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Profile of a Philanthropist (Miami Herald) 4-19-92Mmqrx Hr"w 4.jq_qZ, Aco,:*7 !C19Z/yoz rov.Vitt �t North Palm ftav By BEATRICE E. GARCIA Herald Business Writer OHIO D. MacArthur was one of the world's wealthi- est men when he died in 1978. After creating an insurance empire, he focused on Florida :real estate in the 1950s. He amassed more than 100,000 acres, much of it in Palm Beach and Martin counties. He was the largest individual landowner in the state at one point. MacArthur vowed to leave the bulk of his fortune to philan- thropy and kept his promise. When the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation was funded with $ 700 million shortly after his death, it was instantly ranked with other foundation giants such as Kellogg, Pew, Philanthropist A deal- Aker and risk -taker built hine in insurance and iraa0'�� Getty, Ford and Rockefeller. Today, with assets of $3.3 bil- lion, it's the sixth-largest charita- ble organization in the country. Since 1980, the foundation has passed out grants totaling nearly $71 million in the state of Flor- ida. it pays out about 5 percent of its assets every year in grants. John MacArthur was a con- summate dealmaker and a risk - taker who operated on instinct, according to the official biogra- phy. He had a keen eye for value, whether he was analyzing an ail- ing company or examining a par- cel of land. He understood mar- ket cycles and never bought at market peaks. Catherine, MacArthur's sec- ond wife, was the opposite systematic, detail -oriented and self-effacing. lAbt a Brine met in Chicag , whe she orked for an insuranc om y by his brother and al t i ediately became business p ers. Over the years, she appears nder her maiden name throughout the records of MacArthur's various companies as corporate secre- tary, director or both, when MacArthur was drawing up the papers to create the foundation, he insisted that Catherine's name be included. The MacArthurs didn't care much for the trappings of wealth. After they moved to Florida, their office was the back table in a coffee shop in the Colannades Beach Hotel, an aging resort hotel in Palm Beach Shores that PLEASE SEE FOUNDATION, 3K Ph.11anth.ropl$t made his fortune i1jin insurance, banking and land deals FOUNDATION, FROM 1K he owned. They lived in a two- bedroom flat upstairs overlook- ing the parking lot and drove an old Cadillac. John MacArthur's roots were in a poor mining town in eastern Pennsylvania. He was the youn- gest of seven children born to a coal -miner -turned -preacher. MacArthur's formal schooling ended with the eighth grade, but he was bright, adventurous, and discovered his knack for selling early on. At age 17, he headed west to Chicago, where he. went to work for his brother's insur- ance company, selling policies door-to-door. Thirteen years later, in 1927, he went into busi- ness for himself, taking over Marquette Life of Jerseyville, Ill., an ailing insurer with assets of only $15.31. The first big break came during the Depression when he took over Bankers Life and Casualty Co. with a $2,500 loan. John ran the entire sales staff while Cath- erine ran the office. Survival wasn't easy early on, but the MacArthurs soon hit upon a novel technique for selling insur- ance — the mail. The response to the newspaper ads and mailed flyers was over- whelming, and they sold thou- sands of low-cost policies to peo- .. �_,_ ple across the nation during the 1940s and 1950s. They expanded by buying several other small, usually bankrupt, insurers. In less than 20 years, Bankers had become an insurance empire and the MacArthurs owned all the shares. In the late 1950s, they moved to the Palm Beach area, where the interest in real estate blos- somed. By the time of his death in 19 7 8 at age 81, the couple owned a dozen insurance companies, several development companies and shopping centers, paper and pulp companies, 19 commercial office buildings and 6,000 apart- . ments in New York City, several publishing enterprises, hotels, radio and television stations and banks. The stock in Bankers Life and Casualty went to fund the Mac- Arthur Foundation. The MacAr- thurs' other large holding, the stock of Citizens Bank and Trust Co. of Park Ridge, Ill., went to fund the Retirement Research Foundation, which is the largest foundation devoted to the prob- lems of the elderly in the United States. Although 9.2 percent of MacAr- thur's fortune was used to endow these two foundations, he still passed on $ 70 million to $ 80 mil- lion to his wife and two children from his first marriage.