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NEWSSTAND LOCATIONS

Facebook billionaire still a boy next door

By Eric Lebowitz

A photo of Mark Zuckerberg and a fellow student decorates a page in the Ardsley High School yearbook for 1999-2000

DOBBS FERRY — The highly anticipated initial public offering (IPO) of Facebook stock has not gone as swimmingly as many expert analysts predicted. A glitch with NASDAQ hurt the stock during its opening last Friday, May 18, and Facebook, the brainchild of Dobbs Ferry native Mark Zuckerberg, spent the early part of this week floundering well below its initial valuation of $38 per share.

Despite that rocky beginning as a public company, Facebook has still made Zuckerberg, who turned 28 on May 14, one of the wealthiest men on the planet.

Within the same busy week, last Saturday Zuckerberg also married longtime girlfriend Priscilla Chan, at a “surprise” party that was ostensibly to celebrate her graduation from medical school.

Zuckerberg attended Ardsley schools through his sophomore year of high school before leaving for Phillips Exeter Academy in New

Zuckerberg’s portrait from the ’99-’00 yearbook, his sophomore year at the school.

Hampshire. From there, he attended Harvard — where he created the social networking site now used by 900 million people worldwide — and later moved to Palo Alto, Calif., to run the company. During the two years he spent at Ardsley High School, Zuckerberg was a member of the fencing, debate, cross-country, and academic challenge teams.

“He was a very bright, capable student,” said Martha Snegroff, who taught Zuckerberg in fifth-grade English and sixth-grade science, in a May 22 interview. “He was able to express himself very well. He had good reading and writing skills, and was an all-around excellent student.”

Edward Zuckerberg, Mark’s father, is still a practicing dentist in Dobbs Ferry. The family attended Temple Beth Abraham in Tarrytown, where Rabbi David Holtz recalls the younger Zuckerberg as someone who always believed in the importance of networking and interconnectedness.

“I remember him as a kid who was extraordinarily intelligent and was driven in the sense that, if he was interested in something, he would pursue it,” Holtz said in an interview earlier this week. “He was relatively quiet in class, but when he had something to say, he said it.”

Since “The Social Network” — the 2010 film about Zuckerberg and his nascent enterprise that was nominated for eight Academy Awards — was released, some of the people who knew him in his formative years have disputed the portrayal of the young entrepreneur as aloof and unsociable. Holtz, who described Zuckerberg’s parents as “two of the nicest people you’d ever want to meet,” is among those who felt the movie was not a completely accurate representation of the Facebook founder.

“I didn’t see any of the stuff other people said they saw — the social awkwardness,” Holtz said. “We hurt for him when there are shots taken. I didn’t think ‘The Social Network’ was the fairest account, because I know him as a regular guy.”

Indeed, part of the reluctance to be interviewed that Zuckerberg’s family (which also includes his mother Karen and three sisters) and close friends have displayed in recent years may be due in part to the film. Edward Zuckerberg did, however, join Greenburgh Town Supervisor Paul Feiner for a radio interview in February 2011.

“If I sat back and looked at it as a movie and not as a story about my son, you know, it was a tolerable experience,” the elder Zuckerberg said during that exchange. “But to see one’s own child on the screen… portrayed in a way which did not accurately reflect the way certain situations occurred…that was disturbing to me.”

Since Zuckerberg founded Facebook in 2004, the site has been given credit for revolutionizing the way people use the Internet and even for helping citizens in foreign countries organize rebellions against oppressive governments.

As a result of his creation, Zuckerberg has achieved wealth, fame, and power on a scale that is difficult to comprehend. Even with the early drop in Facebook’s stock price, his net worth was estimated at more than $15 billion earlier this week.

“I’ve spoken to his parents from time to time, like when he was named Time [magazine] Man of the Year, just to say things like, ‘Can you believe it?’” Holtz said.

For some who knew Zuckerberg in his early teens, his status as a global icon may still be sinking in.

“I mention to friends that I did teach Mark, and it’s kind of strange. But it feels good to have had some contact, and to maybe have had a little bit of an influence,” Snegroff said. “It’s like growing up with an actor, or with someone who went on to be president.”

Or maybe, someone even bigger.

Read more local coverage of your hometown in this week’s issue of the Rivertowns Enterprise. Newsstand copies are available at several locations listed above, or subscribe today for convenient home delivery.