And, unlike his brothers, whose political and business activities mean that there are hundreds of ways to reach them, Frederick is all but impossible to contact. But while interviewing the reclusive Koch is all but impossible, it's not hard to imagine the daily routine of the luckiest man in the US: the mornings taken up with polishing horse shoes, the afternoons whiled away cataloging rabbits feet, and the evenings spent coming up with new and exciting ways to spend money.

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