Millionaire’s Giving Pays Off in Blessings

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.”

* Each summer while Crean was in his early teens, he and his father, Andrew, would put down stakes in a tent city called Hobo Hot Springs in Kern River Canyon, about 40 miles east of Bakersfield. The dry heat helped his father’s asthma. Crean’s mother--who worked as a school custodian--would send them a monthly check. And when it arrived, Crean and his father would go to the store to buy food. One month, Crean noticed his dad was picking out different groceries. On the way home, Crean’s dad stopped at the tent of a poor old widow. “He knew she wasn’t going to be there. He set the groceries on the table and turned to me and said, ‘Don’t you tell a soul that we did this,’ ” says Crean with a laugh. “Boy, everyone wanted to know who gave her the groceries. That’s always stuck with me. That was awful nice.”

Which brings us to 1954. Crean was a struggling businessman with a young family. He and Donna started attending a new Lutheran church in Anaheim. The pastor held a class each Tuesday night for new members of the congregation. One evening, the pastor talked about tithing. The lecture changed Crean’s life.

“The preacher said if you were to give--and not expect anything in return--you’ll get your investment back tenfold in blessings,” he says. “That sounded like a pretty good deal. It was worth giving it a shot, anyway.”

So right then, John and Donna--$250,000 in debt--decided to give 10% of their earnings to the church.

At first, Crean made no connection between tithing and his rising fortunes. He just felt as a churchgoer, he should follow the rules outlined in the Bible.

“Christianity’s been around for a while, and it’s been successful,” Crean says. “I wasn’t ready to invent anything.”

A decade after Crean started giving, his church needed $200,000 for a new sanctuary. He didn’t think the small congregation could raise so much money. But that same year, Crean took his company public. In the initial stock offering, he made $2 million.

“Donna and I were in a hotel room in New York City, and we were so doggone excited,” Crean says. “We started to think about what a coincidence it was that 10% of $2 million was $200,000--the exact amount of money needed for a church. We called the preacher, got him out of bed and told him to go ahead with the building. That was a thrill.”

The Creans soon doubled their charitable giving to 20% and eventually raised it to 50%. “I’m very pragmatic,” Crean says. “If something works, I do more of it.”

Crean--who grew up in poverty during the Depression--has never shied away from material things. He built a sprawling estate on the edge of Newport Beach’s Back Bay called the Village Crean, the site of more than 50 charity events each year. And he recently bought a 112-foot yacht called the Donna C. But what makes him happy is giving away money.

And he wonders why more people don’t do it. If not because the Bible commands it, then because “it’s a real turn-on.”

It’s not an excitement many people share in Orange County, which ranks near the bottom of counties nationally when it comes to charitable giving despite its affluence--a puzzling fact for Crean.

“I wonder about that a lot,” Crean says. “There’s a lot of money in Orange County, and I can count on one hand the big givers. I could never figure it out. Most of us have a lot more than we need.”

Donna Crean--John’s partner in giving--has this advice for the unconvinced: “I’d just say try it for a while and see how much pleasure you get out of it. You get such a good feeling back when you share with people. People who give know the feeling I’m talking about. You’ll feel blessed.”