John Crean had a pretty good year in 1998.
Already one of the wealthiest men in Orange County, Crean, 69, stepped down early last year as chairman and CEO of Fleetwood Enterprises--the nation's largest manufacturer of recreational vehicles and mobile homes--and cashed out stock for a nine-figure check.
Crean is uneasy about disclosing the exact amounts, but he quickly points out that Fleetwood is a public company and if you're dying to know the details, as Casey Stengel said, "You can look it up." It turned out to be $176.8 million.
And then he and his wife, Donna, did what they always do: They gave half of it away.
In addition to donating half his final year's salary to charities, the stock profits enabled the Crean Foundation--which gives money to worthy causes--to boost its endowment to close to $100 million.
To understand John Crean and his generosity, you need to solve this riddle: Why, in 1954, would a struggling entrepreneur--with a wife, two young boys, a mountain of debt and a weekly paycheck of $125--begin to tithe, giving 10% of his meager wages to the church?
There are some clues:
* In 1933, the Long Beach earthquake leveled much of Southern California. John Crean, then 8 years old, lived in Compton. "The earthquake scared the pants off of me," Crean recalls. "The night after the earthquake hit, we were sleeping in a tent in the vacant lot. The earth kept shaking, and all night long, both men and women were screaming and hollering like a bunch of idiots. Up until that time, I always thought the adults were in charge. But that busted my balloon right there. That's when I probably started looking for God."
* Young John Crean closely observed the family with five children who lived across the street. He had a knack--which later helped him build a business empire--for examining why something worked well and figuring out how he could use it. So he looked at this happy family and wondered: What made them so different? What made them so happy? So squared away? The one thing he could figure: "They were all avid church attenders, which was kind of neat. I always thought that was a good thing."
