Emile Bustani
Emile Morched Bustani was a Lebanese entrepreneur, philanthropist and politician.
Bustani was born in 1907 in Dibbiyeh – Chouf. After he lost his father at age of six, Bustani was raised by American missionaries at the Gerard Institute in Sidon – South Lebanon. Later, Bustani received help from a wealthy Lebanese businessman to study engineering at the American University of Beirut, from where he received a BS in that field by 1929.
In 1930, he rejoined AUB as an instructor in Physics and as a Graduate student he received his MA in Astro-Physics by 1932. A year later in 1933, he obtained a BS in civil engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA.
Back in Beirut after MIT, Bustani worked for a time with the Iraq Petroleum Company, but soon founded his own Contracting and Trading Company, CAT – a company involved in laying and constructing oil pipelines, building roads and constructing cities throughout the Middle East.
Bustani was elected a Member of Parliament in Lebanon in 1951, an office he held until his death in 1963.
Bustani died on March 15, 1963 when his airplane crashed off the coast of Beirut in a heavy storm.
He is the father of Mirna Bustani, first woman to be elected in the Lebanese Parliament.
