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“ ‘Because my son’s life was more important than my own life and everything I have, when we learned of his death on December 17, it was like a bomb went off that tore my wife and I and our family up.’ ”
Those were Ray Dalio’s first extensive remarks since the billionaire hedge-fund investor’s 42-year-old son, Devon Dalio, was killed in a car crash in late December.
The well-respected investor in a post on LinkedIn said Wednesday that he “found that being with the pain rather than fighting it was helpful,” and writes that wrestling with the tragedy amid the COVID-19 pandemic, when so many other families are dealing with loss, helped to put things into perspective.
“It didn’t take long for me to realize that the devastating experience my family and I were going through was being experienced by many people at the same time (because of COVID and because of other reasons) which both made me feel for them and helped me deal with my loss better,” the investor wrote.
Dalio’s son Devon was driving when his Audi hit a Verizon store in Greenwich, Conn., on Dec. 17, according to the Connecticut Post newspaper.
The Audi crashed into the store and burst into flames. Police are still investigating the cause of the crash, which nearly destroyed the store. No employees were injured, according to the Associated Press.
Devon was Ray and Barbara Dalio’s oldest son and was co-founder of P-Squared Management Enterprises, a private-equity firm focused on small- and midmarket health-care technology companies. He was a Dalio Foundation board member.
He is survived by a wife and daughter, his parents and three brothers.
The older Dalio, in his post, said that thinking about the future and “how to make it as good as possible,” helped him and his family navigate the loss.
“So, I would recommend that when the time comes naturally, you shift your attentions from feeling sorry for yourself and your lost one and living in the past to thinking about what you can in the future, especially to help others you care about.”
