William Wrigley, Head of Chewing Gum Giant, Dies at 64
William Wrigley, chairman of the world’s largest chewing gum company and a major benefactor of USC and the university’s research facilities on Santa Catalina Island, died of pneumonia Monday in Chicago. He was 66.
For years, his family owned virtually the entire 42,000-acre island and the Chicago Cubs baseball team, which trained there until 1952. The family also built and owned the imposing Mediterranean mansion on South Orange Grove Boulevard in Pasadena that now serves as headquarters for the Pasadena Tournament of Roses.
Born Jan. 21, 1933, in Chicago, Wrigley was the son of Philip Knight “P.K.” Wrigley and the grandson of William Wrigley Jr.
It was Wrigley Jr. who, in 1892, founded the chewing gum company that bore his name. He went on to make millions manufacturing and marketing products such as Spearmint and Doublemint gums.
Wrigley Jr., who lived most of the year in Chicago, built the Pasadena mansion in 1914 as a summer home. Two years later, the same year that he bought the Cubs, he purchased all of Catalina except the square mile that makes up the town of Avalon for $2 million.
William Wrigley, who was reared in Chicago, attended Deerfield Academy in Deerfield, Ma., and graduated from Yale University in 1954 before serving as a reserve officer in the Navy.
He joined the Wrigley company in 1956, two years before the family donated the mansion and its 4 1/2 acres of grounds to the Tournament of Roses.
Rising rapidly through the firm, Wrigley was named president and chief executive officer of the family company in 1961. He also served as a director of Texaco and as chairman of the Santa Catalina Island Co., which managed the family holdings on the island.
In 1975, under Wrigley’s direction, the family deeded 86% of the island to the Santa Catalina Island Conservancy, a nonprofit organization founded to administer and preserve the island’s natural resources. In 1981, he sold the Cubs to the Tribune Co., publisher of the Chicago Tribune.
Wrigley, a member of the USC Board of Trustees and a longtime contributor to the university’s endowments, donated $5 million in 1995 for the establishment of the USC Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies on the island. The 1,500 students at the institute study a broad range of ecological issues.
Wrigley also was a life trustee of Northwestern Memorial Hospital in the Chicago area and served as a member of the advisory board of the Center for Sports Medicine at Northwestern Medical School.
He was first married in 1957 to Alison Hunter. They had three children, Alison Elizabeth, Philip Knight and William Jr., before their marriage ended in divorce in 1969.
The following year, in a ceremony on the island, William Wrigley married Joan Georgine Fisher. That marriage ended in annulment.
In November 1981, he married Julie Burns, an environmentalist who has been active in the work of the institute on Catalina.
He leaves his wife and children. Funeral services are pending in Chicago.
