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John D. World Was Monopoly Board (PBP) 1-7-78THE PALM BEACH POST-- / — to) a - OST -1-7— Ti' ACCESSION # q OVVorld John S 1­10n.op,oly 13.o ard By GAYLE PALLESEN. Past Staff Writer John Donald MacArthur was one of a handful of men in the world who could play Monopoly with rows of real hotels, chunks of land and boardwalks., His life resembled the game board, beginning at "Go" with his birth March 6, 1897, struggling through the low -rent ,properties, acquiring one holding at a time, always moving ahead to escape the poverty that had haunted him in his childhood until he 'won at the game called life. The card marked "chance" rated hien as one of .America's two remaining billionaires . Now there is one — Daniel K. Ludwig. "I never started out to make a great fortune. I never put a price tag on my efforts. I stayed with' it," MacArthur said i.n a Canadian documentary filmed shortly bef ore he suf f eyed a stroke. in the f all of 1976. He never fully recovered from the November stroke 11 which was covered up f or weeks by aides who insisted he had just choked on an ice cube and was suffering from exhaustion. For a whsle he went to a speech therapist, but quit when he got frustrated at his rate of recovery. It was hard for him to talk. Some days he spoke clearly, but every sentence had to be carefully thought out. Other days, he was barely audible. "My mind works faster than my tongue," he said two months after being released from his three-week hospital stint last year. MacArthur looked healthier after the stroke than before. He dropped his three -pack- a -day cigarette habit and gained some weight. His once -ashen cheeks gained color. Famed artist LeRoy Neiman highlighted the bil- lionaire's lined face with pink when he sketched him in June. But the effects of the stroke were still there. His right hand never regained full strength. His sig- nature — used to sealing million -dollar deals — had to be carefully drawn, letter by letter, as if by a school boy. He would tire in the evenings, but he never lost his sense of humor. He always loved to joke around, like the time he dressed in a waiter's uniform and served comedian Bob Hope coffee in bed. Most of the time, his mind was quick and witty. He .insisted on working until the time of his death and he maintained his reputation for being "salty -tongued" and "crusty" in reporters' descriptions of him. MacArthur enjoyed being around reporters, having once been one for the Chicago Herald Examiner. He was dubbed "'rhe Accessible Billionaire" by the Canadi- an filar documentary. "I have always talked to every reporter from every media," he said in a letter 'to The Palm Beach Post in 1971. "I take the position that the public is entitled to know what; I plan to do or not do. It might directly or indirectly affect some of their lives." He wasn't exaggerating. He was Palm Beach Coun- ty's largest landowner and one of the largest in the state. He owned 45 companies and employed about 15,- 000 people, But things weren't always like that for the eighth - grade gr°ade dropou t Humble Beginnings John Donald MacArthur was the seventh and last child of Georgiana Welsteud and William Telfer MacAr- thur. Born in Pittston, Pa., he was the son of farmer turned self -ordained minister who was also the son of a self -ordained minister who was also the son of a self - ordained minister. After dropping out of school, MacArthur served as his father's assistant for two years before moving to Chicago where he went to work in his oldest brother Alfred's insurance company. Within three months, he worked his way up to being the company's top salesman, but he was unhappy and went to work with his brother Charles on the Chicago Herald Examiner. (Charles went on to become a famed playwright and was co-author of "The Front Page") . After a short stint as police reporter, MacArthur went bank to working for Alfred. He headed to Canada where he became a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps in Toronto. But instead of the Royal Flying Corps sending him to battle like he'd hoped, MacArthur was sent to Texas as a flight instructor. During his first several months there, he crashed three planes. Injured in one of the crashes and facing a British court. -martial, MacArthur was still eager for battle. He went AWOL and stowed away on a troop thansport ship headed for Europe. MacArthur liked to tell the story. It was one of his favorites. He was scared and bunked in with a soldier who befriended him, answering to someone else's name when roll was called. It worked for a. while. But it was a pretty reporter named Judy McCarthy who saved his neck and changed the course of his fu- ture. The two had shared a short, romantic fling before he left on the ship. She wrote a moving account of a brave, wounded young man, determined to serve his country in battle even if he had to stow away on a ship to do it. The story was picked up around the world. MacArthur was suddenly a war hero. He even received a pension arld the War Department ended up sending him on a speaking tour to encourage other young men to be patriotic. Through the years, he stayed in touch with Judy McCarthy until she died. She never married, he said. "John MacArthur is like a cat. No matter how he is dropped, he always lands on his feet," the Miami Herald wrote in 1965. Luck played an important part in his climb to the top, but not nearly as large a part as determination, drive, long hours and the willingness to take a chance blended with a sales pitch that could melt the heart of an Eskimo. "I've been the luckiest guy in the world. I was in the right place at the right time," he told David Frost during an interview several years ago. "It was kind of like the Braille system. I'd stumble around, bump something and make money." He married Louise Ingals, who is the mother of his two children: Roderick John, born in 1920 and Virginia, who was born in 1922. He was not close to either of them and once said he, considered them disappoint- ments. He had seven grandchildren. Climb to the Top For years, MacArthur tried unsuccessfully to get Louise to grant him a divorce. Separated from her and the children, MacArthur fell in love with Alfred's secKe- tary, Catherine Hyland. In 1926, he flew to Mexico for a divorce and mar- ried Catherine. It wasn't until 1937 that Louise finally agreed to give him an American divorce. It was . with Catherine that., he began to build his empire. Together in 1928, the two of them bought Mar- quette Life Insurance Co. 4 They struggled to keep it together during the Depression. MacArthur said at one time the company's assets were down to about $15 and the governor was threatening to close down what he called "fly-by-night" operations. I "But I DID hold it together," he recently recalled, smiling. In 1935, MacArthur borrowed $2,500 to purchase Bankers Life and Casualty Co. — now the largest stock company of individual health and accident policies in the nation and the second largest in the world. "They handed me the company. I put it in the back of the car, I had a directors meeting on the way and elected myself president," he kidded. I What the man did — taking a few dollars and turn- ing a bankrupt company into the cornerstone of a bil- lion -dollar empire — could not be duplicated today, MacArthur said. "Today, you'd need $1 million capital to start. May- be you could go to Las Vegas and make a billion. But it could not be done again the way we did it," he said. Something that set MacArthur apart from other businessmen is that he wasn't afraid to try something new, even if it meant gambling with his last dollar. Bankers Life grew by selling $1 insurance policies through newspaper ads. If people only had a dollar to 0*1 Imm 61 M, spare, he was after that dollar. It was something th., had never been tried before and the money came you ing in. His practices came under sharp scrutiny. Betwe( 1948 and 1951, MacArthur was investigated by insuran( departments in 14 states. In 1972, the Florida State Insurance Department cleared MacArthur and Bankers Life of any improper advertising activities after questioning television com- mercials done by commentator Paul Harvey withoilt a Florida license to sell insurance. Since Harvey was paid by ABC to plug advertisers and' not, the company directly, the department found no fault. Harvey, a close friend of MacArthur's, is a trust- ee of the foundation which now controls Bankers Life. "I'm no genius," MacArthur said shortly before his stroke. "One man never built anything worthwhile by himself. I was just fortunate enough to contact the right people. I have a great wife and without her, I would never have made it." MacArthur was the sole stockholder of Bankers Life until October 1974 when he resigned as president and put all the shares into a tax-exempt charitable foundation. He became chairman of the board and chief executive officer, naming Catherine, his son and Har- vey as foundation trustees. "It should be no wonder to you I use this man's picture to shave by," Harvey said at MacArthur's 80th birthday celebration in Chicago. "He's buttered the toast for the Harveys going on a third generation now. And unashamedly as long as I can, I will sit at his feet and learn as much as I'm able to absorb.' � Every March, Bankers Life has held a "March for MacArthur" during which salesmen strived for their best month of sales in honor of "the Skipper's" birth- day. But Bankers Life is just one of 13 insurance com- panies he owned. His collection included: Bankers Mul- tiple Life Insurance Co.; Certified Life Insurance Co. of California; Constitution Life Insurance Co.; Marquette Life Insurance Co.; Protection Mutual Insurance Co. of Pennsylvania; Southeastern Title and Insurance Co.; Gotham Life Insurance Co. of New York; Union Bank- ers Insurance Co.; Western American Life Insurance Co. and Western Life Assurance Co. of Hamilton. Ohio. Insurance wasn't MacArthur's only interest. He owned about 30 other companies; 100,000 acres of land in Florida; land in Illinois, Arizona, Georgia, Colorado, Michigan and Wisconsin; hotels, golf courses, paper mills, farms, 61 buildings in New York City alone; utili- ty firms; oil wells; real estate firms; restaurants; a car rental firm and a liquor firm which named a bottle of whisky after him. . Big and Little Munyon islands in the Intracoastal Waterway, were his. So was 2.5 miles of ocean to lake- front property running from the Riviera Beach city. limitsnorth to Lost Tree Village. He was also the sole stockholder of Citizens Bank and Trust Co., which is Illinois' second largest bank. And the list goes on. When MacArthur visited Chicago last March, his employees would point out various buildings and land he owned, saying: " or "YOU You own this building" A own that block" as they drove through the city. He owned the JDM Country Club in Palm Beach Gardens. In fact, there was no Palm Beach Gardens before MacArthur. He developed the town in 1959, the same year he came to Florida. He wanted an inter- change to his new community when Florida's Turnpike rnpike was being constructed and when the state said the pop- -ulation wasn't large enough to warrant one, he agreed to pay for it himself, The $450,000 expenditure is said to have increased the value of his land holdings by mil- lions. He still owned most of the undeveloped land west of the city at the time of his death. Around the state, he had a 10,300 -acre cattle and citrus ranch in Highlands County Nk,-here he would es- cape occasionally for relaxation; 32,000 acres in Saraso- ta County and about 10,000 acres in the Orlando area. "I bought a lot more land than I needed in Florida and I won't live long enough to develop all of it," he predicte d in 1976. Pied Piper of tree Lourrs MacArthur was like the Pied Piper when it came to attacking lawsuits. Newspaper files are stuffed with ac- counts. "John MacArthur Sued for $100,000;" "MacAr- thur Sued Over Promissory Note;" "PGA Files Suit Vs. MacArthur; " "Billionaire Sued Over Used Goods; " "Evicted Widow Sues — Asks Millions From Tycoon; " "Libel, Slander Suit by Farish Cites MacArthur; " "Supreme Court Rules in Favor of MacArthur." In November, he settled a lawsuit brought against him over the purchase of Frenchman's Creek develop- ment west of Juno Beach by handing over a cashier's check for $1 million. The money went to Universal Profile Inc. for back payment of stock MacArthur allegedly agreed to buy in the development. He claimed he was "conned" in the deal. One of the most controversial cases he has been involved in began in 1972 when he evicted Adeline K. Moffett, once one of the world's richest women, for failing to pay rent on a $150 -a -month Palm Beach apart- ment he owned. The elderly widow of the late chairman of the board of Standard Oil of News Jersey won an $80,000 judgment stemming from water damage to antique fur- niture she claimed was destroyed when the apartment roof leaked in 1969 and from back injuries she said resulted from slipping on the wet floor. Claiming she was maliciously evicted and suffered humiliation, Mrs. Moffett, 79, sued MacArthur for $200 million. In May, the Florida Supreme Court, by refusing to hear the case, upheld a lower court order requiring the insurance magnate to disclose in writing his net worth. The case has. not yet gone to trial. " MacArthur said then he wasn't well enough to do the work required to determine the value of his hold- ings. He said in late September he wasn't going to com- ply with the order. "It would take a battery of accountants, maybe 20, working fulltime for several months to untangle his financial web. There are dozens and dozens of corpora- tions in which he is the sole stockholder," said Elmer Holmgren, head of MacArthur's legal department. In a separate case, Circuit Court Judge Vaughn Rudnick ruled 'last June that MacArthur would, have to answer written questions about whether he persuaded one of Joseph D. Farish Jr.'s clients to drop hire as a lawyer. Citing MacArthur's poor health, his attorney con- vinced Rudnick the billionaire ought not be forced to testify in a $10.5 million civil suit by Farish. "If a man who owns an empire such as this rc,,an does can hold court and conduct a business meeting for two or three hours, he can certainly give a deposition," Parish's attorney argued unsuccessfully. Farish is suing MacArthur for slander and libel, saying he spoke and wrote letters to a woman suggest- ing she drop Farish as her attorney in a suit against companies connected to MacArthur. In August, the federal government filed a $13 mil- lion lawsuit, claiming MacArthur and officers of 12 cor- porations participated in fraudulent land dealings on Florida's West Coast. . The Department of Housing and Urban Develop- ment ( HUD) filed charges claiming false promotional gimmicks by developers of Holley -by -the -Sea develop- ment between Pensacola and Fort Walton Beach. MacArthur's name was included as chairman of Bankers Life. Several Bankers Life subsidiaries also were named. MacArthur denied the charges along with Bankers Life President Robert Ewing. Animal Lover He was a busy man, but he always had time for animals. Happy and Mi Mi, his two silver miniature poodles, have the run of his apartment. A table drawer is filled with rubber squeaky toys he would hold up while the dogs danced, and then toss across the room for them to chase. The courtyard of the Colonnades Beach Hotel is covered with ducks. Plump ducks, half-grown gangly ducks, fuzzy little ducklings. MacArthur loved to watch them from his picture window in the coffeeshop. Often he would stop a conversation to point out a line of little ducklings heading to a man-made pond for a drink. He saved them bread and table scraps from breakfast and lunch. Once he helped rescue a 1,500 -pound beached whale and in 1964, he tried to save Warren, a wounded sea cow. Doctors operated in a canal on the sea cow which had been gashed by a boat propeller, but Warren disap- peared and doctors believed he died. When MacArthur found time to escape to his Buck Island Ranch across Lake Okeechobee for relaxation, he would play with the dogs and even spend time pet- ting the bulls and trying to hand feed them. He didn't want people to think him philanthropic, but one of his pet charities was the Animal Rescue League. Unloading Holdings The announcement came in August. MacArthur, the same man who five ,years earlier had evicted the Pro- fessional Golfers Association ( PGA) from its Palm Beach Gardens home, had agreed to sell 2,300 acres for the association's new home. The land, estimated to be valued at about $30 mil- lion, is bounded by the turnpike on the east, PGA Boulevard on the north, Canal C18 on the west and Northlake Boulevard on the south. The PGA is planning three championship golf courses, headquarters, hall of fame, clubhouse and uni- versity and education center on .the property. Ironically, MacArthur had been the landlord for the PGA from 1964 through March 1973. He served an evic- tion notice on the PGA in November 1972 over a con- tractual dispute and the following spring the headquar- ters of the national organization were moved to another site. MacArthur's next major deal came in October. He finalized the sale of the Biltmore Hotel, a Palm Beach landmark, to developer Stanley J. Harte for $5.34 mil- lion. MacArthur bought the hotel in 1970 for $1.5 million and Harte tried to acquire it shortly thereafter, only to have the deal fall through just before the closing. Even this time, the cagy MacArthur failed to show at the first date set for the closing. Harte sighed with relief when the exchange finally took place. MacArthur tucked a cashier's check for $250,000 as a down payment in his pocket and grinn. ed when a waitress in his hotel walked by shrugging her shoulders and remarking "Another day, another dol- lar." She summed up his life in four words.