Paying Tribute to the American Dream — and Dreams of People Everywhere

By DOMENICA MARCHETTI

Kenneth E. Behring was raised poor in Depression-era Wisconsin.

His father, who worked in a lumberyard, and his mother, who cleaned houses, cautioned their son not to set his ambitions too high. “You are what you are,” they told him.

But their son didn’t listen. Even as he watched his parents struggle to get by, Mr. Behring fervently believed in the proverbial American dream: that if he worked hard, he could succeed in life.

That dream sustained him during his early career as a used-car dealer, car-wash owner, and, by the time he was 20, owner of a new-car dealership. He soon ventured into real estate, eventually amassing a fortune as a developer, first of inexpensive condominiums, then of luxury gated communities, from Florida to California. He also had a short-lived career as owner of the Seattle Seahawks football team.

Last September, Mr. Behring, 72, who lives in Danville, Calif., decided it was time to offer a gesture of gratitude to his country for offering him the opportunity to realize his dream. That gesture came in the form of an $80-million gift to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, in Washington. The money will be used to modernize the museum’s exhibits and to showcase the role of the American dream in the nation’s history.

Mr. Behring’s donation to the Smithsonian last year is not the only large gift he made in 2000. He also gave $7.5-million to expand the Principal Leadership Institute, a training center for educators, at the University of California at Berkeley. And he donated $2-million in proceeds from the auction of his extensive gun collection to Wheelchairs for the World, a charity he established to distribute wheelchairs to disabled people in developing countries. Mr. Behring has also pledged to endow the charity over the next five years with $15-million from his private foundation.

“Some people give through their professions,” says Mr. Behring, whose financial worth is estimated to be about half a billion dollars. “I’m not a teacher or a statesman, but I can give back money.”

More Than Dollars

Those who know Mr. Behring as a philanthropist say he gives much more than dollars. Since starting Wheelchairs for the World, Mr. Behring has traveled the globe in his private jet, personally distributing dozens of wheelchairs to disabled people in Botswana, Guatemala, Mexico, Romania, and Vietnam, among other locations. So far, the charity has passed out more than 30,000 chairs, with a goal of distributing at least 100,000 per year.

“He is working harder than he ever has, trying to give his money away to the right causes,” says David Behring, one of Mr. Behring’s five grown sons, who is involved in running his father’s philanthropies. “His energy is boundless. He’s constantly traveling.”

Beyond his travels for Wheelchairs, Mr. Behring, who is semi-retired, has also worked to assemble a prominent international board of advisers to help guide the charity. The board includes several members of Congress, as well as Nelson Mandela and King Juan Carlos and Queen Sophia of Spain.

Mr. Behring’s commitment to help disabled people happened quite by accident. In 1999, he offered to carry a shipment of wheelchairs on his jet and deliver them to Eastern Europe and Asia during an already-scheduled trip.

Once Mr. Behring saw the immediate difference that a wheelchair could make in someone’s life, he was hooked. He speaks of one elderly woman who had been carried around on her son’s back. “She got real close to me and said, I’m 81. I wanted to die, but now I don’t want to.’”

“If he didn’t care so much, he wouldn’t do half the things I’ve seen him do,” says Christopher J. Lewis, director of marketing and fund raising at Wheelchairs. “When the Queen of Spain called him and gave him three days’ notice to appear at a dinner with the president and king of Spain, he mobilized. He got wheelchairs, he had people scrambling in every direction,” says Mr. Lewis, who is the son of Jerry Lewis, the entertainer and longtime national chairman of the Muscular Dystrophy Association.

Controversial Times

Still, Mr. Behring has faced his share of controversies, both in business and in philanthropy. Among the most heated was the construction of Blackhawk, a luxury golf and residential development with 2,400 homes, outside of San Francisco. Local environmentalists protested the project and took Mr. Behring to court. He eventually paid an undisclosed sum to settle the suit, then built the development.

His seven-year tenure as owner of the Seattle Seahawks was also rocky. He was viewed as an intruder at a time when Seattle’s population was on the rise, in part from migrating Californians. What’s more, the Seahawks performed poorly during the first four years that he owned the team. He sold the the team in 1996 to Seattle billionaire Paul Allen.

His hobby as a hunter of rare game came under fire the following year, when he donated $20-million to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History to renovate the building’s rotunda and refurbish its Hall of Mammals. Mr. Behring also offered to donate some of the beasts he had bagged, but the Smithsonian declined the offer following vociferous criticism from environmentalists and animal-rights groups.

While Mr. Behring defends his actions as a hunter, he has since given up the pursuit, saying he prefers to spend time on his philanthropy.

He recalls one of his earliest gifts, the establishment of an annual teaching awards program at his sons’ high school in Florida, where he had moved his family in the 1960’s to expand his land-development business.

In the 1980’s, as his wealth grew, so did Mr. Behring’s giving. He founded the Blackhawk Automotive Museum, in Danville, Calif., to house his extensive collection of antique and classic cars, and the University of California at Berkeley’s Museum of Art, Science and Culture. He became close to Ira Michael Heyman, then the chancellor of Berkeley, who later became secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.

The friendship led to Mr. Behring’s $20-million gift to the National Museum of Natural History. Mr. Behring’s relationship with the Smithsonian continued even after Lawrence M. Small replaced Mr. Heyman as secretary in January 2000. Mr. Behring says he was especially impressed with Mr. Small’s vision for the National Museum of American History. While the museum was created in 1965 to chronicle the history of technology in the United States, Mr. Small had plans to broaden its scope to focus on other aspects of history, a goal that meshed perfectly with Mr. Behring’s desire to find a way to pay tribute to the American dream.

His only regret, Mr. Behring says, is that he did not start sooner. “I don’t think when I was younger I knew what satisfaction you could get out of giving back to people,” he says.

It’s a lesson he’s trying to pass on to the next generations of Behrings. For Christmas, Mr. Behring took Pat, his wife of 51 years, his five sons and their wives, and his 10 grandchildren to Mexico to deliver wheelchairs.

“I’ve never had a feeling like lifting a child that has never walked, putting him on a wheelchair, and showing him how to use it,” Mr. Behring says. “I wanted the family to experience it, too.”