John Kluge, the richest man few heard of

There is only one reason many people have never heard of John Kluge, even though he was the richest man in the world a generation ago. John Kluge himself.

“I think a great deal of publicity becomes an obstacle,” Kluge said. “I’d love to be in the woodwork all my life. I enjoy it when I know who the other people are and they don’t know who I am.”

Yet his contributions to America included food distribution, broadcasting and a philanthropic record that began more than 40 years before his death, when he was a mere millionaire. Born on September 21, 1914, in Chemnitz, Germany, John Werner Kluge came to America -- specifically Detroit -- in 1922, where his stepfather put him to work at 10 in the family contracting business a a payroll clerk. At 14, Kluge left home to live with a teacher. He later said, “I was driven to have an education.”

Indeed, he attended Detroit City College (now Wayne State University) before being offered a scholarship from Columbia. This is where he cut his first deal, talking the college into doubling the offer by including room and board. This proved to be the best deal made in New York City since Peter Minuit bought Manhattan for $24 in beads, because over his lifetime, Kluge would become Columbia's greatest benefactor, donating over time $500 million to the university, including the largest single donation in collegiate history: $400,000,000.

However, his penchance for wheeling and dealing, and risk-taking almost ended his college days. A dean caught him playing poker. He told a biographer later,  “I told him, ‘Dean, you will never catch me gambling again,’ and it was then that I realized the dean of Columbia University didn't understand the English language. I had told him he'd never catch me gambling again.”

Kluge knew the English language well. As a German immigrant, he knew he had to lose the Deutsch accent if he were to succeed in America, and he definitely had that drive and ambition. Interestingly, though, while at Columbia the future capitalist flirted with communism, passing out their leaflets one time. That incidence of course did not threaten his academic career. He later said, “I was never an official member of the Communist Party, but I was quite liberal.”

But Kluge was too much of a risk taker for that economic philosophy. He said, “Looking back at my life as an undergraduate at Columbia, I remember it as a time of hard work — not only schoolwork, but also the part-time jobs that helped my classmates and me to get by in those years following the Depression.”

Graduating in 1937, Kluge returned to Detroit, working for a printing company. He served in military intelligence in World War II, rising to captain. After the war, he walked up and down Georgia Street in Silver Spring, Maryland, soliciting investors for his new radio station, WGAY. It was the first of more than 200 companies he would invest in over the course of a lifetime. He put up $15,000. His success led to the acquisition of other radio stations in St. Louis, Dallas, Fort Worth, Buffalo, Tulsa, Nashville, Pittsburgh and Orlando, Florida. In the 1950s, he invested heavily in FM radio stations, which were considered mere afterthoughts compared to AM.

But at the same time, he also was in the food distribution business, beginning with a Frito's franchise in the New England states in 1947. Fleischmann’s yeast, Blue Bonnet margarine and Wrigley’s chewing gum would join his eclectic roster of goods. He merged with his chief competitor, David Finkelstein, in 1956.

In 1959, Kluge acquired a minority interest in the Metropolitan Broadcasting Corporation. Shortly afterward, he had a talk with Barney Balaban, president of Paramount Pictures, who told him, “Young man, you bring me $4 million and you’ll be able to have the Paramount stock in the Metropolitan Broadcasting Company.”

With that deal, Kluge took control of the company in 1960, renaming it Metromedia. The company bought two TV stations from television pioneer Allen B. DuMont who was shutting down his network. He bought others and soon had the largest chain of TV stations in the nation, running them as independents that relied heavily on re-runs. The company also had advertising companies, including a billboard division. He acquired the Ice Capades and the Harlem Globetrotters.

In a deal that shocked everyone, Kluge took sole ownership of Metromedia for $1.1 billion in 1984. This was the biggest gamble in his life. He then proceeded to sell off its parts for more than $4 billion, half of it from his sale of a dozen TV stations to the new Fox Broadcasting Network. His independent stations in  New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Boston, Houston, Washington, D.C., and five other cities were now network stations.

By 1989, Forbes magazine named him the richest man in the world. At 64 , he lived on a 7,378-acre estate near Charlottesville, Virginia, and its 45-room mansion. The estate included a golf course designed by Arnold Palmer.

Philanthropy that began in his 40s was now essentially his life, although he did make investments in cellular telephones and in Eastern Europe following the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. Kluge did not merely write checks, but he devoted time to mentoring and counseling young people.

His personal life was a series of four marriages, including his third marriage to a woman who had posed naked in Britain's Knave magazine. He was so smitten by her that he converted to Catholicism to marry her.However, her nude posing and previous life as a belly dancer caused a scandal when Prince Charles visited them in 1986. The couple divorced in 1991. She received their mansion and a $100 million settlement. Later, though, she lost the estate to creditors as her winery business went bust.

His status as the richest man in the world led to an interview in 1990 by an obituary writer for the New York Times. It was not published for another 20 years, as he died on September 8, 2010.

Son John Kluge Jr. is carrying on his work, as he plans to give away 90 percent of the family fortune. The list of projects includes his father's favorites, including a scholarship program run by the Library of Congress and million-dollar Nobel-level science prizes for sciences not covered by Nobel. The son's top project is building a billion toilets. Giggle all you want, potable water and sanitation are the most important public health issue in the world, as they fight typhoid and a host of other communicable diseases. the fact that most people never heard of his father does not mitigate the importance of this exceptional American.

The first volume of "Exceptional Americans" is available here.