Reese Palley, 93, flamboyant Atlantic City art dealer and adventurer

WE COULD ALL take a lesson from the life of

Reese Palley.

"He used every speck of his life," said his wife, Marilyn. "He used up his life to the very last minute. Relaxation was not a word in his vocabulary. He hated weekends and holidays because no one was around.

"Reese believed that every moment of life is an event."

And, let's face it, a guy who could write a 1,000-word history of concrete - and get it published - was someone to be reckoned with.

His restless mind never stopped cranking out ideas and opinions. He loved to provoke people into thinking. His good friend, the late Inquirer cartoonist Tony Auth, used to bang the phone on his desk in frustration when provoked by Reese.

Reese Palley, who died Wednesday at 93, was a millionaire businessman in Atlantic City who made his money in real estate and with an art gallery on the Boardwalk that catered to the wealthy. But he gave it all up in 1979 to sail around the world on his 46-foot sloop, "The Unlikely."

In his own words, here's how Reese made his money: "I bought 27 acres at Park Place and Boardwalk one year after gambling was voted for in New Jersey.

"Not having any money, I bought a $16 million property from eager sellers with $100,000 down and an enormous mortgage due in nine months. Ten days later I sold the property to Bally, took some of the money, bought a sailboat and sailed around the world for the next 20 years."

Before he took off, he used some of the money to charter two 747s to take family and friends to Paris for a weekend.

He wrote six books, including those recounting his sailing adventures. And he even invented an energy-efficient toaster.

Reese had ideas and opinions on just about every subject. Most recently, about the plight of his native Atlantic City.

He told Paul Mulshine, a blogger with the Newark Star-Ledger, that he got in trouble years ago when he said that Atlantic City needed a bulldozer six blocks wide.

"Now it needs a bulldozer 12 blocks wide," he told Mulshine.

"If you want to rebuild the city, bring back the 1920s," Reese said. "Legalize marijuana and prostitution."

"Palley was joking about the pot, but not about the history," Mulshine wrote.

"Even with the best of intentions, there is no more money," Reese said. "And it would take huge sums of money to convert what is a terrible place into a major tourist attraction. I don't see even a faint ray of hope."

Too bad, since Reese Palley made his fortune in Atlantic City, where he was born, educated and grew up. He billed himself as the "Merchant to the Rich." In other words, he sold art and collectibles to the people with the money.

For instance, he bought a large painting for $3,000 from Paris "experts," who missed the fact that it was one of five Raphael paintings lost since the 17th century. It was a portrait of Lorenzo deMedici and it was worth about $30 million.

Reese was born in Atlantic City and graduated from Atlantic City High School. He was the valedictorian in the first graduating class of the New School in Manhattan, and later studied at the London School of Economics.

He opened an art gallery in SoHo in New York City, hastening the development of that neighborhood as the vibrant art center it became. Among those he exhibited were John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

He opened his art gallery on the Atlantic City Boardwalk in 1957. One of its attractions was a white cockatiel named "Cocky," and unnamed goldfish to greet customers.

In Atlantic City, Reese usually dressed in black. In Philadelphia, he often sported a bright red beret.

In the 1970s, Reese owned a second store on Walnut Street near 17th. He was living in the city's Fairmount section when he died in his sleep. He had not been ill, his wife said.

Occasionally, Reese's adventures have been recorded in the press and in TV interviews. Back in 1984, the Daily News' late columnist Larry Fields wrote that Reese "has been having an adventurous cruise around the world. He was in India when Indira Gandhi was assassinated and weathered the riots that followed by holing up in a Bombay hotel.

"He was unable to leave because of mechanical problems aboard his ship. He's now in Singapore where the troubles are being repaired, and then he'll sail up the Red Sea to Israel.

"Just so the journey shouldn't be a total loss, Reese has written a book about life and love at sea entitled 'Unlikely Passages.' "

Just a taste of Reese's adventures in his own accounts: How he discovered caverns under Odessa on the Black Sea and converted some of them into a mushroom farm; how his boat was the first private sailing yacht to land in Shanghai; how he escaped five communist Ethiopian gunboats after being dismantled in the Red Sea; how he helped a penniless rabbi smuggle a precious Torah out of Odessa; how he officiated at the first Seder of a Jewish family in Odessa . . .

Well, you'll just have to read his books.

Reese never seemed to run out of ideas and wrote numerous columns for the Inquirer in recent years on just about any subject that caught his fancy.

"He was a word freak," his wife said. "He loved the power of words."

They were married in 1985, but had known one another since the '70s.

Besides his wife, he is survived by a son, Gilbert; two daughters, Diane and Toby Palley; a brother; three grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

Services: Celebration of Life 1 p.m. Sunday, June 14, at the Ethical Humanist Society of Philadelphia, 1906 Rittenhouse Square.