The URL can be used to link to this page

How 'Old Man' MacArthur bullied, bulldozed and built northern PBC (PBP) 5-15-05TS PAUM BWAQ)i zaps 1'lACHPRI-!UR ` John D. ack hur° .'!"� Left his fortune and the foto ot'' Brought the world Gentle Sen, I Founded Palm Beach Gardens northern Palm Beach County county Flipper and Treasure Isle ® Developed most of Lake Park and to a Chicago foundation N Fought with Roy Disney and the .,,: North Palm Beach M Entertained Bob Hope, Jackie Professional Golfers' Association ... Left thousands of acres for Gleason and Hollywood stars at his N Smoked four packs a day, drari �� I nna� s,SeaGh: Hotel like a fish and loved to be 80 e S rvati o C..... _ • �. u..�_..W. � " .::.. 1 , 1, �., .. :,� 1 .., ..,, w:.., .. h�.n .114,,... ��., .., ...; zti•; ��. :��vaz'. •.k.,. ', •S.ti ' ,�"'wti' .,,�;:::�>L:;::tiv'•s 1i,...,.i.�,?�•�y.;:S;'�'.•: ....�.—.1...,f >,;iM`'�.5`\�`'.,�`�, ,,`.�.�\'\`\,\,a.•\�'.'�`,\ \�`C�1�\'� �.\Y.�``h.�1,1,\\\"�� r1�\,\+. �4 .. ti '" •aiti_, ' s Fiftyweek PaIm BeachCountYears met the man who would steer its future: JMacArthur. a n T. lac) rt] ur By JOEL ENGELHARDT George Frost was a young engineer in the early 1960s when he and a Palm Beach County commissioner walked into the old man's home for a morning meet- ing. eeting. John D. MacArthur stood before them stark naked, cooking eggs. The billionaire, discuss- ing plans for a turnpike inter- change, didn't explain his lack of clothing and the two men didn't ask, Eventually, MacArthur got dressed. "A tool," Frost called it. Just another way for the old man to get what he wanted. Controlled eccentricity. John Donald MacArthur, owner of most of northern Palm Beach County, was a risk -taker extraordi.naire. Irascible, ill-mannered, foul -tongued. A Scotch - slinging, chain-smoking, fanny -pinching billionaire. A man with the contempt for wealth found in someone who spent most of his life without it. Whether he was buying land, lending money or wan- gling his way into a corpo- rate board room, John D. MacArthur had to get the better of the deal. He didn't do it to see his name in lights. He once said that if he wanted a monu- ment, he would have called the city he founded. MacArthur City, not. Palm Beach Gardens. He didn't do it to support a lavish life. He was so cheap that he wouldn't buy rubber bands, instead relying on the ones that came with the morning newspaper. He did it because he could. , MacArthur, who pro- nounced his name with a booming MACK -Arthur, didn't make his first million until the age of 48. He died at 80 in 1.978, America's second -'richest man, owner of a $ 1 billion empire of in- surance companies, land in eight states, including 100,000 acres in Florida, and investments as varied as Ala- mo car rental and MacArthur Scotch. He announced his first Palm Beach County real-. estate deal 50 years ago this week. Like Henry Flagler, MacArthur proved that Flori- da could be shaped by a sin- gle man. Like Flagler, MacArthur built his Florida legacy in the last decades of his life. But in place of Flag- ler's gilded edge, MacArthur brought a common touch. He perched atop bulldoz- ers to direct drivers around trees, toted luggage for guests of his hotel and spent hours manipulating politi- cians for sport. He wore rumpled, worn clothing:, lived humbly and took great pains to avoid convention.He put his faith in the one thing that brought him to the tope himself. He used people as props. He .divorced one woman to marry another, refused to help his daughter find her missing son and took over his son's business when it became a success. i His best friend was a dog. Yet he inspired fierce loy- alty in his sales force of thou- sands and, even today, many of the men and women who worked for him in Palm Beach County gather every March 6 to toast him on his birthday. He grew up in the shad- ow of three successful broth - See MacARTHUR, 4E Joel Engelhardt is an editorial writer for The Palm Beach Post. His e-mail address is joel engelhardt@pbpost. com Viiksge Of North pts Seach Village Histcty Ile wasn t Pop. M a cA RTH U Rfirom 1E ers: Alfred, an insurance executive; Telfer, a publisher; and Charles, the Pulitzer Prize-winning play- wright. His cousin, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, commanded U.S. forces in the Pacific -and South Ko- rea. John left the fame to them. But when it came to collecting money, he would come out on top. He lived like a character out of ,one of his brother's stories during the Roaring '20s: savvy, direct, ruthless. His friends and employees knew him as the Skipper, John Mac or the Old Man. He did not look rich, sitting with a slouch in a coffee -stained shirt, Whiskers bris . - ding, cigarette dangling. 1, He never stopped doing what he liked best: making' money. In death, it is what he didn't do, however, that reverberates today. He left his $1 billion fortune and his stewardship over northern Palm Beach County to a. founda- tion. And he left the foundation no instructions. "I'll do what I know best and make it," he told them. "You fel- lows will have to learn how to spend it.' First fight: MacArthur takes over town hall MacArthur spent 23 years in Palm Beach County, manipulating his empire to the end.. When he arrived in 1955, few people lived in the 10 -mile swath between the small town of Lake Park and the even smaller town of Jupiter. Between lay scrubland and pine and palmetto woods and a lush vestige of the Everglades called the Loxahatchee Slough. Over two dec- ades, MacArthur would come to own just about all of it. His arrival was heralded in the May 18, 1955, Palm Beach Post. The "Chicago financier19 owned 80 per- cent of Lake Park, plus 2,200 acres on Singer Island and land he would name North Palm Beach. He took the property to collect on a $4.5 million debt. Ralph Stolkin, a Chicago developer, gave up the land rather than make the first $100,000 payment. MacArthur entered like a big - city ruffian. When Lake Park denied hn'n the right to build a water and sewer system, it denied hh-n control over the only thing limiting the area's growth. So, MacArthur evicted offi- cials from town hall, a building he now owned. Then he called for the town's dissolution in a full-page ad- vertisement in the Sunday Palm Beach Post -Times. As a former news- paperman, he had a way with words. "I would feel I was doing a dis- service to all Lake Park residents not on the city payroll," he wrote, "if I did anything to help you keep your city government alive." The town, spurred by a mayor who took an immediate dislike to the billionaire, would not bend. MacArthur sued to dissolve Lake Park, forcing a settlement that gave him What he wanted: control. of the water supply. John D. MacArthur had come to town, and town would never be the same. He sold off North Palm Beach and the Lake Park lots to builders for $5 million, retaining land on Singer Island. He loaned the build- ers money and pressured them to move fast. By 1963, North Palm Beach had 6,000 residents. He also began amassing land farther west that would become Palm Beach Gardens. He bought thousands of acres at a time, at . prices ranging from $700 to $1,100 an acre. He hoarded land from. Lake Park to Jupiter. He bought the Loxahatchee Slough. Decades later, his foundation would sell those same parcels for exclusive gated communities. Frenchman's Creek, Mirasol I BallenIsles all bore MacArthur's stamp. In 1999, the foundation sold the leftovers, nearly 15,000 acres in three counties, for $228 million. MacArthur considered land a shrewd investment. He knew the more he bought, the greater the price he could command. He told an employee: "I don't want to buy the whole world. I just want to own everything next to what I already own." Z A wife and partner as frugal as he was MacArthur awoke at 4:45 every morning, smoked three to four packs of cigarettes a day and drank 20 cups of coffee. He lived to be 80. In business, MacArthur had only one partner, his second wife, Catherine, who shared his faith in the value of a dollar; uttered profan- ities to equal his own, but came to distrust the train of personalities who lined up to see her husband, hands outstretched. She shunned a social life. In- stead, she worked. Long after they made their fortune, Catherine pored over employee expense *re- ports, rejecting claims she found frivolous. They lived in Lake Park in a home with a carport. When it rained, Catherine would roll the car out for a quick dousing, then wipe it down and consider it washed. Catherine nagged MacArthur when he stayed up too late playing poker, persuaded him to give up his pilot's- license at age 60 and pro- tected him from showing his coarse side in social settings. MacArthur chased other wom- en. Catherine left him in 1948 and a year later sued him for half his holdings. Her suit included allega- tions that he spent company money on himself, hid income from the , IRS and encouraged false advertis- ing. He responded by suing her for divorce. She claimed they were never legally married because he didn't get his first wife's consent to a mail-order Mexican divorce in 1937. The suit showed that John and Catherine also were married by mail. But as insurance regulators and tax officials hovered, hoping to find evidence against a man who regu- larly escaped their clutches, the couple reconciled, and all charges were dropped. ITI-E PA,,4, 13r-Ats+ QS,r 5- 15-65 Acedkzoosr% 51UPPL-0 HERE: The center of the land ernire by Johli D. MacArthur looked like the edge of civilization in 1-982, the year his foundation- began marketing his land. Interstate 95 stopped at PGA Boulevard, not to be extended until 1987. By stamping out roads in the Garden Woods subdivision long before homes were built, MacArthur forced the interstate's future path to turn precipitously west —through more of his land. Radio Corporation of America, or RCA, had abandoned its complex in 1971, 10 years after MacArthur lured the company to provide an economic -base for his new city, Palm Beach Gardens. SPartan billionaire: You can,tbuy your way into heavenP MacArthur rarely gave any- thing away and, when he did, he usually had an angle. Like. the time he offered the Baptist college 200 acres, hoping to bring a university to his vast land holdings. When he gave money away, he didn't want anyone to know. He paid for the football field at Palm Beach Gardens High School but withdrew a donation for the swim - Ming Pool when the principal told a colleague of his largess. "Every time I give somebody something, I am besieged by a thousand others with their hands out," MacArthur said. "Frankly, I don't believe you can buy your way into heaven." He loved children and animals, but with men, MacArthur could be ruthless, impatient and unforgiv- ing. Some attorneys complained that he failed to pay his bills. "He didn't like people who tried to gouge him," said Bill Pruitt, whose firm did business with MacArthur for years. "He wasn't going to be a patsy." He would offer guests a drink at his hotel, the Colonnades on Singer Island. After they'd had their fill, he would remind them to pay the bartender on the way out. He looked for bargains every- where. On visits to Miami, he'd dine with developer Irving Miller. When MacArthur paid, he chose a place where they could eat for less than $1.50. When it came time for . s Miller to buy, Miller would select a pricier restaurant. Rather than free- load, MacArthur would limit him- self to soup or salad, nothing more than $1.50. Palm Beach Post reporter Gayle Pallesen flew with MacArthur in his final years — coach, always coach, because, you see, the tail gets there just as fast as the nose. She liked the old man but she AGA LANNIS WATERS/Staff Photographer The 43 -mile 1-95 missing link opened in December 1987, and The Gardens mail opened in October 1988. The MacArthur Foun- dation doled out land slowly over the next decade before unloading nearly 15,000 acres, including most of the land in this pic- ture, in one giant sale in 1999. Downtown at the Gardens, featuring a movie theater, restaurants and stores,'is rising just west of the mail. Across PGA Bouievard, more stores and office buildings are planned. The vacant land north of PGA Boulevard is slated to be an industrial park. And more homes are in the works to the north. wouldn't do what he once asked, when he nudged her and told her to ask the stranger in the next seat for his uneaten cake. Undeterred, MacArthur asked on' his own, reached over, wrapped the cake in a napkin and stuffed it in his pock- et. "Scotsmen are supposed to be very tight," MacArthur was fond of telling reporters. "Cheap is a better word for it. I've never denied it. I in- herited it. My father was a Scots- man, even if he was born in New York City three days after the boat landed." Son of a fire-and-brimstone preacher MacArthur's father, William Telfer MacArthur, was -a -failed farmer and self -ordained minister, who traveled the country railing against sin and damnation. . His mother, Georgiana, tried to shield her children from her hus- band. She died when John, the youngest of seven children, was still a teen. John spent several years with his father before he moved to Chicago to be with his three older brothers. John one day would have the money to buy anything he wanted but, in keeping with his father's ad- m0nitions, would spend next to nothing on himself. In Chicago, John worked for brother, Alfred, the insurance exec- utive. In 1916, at age 19, John later bragged, he sold more than $1 mil- lion worth of insurance. He did it by winning the confidence of facto- M-SuD_.ervisoTr�s� t I gain access to blue-collar workers. He yearned to top his brothers, first as a World War I flying ace (who never saw act -ion), then as a small businessman. He failed with a gas station, then a bakery. He tried newspaper work with brother Charles, who co -wrote the 1920s classic play The Front Page before marrying actress Helen Hayes. But John couldn't match Charles at the craft, and he went back to selling insurance. John married Louise Ingals, in 1919. They had two children, Vir- ginia and Roderick. But the mar- riage between two opposites — she quiet, gentle and refined; he loud, aggressive and coarse — didn't last, according to William Hoff- man's unauthorized 1969 biogra- phy, ne Stockholder. , John married Catherine, Al- fred's secretary, and got a divorce from Louise on a trip to Mexico in 1926. Louise refused to formally grant a divorce until 1937. He dis- played flashes of brilliance as an in- surance executive but clashed with his bosses, including Alfred. In 1928, he broke out on his own, borrowing $7,500 to buy the failing Marquette Life Insurance Co., even though the company's roster of high-risk customers and low cash reserves made it a bad risk. He survived the Depression by denying claims, a practice that would make his insurance compa- nies top performers, Hoffman wrote. In 1935, he learned of a stable company that would cost just $2,500. He borrowed the money and became the sole owner of Bankers Life and Casualty. He es- tablished the basis for his fortune in 1942 when he hit on the idea of selling insurance nsurance by mail for $1 a month after finding the untried pro- totype in the archives at Bankers Life, Hoffman wrote. 7� pnLnn L3*AcH Posr 5- t5 -o5 AeG -Air aws/ W DID HOPE PAY FOR THAT COFFEE?: MacArthur entertained Hollywood stars at the Colonnades Beach Hotel on Singer Island and named a suite for one of his favorite guests, comedian and fashion plate Bob Hope (taking a call while MacArthur pours in 1974). MacArthur made his home at the Colonnades (left) because he liked having a hotel -staff at his beck and call. The hotel was demolished in 1990 to make way for a Marriott time-share. VINo,ge of North pakn 8001 VIROge Hl" MacArthur bought a $50 ad in a Chicago newspaper and couldn't believe the response: more than 1,000 requests, according to Hoff- man. offman. A second ad did the sante. The era of mail-order insurance was born. MacArthur foresaw the day when regulators would intervene. So he built a nationwide sales force. By 1948, he could send a salesman to the door of any customer who re- quested a brochure. Mail-order gave MacArthur his first $1 million. But $1 million would not be enough. "The only reason I own 100 per- cent of the stock of my empire is that no one with $100 would invest in an impossible undertaking," he told a reporter three years before his death. "My own brother spent hundreds of hours giving me valid reasons why I had attempted an im- possibility. By all the rules of the game, Bankers Life and Casualty Co. should have gone down the drain 40 years ago. The only expla- nation I can offer is luck." In three years, the company's premium income quadrupled. By 1956, Bankers took in $120 million. MacArthur was ready to soak up the sun. Starting a city, with orwithout Disney Shortly after MacArthur found- ed Palm Beach Gardens in June 1959, Walt Disney slipped unno- ticed into the city. The creator of Mickey Mouse and Disneyland dressed down to avoid publicity as he met with MacArthur and offi- cials of the Radio Corporation of America, owners of the burgeoning i NBC television network. RCA want- ed anted Disney on its network. MacArthur wanted a Disney theme park on his land. MacArthur and Disney got along famously, two creative men in a world of suits. They shook hands on a deal: Disney would pro- vide the entertainment, NBC the programming, MacArthur the land and financing. It would be at least a year until the news seeped out. But by then the deal would be dead, killed by a moment of anger in the penthouse of the Palm Beach Towers condo- minium. MacArthur's wrath would fall on Roy Disney, Walt's brother, who ran the company's business side. The group gathered to draft the agreement, which would have put Disney on 320 acres along PGA Boulevard. Roy was there; Walt was not. Experts from the Universi- ty of Southern California had con- cluded that a theme park east of the Mississippi River would not drain business from Disneyland. In fact, they said, it promised to be a bigger hit. Shortly before lunch, Roy Dis- ney spoke the words that killed the deal, said Jerome Kelly, Mac - Arthur's real-estate adviser, who at- tended ttended the meeting. Kelly died in Novembe.r 2004. Roy Disney said he didn't want a repeat of Southern California, where Disney's neigh- bors made money off the theme park's success. Roy Disney wanted a bigger piece of MacArthur land. MacArthur didn't wait to debate. Roy was breaking his brother's hand -shake agreement. MacArthur would net be played for a fool. He said nothing until lunch. Then he stood and excused him- self. Kelly pulled him aside. How could he leave now? MacArthur told him: "I have to get the hell out of here or I'll hit that goddamn beagle right in the nose.99 Shaping a city and avoiding county control el ► MaCARTHUR from previous page The early 1960s found MacArthur selling lots and building homes in the first sections of Palm Beach Gardens, north of Northlake Boulevard and just beyond Lake' Catherine, named for his wife. He built a showy waterfall at the entry on a street later renamed MacArthur Boulevard. He made sure his first neighborhoods wrapped around schools. Even to- day, kids in those neighborhoods can bike to school without crossing s a six -lane road. The curving streets are fragrant with such names as i Buttercup and Bluebell, Aster and Azalea, Dogwood and Daisy. Sidewalks are scarce. MacArthur thought they should go behind homes, but builders dis- agreed. The result: The city today owns thin strips of land behind peo- ple's homes. :s When Florida Power & Light Co. told MacArthur it would be im- possible to bury its electric lines, MacArthur inquired into the price of operating his own power plaint. FPL got the message and gave in. Today, most of the city's power lines are underground. MacArthur founded the city to See MacARTHUR, next page (a avoid county control. His insurance men commuted from Chicago to form the first city council. MacArthur never lived in his city. He had a three-bedroom home for many years on a corner lot next to Lake Park Elementary School. The house, with 9 -foot -deep swim- ming pool, still stands, assessed for tax purposes at $101,000. MacArthur grabbed national ex- posure xposure for his city in 1961 when he moved a 75 -ton banyan from Lake Park to the Palm Beach Gardens entry. Life magazine ran a full-page photo of the tree dangling above utility lines and reported that it snagged a railway signal line, stop- ping three New York -bound trains, and later fell, crushing an earth - mover. Total bill: $26,000. But to sell homes, MacArthur knew, he needed jobs. He scored his biggest coup with RCA, which brought 2,000 jobs when it opened a plant in 1961. It helped that MacArthur owned more than 10 percent of RCA's stock. He added an entertainment draw in 1964 by luring the Profes- sional Golfers Association. MacArthur, who knew little about golf, didn't get along with PGA offi- cials, who knew little about busi- ness. The marriage lasted eight years before MacArthur evicted the PGA from what is now Ballenlsles. MacArthur bought Channel 12, a local Tv station, and WEAT AM, a radio station. He considered buy- ing uying The Balm Beach Post as well. In 1965, MacArthur's insurance men gave way to a city council elected by residents. "I have always viewed Palm Beach Gardens as something that will live after me, and I'm proud of what I have con- tributed," MacArthur said. "It is the only monument I want." By the 1970 census, Palm Beach Gardens was the nation's fastest-growing city, going from a lone squatter. in 1960 to 6,007 resi- dents. MacArthur didn't chase out the squatter. He gave him a home in Lake Park. Today, PGA Boulevard is the most expensive address in north- ern Palm Beach County, featuring upscale shopping and office build- ings. But in 1963, the road existed only in MacArthur's mind. Officials doubted that anyone would want to drive to such a remote spot. MacArthur convinced them other- wise. Once, reporters heard Mac - Arthur's raised voice through the door of the county engineer's of- fice. "I never would have bought that land if I hadn't thought the road would be four-laned," MacArthur shouted. , A county official left muttering, "That MacArthur is quite a sales- man." The result: The county would pay $875,000 for a new road, cross- ing virgin MacArthur territory and connecting Singer Island to the fu- ture path of Interstate 95. MacArthur would put up $600,000 for an exit at Florida's Turnpike. He would be repaid from toll collec- tions in two years, faster than any- one expected. When the interchange ' opened in 1965, MacArthur gave a speech and used the ceremonial scissors to snip the very real tie of his stTon- gest booster, County Commission- er E.F. Van Kessel. All the comforts of home MacArthur hated to make deals from behind a desk. He brought a kitchen -table mentality from the days when he and Catherine ran their insurance company from a Chicago apartment. In, 1963, he bought the Colon- nades Beach Hotel on the ocean in Pahn Beach Shores on Singer Is- land. He said he didn't want the ex- pense of a maid at home. Instead he would have a hotel full of ser-' vants — a waitress to fill his coffee pot, a switchboard operator to take his calls, a bartender to make his drinks. He started every morning with a phone call to Louis Feil, his real- estate partner in New York. To- gether, they amassed Manhattan office and apartment buildings worth hundreds of millions. By virtue of his daily presence at a 3 -foot -square table adorned by two phones and a coffee pot, the hotel coffeeshop became his head- quarters. From there, he dealt with Howard Hughes. The neon li,,ahft from a MacArthur hotel in Las Vegas bothered the reclusive Hughes, who lived in a hotel next door. Hughes offered to buy the sign. MacArthur said sure — but he would just put up another. Hughes bought the hotel instead, and MacArthur pocketed a $3 million profit. MacArthur holds a puppy from nis We'I'maraner, Zeckendorf, named for a New York_City developer. Businessmen, many of them looking for MacArthur to finance-,, their schemes, lined up at the Col- onnades, sometimes waiting for days. "This is- the greatest racket," MacArthur once told a New York Times reporter. "If I took these guys up to my office (in the hotel penthouse) I'd have to be courte- ous to them. Here, I can just get up and walk off into the kitchen and hide." MacArthur trained his dog, Zeckendorf, to growl on command, a handy prompt to end business talk. Zeckendorf, a gift from re- nowned New York developer Wil- liam Zeckendorf, had free run of the hotel, mooching food from din- ers. Then, MacArthur got a visit from the health inspector. The dog must be reined in, MacArthur was told. MacArthur scolded the large, golden Weil-naraner and chased him out the back door.- The dog ran to the front door, scampered back in and jumped into John D.'s chair. MacArthur turned. to the health in- spector. "Arrest him," he said. Zeckendorf would accompany MacArthur on car rides. Most hu- mans thought twice. "MacArthur drives with charac- teristic aggressiveness, a heavy foot and all individual style in 7 which he sits almost in the middle of the seat and uses his left hand, exclusively, on the wheel, leaving the right hand free for smoking and gestures," a reporter wrote in 1965. "He appears to point the vehi- cle by sighting directly down the center crease in the hood. There is a sense of elan and excellent tim- ing which makes the near -misses seem precisely planned." His wardrobe lacked Man. Howard Flynn, a neighbor and Lake Park town councilman, once asked MacArthur why he dressed like a bum. "Sometimes," bet - MacArthur said, laughing, "it's ter to feel like a bum than a million- aire." OutDisneying: Disney Disney World went to Orlando, and it stuck in MacArthur's craw. He decided to outdo Disney — in Palm Beach Gardens. MacArthur's Walt Disney would be Ivan Tors, the producer. His Mickey Mouse would be Flip- per, the dolphin. His Donald Duck would be Gentle Ben, the friendly bear. The public would pay to see what MacArthur was doing with all those animals — filming television shows and movies — a Universal Studios before there was Universal Studios. MacArthur and Tors also dreamed of TorsWorld, where Afri- can animals could roam free — a Lion Country Safari before there was a Lion Country Safari. They'd give people a reason to stay at Mac - Arthur's Colonnades Beach Hotel and to buy homes in his city. But relations between Tors and MacArthur soured over money, MacArthur's production chief, Sherman Adler, recalled. To get them back together, Adler said, he suggested a game show, the na- tion's first outdoor daytime pro- gram, Treasure Isle. It would be filmed at the Colon- nades, pack the hotel with guests, and bring Tors to MacArthur's front door. MacArthur built a 1 - acre lake at the Colonnades, where he could watch filming and Zecken- dorf could roam the set, free to chew through a cable and delay the first day of production. The show, which challenged contestants to run a watery gantlet to win a trea- sure, was a hit for two seasons. \ANaqe of North Palm Beoch Village History MacArthur steered bulldozers around- trees and wasn't above moving even the than the average person. For example, I built Palm Beach Gardens without largest banyan. 'There are some bearded jerks and little old ladies who call me a knocking one tree down. I moved the biggest tree ever moved in Florida — they despoiler of the environment,' he once said. 'But I believe I have more concern said it weighed 80 tons, although I doubt it.' .0 V X 0 SM I believe in doing an honest day's work and always have. How do you tell what is a day's .work? You count your maHcers. A marker may just be a $10 bill. But at the end of every day you count your markers. And if you have more than you had yesterday, you've probably done a day's work.' MacArthur's last grand design for the empty land west of Florida's Turnpike was to bring the winter home of the Ringling Brothers cir- cus, complete with resort apart- ments. partments. Adler negotiated for a year with the tough-minded Houston millionaire Roy Hofheinz, the man who dreamed up the Houston As- trodome. MacArthur invited the governor and the press to the hotel for the signing. The former judge, Hofheinz, flew in from Houston. Adler, in his mid-20s and excit- ed xcited by the hoopla, sensed som.e- thing amiss. MacArthur pooh- poohed his concerns before rising to make an announcement: "You know, I had a sleepless night last night. I'm not sure about this deal. I don't know if I want it. An old man shouldn't have more on his plate than what he can eat that day." "Men we have nothing to say," Hofheinz, who used a wheelchair, said, rolling toward the door. "Judge," MacArthur said, calm- ly. "Did you spend the night here (at the Colonnades) ?" The judge nodded. "Make sure you pay your bill on the way out," MacArthur bellowed. "And don't let the doorknob hit you on the ass." Sensing the end In 1970, doctors treating MacArthur for lung disease discov- ered iscovered something worse: stomach cancer. Surgery would add eight years to his life but it awakened in him a sense of mortality. "I realized I had so much to do. I hadn't prepared properly. what would happen to the company? It would go down the drain to pay the taxes. I asked for one more year to straighten things out," he told a re- porter, recalling a stressful night in the hospital. When morning came, MacArthur bellowed, "Get me my lawyer!" And the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Founda- tion oundation was born. JOHN D. MacARTHUR Three years before his death "He had a 25 -cent will. Like most guys, he said there was no rush," said Phil Lewis, who man- aged a family foundation and talked with MacArthur about setting one up. "I said. ,'Mr. MacArthur, you gotta do this. It's the only way to get around Uncle Sam coming in and taking everything.'" Retirement never occurred to MacArthur. "I'm not against retirement for those who want to sit around and wait to die," MacArthur said at his 77th birthday celebration. "But I need a reason to live." He had not decided what his foundation would do. "Maybe now I'll have more time to think about that," he said. If he did, he never said. He left it to the foundation board, made up of his wife, Catherine; his son, Rod- erick; and friends and business as- sociates. Paul Harvey, the Chicago radio commentator who plugged Bankers Life on his show, served until 2002. Doing it his way MacArthur kept himself busy during the '70s fighting lawsuits in just about every jurisdiction in northern Palm Beach County. The man who prided himself on saving trees battled criminal charges of dredging without a permit, a build- ing stoppage because his sewer company didn't meet county health standards, and lawsuits over devel- opment of his vast Pal -Mar hold- ings straddling the Martin County border. All the while he held court at the Colonnades, fed the ducks ev- ery day and never mellowed. He built Palm Beach Gardens hospital but refused to let the city council run it. It remained closed for a year until a not-for-profit could take over. He didn't give the city land but sold it 10 acres for city hall in 1970 (price: $155,000). He went to court when the county wouldn't meet his price on 9.4 acres for a north county court- house,, ourthouse.: The jury awarded MacArthur $169,000, twice what the county offered. But, in less no- ticeable ways, he could be gener- ous. Even though his idea for a Palm Beach Atlantic College in his city never came about, he quietly helped the school make headway in downtown west Palm Beach. A $12 million donation to the college was among his final acts, delivered three years after his death. Last days, last deals MacArthur went to the hospital in November 1976 under the cover story of choking on an ice cube. He had suffered a stroke, which weak- ened his left side and quieted his salty tongue. But it didn't slow him down. Hugo Unruh, then a west Palm Beach police officer, remembers pulling MacArthur over for driving erratically one morning at dawn. The old man seemed lost and couldn't speak, and Unruh, now a powerful county lobbyist, didn't recognize the name. He put him in fall for his own safety. That is, until a supervisor heard of it. A call to the Colonnades brought Mac - Arthur's chauffeur, who chastised the old man for slipping out, again, for a joy ride. In 1973, MacArthur evicted Adeline Moffett, the widow of a Standard Oil chairman, from her $150 -a -month Palm Beach apart- ment partment for not paying rent. Three years later, despite his stroke, MacArthur battled her $50 million lawsuit and a court order to dis- close his wealth. He still owned close to 50,000 acres in northern Palm Beach and southern Martin counties and ran the nation's largest privately held insurance conglomerate. His hold- ings included banks and develop- ments in New York, Colorado, Cali- fornia and Texas. "It would take a battery of ac- countants, maybe 20, working full time for several months to untangle his financial web," his attorney said. In 1976, Newsweek magazine rat- ed ated him the second -richest Ameri- can, with assets of $1 billion. Tough on the children MacArthur rarely gave his chil- dren, Roderick and Virginia, a break. MacArthur, a high school dropout, complained that Roderick wasted too much time in college when he could have been running an insurance empire. Virginia stud- ied art in Mexico City, where she married and set up home, too far away for MacArthur to keep count of her children. When her son, Gregorio Floren- cio Cordova, disappeared while hitchhiking to San Francisco in 1973, family members criticized MacArthur for failing to help. MacArthur dismissed the disap- pearance as a teen escaping his parents' troubled marriage. Ill will with Roderick climaxed in 1975 over the Bradford Ex- change, the commemorative plate business that made Roderick a mil- lionaire. The mail-order company started in the early 1970s with a $115,000 loan from Dad. But when sales soared, MacArthur demanded control. Ultimately, father locked son out of the company offices (in a building dad owned) . Roderick, who was in his 50s, staged a day- light raid to get back his inventory of 25,000 plates. The relationship improved in the final years, and fa- ther ather entrusted son with his funeral plans. "In the old days, a good Irish wake was pleasant. You saw your old friends... you drank good whiskey and ate good food," John wrote to Roderick. "With the com- ing of the funeral home, the style changed and today's funeral bores everybody. "Call me eccentric if you wish, but I am for having a great get- together ettogether at a convenient time.... Everyone would eat, drink and be happy.... Before the dancing start- ed tarted we would let one speaker tell ev- erybody verybody what a great guy I was. I will have no control over the `me- morial service' but will provide the funds to do it right." In early January 1978, surgeons found cancer of the pancreas. They gave MacArthur two weeks to live. He died three days later, on Jan. 6, 1978. His body was cremated. No fu- neral was held. His son organized the memorial service a year later. Catherine didn't attend. The land he amassed went to his foundation, which took years deciding on a course of expensive gated commu- nities. The money the foundation made would be given away more than $3 billion by last count turning the gruff old man into one of the world's foremost philanthro- pists. John D. MacArthur got no plaque, no statue, no tombstone. No marker at all' ... except, of course, the way we live. To compile this account of John D. MacArthur's life, The Palm Beach Post combed through three decades of newspaper accounts, tracked govern- ment records dating to the 193Os and conducted interviews with dozens of Mac -Arthur's contemporaries in South Florirda. Driving with MacArthur, one of the world's most accessible billionaires, could be a. hair-raising experience. In this 1977; photo, he's driving a golf cart at the JDM Country Club, one-time home of the Professional Golfers' Association. 16