Tom Monaghan: With His Eyes on Heaven

TOM MONAGHAN

Portrait by Dave Neill

With His Eyes On Heaven

Sometimes, it is easy to blame others and avoid taking personal responsibility for one’s own circumstances. That could have easily been the case with our Chairman and Founder, Tom Monaghan. You might say that everything seemed stacked against Tom from a very early age. • He lost his father on Christmas Eve when Tom was 4 years old. • He spent the next 6 years living in an orphanage run by Catholic nuns. • He spent most of the remainder of his school years living in foster homes. • He was sent home from the seminary, shattering his dream of becoming a priest. • He graduated last in his high school class. • He enlisted in the Marines, and upon discharge lost all his savings to a swindler. • He did not have enough money to go to college and had to quit in his freshman year. • He bought a small pizza store, which over the ensuing years brought him more than once to the brink of bankruptcy, suffered the loss of his headquarters to a fire, and was involved in a costly 5-year lawsuit that went all the way to the

U.S. Supreme Court to keep his company name. Perhaps you have heard part of the Tom Monaghan story, but hopefully there are things you will learn in the next few paragraphs that will help you understand more about this unique and generous man and why he would spend so much of his fortune on starting Ave Maria School of Law.

Tom Monaghan with his wife, Marjorie

There were a number of influences in Tom’s life that paved the way for him not only to become successful in business beyond his wildest dreams, but to ultimately divest himself of his vast luxuries in order to dedicate his life and his resources to getting more people to Heaven. It is a journey very few others have had the faith to take. Without a doubt, Tom will readily admit that his biggest influencer, his biggest supporter and a big part of his success is his wife of 58 years, Margie. Tom’s first and a lasting influence ironically was as a result of the loss of his father at a very early age. The 6 years he spent in the orphanage with the Felician sisters had an enormous influence on Tom’s faith formation. Even at that young age, Tom was dreaming big, of being financially successful and of being respected. “As a boy I was upset by the biblical proverb, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.” When I asked the nuns in the orphanage to explain it, they told me it means that a rich man needs to be poor in spirit. A person should be humble about wealth and want to do good with money, never anything morally wrong. I thought that was a pretty good guideline.” Tom’s enlistment and subsequent training in the Marine Corps was another factor that strongly influenced him and prepared him for the seemingly insurmountable challenges that would lay ahead. Making it through the 16 weeks of Boot Camp gave Tom a lot of confidence. Tom felt if he could make it through that, he could deal with anything. Spending time on a ship in the South Pacific gave Tom a lot of time to think about life and his future. During that time, he came up with what he calls his five priorities…his roadmap for life. These priorities are: Spiritual: To be a good Catholic and have a strong relationship with God Social: To live by the Golden Rule Mental: To continue to educate oneself Physical: To care for the body which is the temple of the Holy Spirit Financial: To work hard and save for future goals The big dreams he allowed himself to have for wealth and success, he realized, would be empty and meaningless if they lacked consideration for others and for God. “I asked myself what good a lot of money would do me if I don’t have friends, a good marriage, continued health, or if I did not go to heaven.” Despite the potential “excuses” listed above that may have given Tom reason to think he could never be a success, he did become successful - even beyond the wildest dreams of his youth. After years of challenges, setbacks, broken partnerships and lawsuits, Domino’s Pizza became the largest pizza chain in the world. With its enormous success eventually came the opportunity and the money for Tom to impress people. “I think I have always had a stronger than average urge to impress people. I don’t know where that came from. I think that was probably my upbringing, where I was always sort of poor, embarrassed about the situation that I was in, not having the things that other kids had, particularly a normal family.” In the early years of his success, Tom did impress. He bought things to impress other people - jet planes, a helicopter, yachts, classic cars - including an $8.1 million Bugatti Royale, an Indy Race car, a northern Michigan island resort and finally the Detroit Tigers professional baseball team. Tom admits: “I didn’t pull off the role model thing very well. As a successful Catholic in the financial world, I had the idea that I was meant to be a role model, but there were a lot of mess ups along the way. I had this compulsion for all these luxuries and I was so foolish and so stupid, especially when I think of what I could have done. But it was obvious to me after I read C.S. Lewis‘s Mere Christianity that I was exactly the kind of person I hated: a show off. Thank God I had a second chance.” Upon reflection, Tom recalled what he really always knew - that there is something in life

Tom Monaghan with the late Justice Antonin Scalia

that is a lot bigger and more important than those things that had come about from the success he had at Domino’s. Tom had faith that God would help him find the “something” that was more important, and that He would then show Tom the way to his ultimate goal, which was to get to heaven and take as many people with him as possible. After reading Mere Christianity, he knew he needed to face up to the sin of pride and do something about it. From that moment on, Tom took what he called “the millionaire’s vow of poverty.” He decided to give up all ostentatious luxuries (not conveniences), but show off luxuries. There was no more interest in collecting a fleet of collector cars. He sold his jets and yachts. He sold the Detroit Tigers and ultimately sold Domino’s. This vow began to change his life and before long he found himself more content and at peace. Three things that became priorities in Tom‘s life were attending daily Mass, daily praying the rosary and regular confession. So what convinced Tom that it was necessary to spend tens of millions of dollars to start Ave Maria School of Law? Tom learned a lot about lawyers in his many years of business dealings. Over the course of a five-year battle with Amstar, which owned the Domino’s Sugar brand, Tom’s company spent up to $30,000 to $40,000 a month on legal fees. Tom observed: “Law is such an important profession. It is lawyers who effectively run our country. They have so much influence on our society. Most of our politicians are lawyers and of course all our judges are lawyers. Every large corporation has lawyers at every board meeting, if not on the board itself.” It had also become clear to Tom at this time that most Catholic institutions of higher learning had turned away from virtually any Catholic identity at all, drifting more and more toward moral and social relativism, with less regard for religious truth. Many hired faculty without any consideration of their faith or support of Catholic higher education and by separating faith from reason, they created a vacuum that encouraged new relativism based on academic freedom and little concern for an authentic search for truth. He concluded that there was no authentically Catholic law school out there. So, it seemed to Tom that if he wanted to positively influence society/culture, then forming authentically Catholic attorneys was a must. He wanted to train lawyers who not only excelled in the practice of law, but who were formed in the morals and ethics, according to the Catholic intellectual tradition. With this as the backdrop, in the fall of 1998, Tom set in motion plans for building Ave Maria School of Law, a law school that would use faith and reason, and the Truth as its foundation for teaching. An exceptional Catholic faculty was immediately drawn to the opportunity to teach at a law school whose mission was to provide a legal education in fidelity to the Catholic Faith as expressed through Sacred Tradition, Sacred Scripture and the teaching authority of the Church. The law school also hired Bernie Dobranski who was at the time the Dean of the Law School at Catholic University of America to be its first dean. When Tom described the launching of the Ave Maria School of Law as a “First Class” operation, he was not exaggerating. They had an outstanding board put together from a dream list. There were several brainstorming meetings with top Catholic legal experts including Supreme Court Justice Scalia, who flew to Ann Arbor for a meeting about the curriculum and other matters pertinent to the formation of this new authentically Catholic law school. And perhaps the biggest coup was being able to get Judge Robert Bork to agree to serve on the faculty. The enormous early success of Ave Maria School of Law in Michigan was all Tom had hoped for and more. The success in attracting quality students and the top ranked success of its graduates on the bar exam was unprecedented among new schools. The move of the law school to Naples, Florida in 2009 began another new chapter in its history. The law school’s second dean, Eugene Milhizer, noted: “Our society is run by lawyers, for better or worse, and I think there is a real place at the table for a school that says not everything is relative, that some things are evil and some things are really good, and that words have meaning. When you see this playing out in the real world, there are real consequences. The law school is training future leaders of our country and future lay leaders in the church. The culture will be a better culture when our graduates start assuming positions of authority.”

In 2014, Kevin Cieply, JD was appointed by the board as the law school’s third dean. The strength of his military background certainly played a role in that decision. Dean Cieply’s resume includes 22 years of military experience including as a helicopter pilot and JAG officer, retiring in 2008 as a colonel. Under Dean Cieply’s leadership, the mission at Ave Maria School of Law has remained inviolate, as it has in consecutive years been named the most Devout and the most conservative Catholic Law School in the country. “What we try to give our students here is a deep understanding of the law that cannot be found without faith and reason working together.” This year, Ave Maria School of Law celebrates its 20th year, and our graduates have indeed started assuming positions of authority. Seven of its alumni have been elected or appointed to state or federal judgeships. Others have gained recognition for their work at the Vatican, in major U.S. corporations and for various positions defending religious liberty and the right to life, including appellate practices before the United States Supreme Court. So, what does Tom Monaghan have to say as he reflects on his decision to start Ave Maria School of Law:

“Very few people have the opportunity and the ability to start a Catholic law school so I saw it as an obligation. But I always knew this was nothing that I could do alone. I want to personally thank everyone who has shared my vision and has helped us for the last 20 years to develop the kind of faithful students and graduates who truly will make our culture better, and perhaps even save it.” Tom recognized early on that his dream of having a law school dedicated to the creation of faithful, ethical lawyers was not something he could do alone. He has spent tens of millions of dollars to create its solid foundation. Now it is our turn to build on Tom’s dream - a dream we all can share. Thank you.