Clement Stone, 100; Self-Made Millionaire, Philanthropist

W. Clement Stone, a onetime Chicago newsboy who turned a $100 investment into a multibillion-dollar insurance business and enthusiastically preached the gospel of achieving success through a "positive mental attitude," has died. He was 100.

Stone, who gave more than $275 million to various philanthropies and was a major Republican Party supporter who donated more than $5 million to Richard Nixon's presidential campaigns, died of natural causes Tuesday at a hospital in Evanston, Ill.

From a single agency he founded in Chicago in 1922, Stone by the mid-1930s had built his Combined Insurance Co. of America into a major force in the industry.

In 1982, Combined merged with Ryan Insurance Group and five years later, when its name was changed to Aon Corp., Stone became chairman emeritus. Last year, Aon reported total revenues exceeding $2 billion.

Short and stocky, with slicked-down hair and a pencil-thin mustache that he kept perpetually black, Stone cut a jaunty figure with his wardrobe of colorful bow ties, pinstripe suits and gold cufflinks the size of quarters.

Stone once drove a gold Cadillac and he continued to smoke Cuban cigars, which he had stockpiled in pre-Fidel Castro days.

But as much a trademark as his flamboyant appearance was his ebullient, think-positive attitude.

"He's probably the most positive-thinking person I ever knew," the Rev. Robert Schuller, a 40-year friend who will speak at Stone's funeral in Evanston on Friday, told The Times on Wednesday.

"He was also a great believer in possibilities, and was one of the first persons to believe in my dream of a Crystal Cathedral," Schuller said. "Without his major seven-figure gift, this building would not be standing here today."

Members of Stone's insurance sales force were schooled in what Stone called PMA: positive mental attitude.

They were instructed in "how to keep a smile in the voice" and when to make eye contact with a prospective customer.

And they were encouraged to declare their PMA daily with catch phrases such as, "What the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve" and "Do it now."

At sales meetings around the country, Stone would stand on stage and ask his audience, "How do you feel?" They'd respond with the PMA mantra: "I feel healthy. I feel happy. I feel terrific."