Big Wheel

28 days, 26,000 miles, one man's obsession. And globetrotting tycoon Ken Behring is just getting started

By: William R. Newcott; September-October 2004 | Source: AARP.org | July 23, 2004

Beijing's Forbidden City, seen in the light of day, is the quintessential tourist attraction—a squeaky-clean Disney World pavilion writ large. Camera-toting visitors in wide-brimmed hats and sensible shoes stroll across the impossibly expansive courtyards snapping pictures of each other, the city's gently sloping buildings with their tiled roofs and ornate pillars serving as little more than an exotic backdrop for their family vacation albums.

But at night, when the tourists have gone, the 600-year-old palace of the emperors reclaims its mystical allure. Across the darkened courtyard, the Palace of Heavenly Purity seems to hover, illuminated, like a great treasure box. There, in earlier times, the emperor spent his nights—attended by thousands of servants and concubines.

On this night, of course, no emperor sits in the seat of honor. Rather, a dinner is in progress to celebrate the vision and largess of a remarkably average-looking American—an understated man who has made it his personal mission to provide a wheelchair for every single needy earthling who can't afford one.

In the past four years, Ken Behring and his Wheelchair Foundation have given away nearly a quarter of a million wheelchairs in 121 countries. He circumnavigates the globe in his private jet month after month, setting down in the most remote landscapes imaginable—Samoa to Somalia—to personally oversee their distribution. He's there to greet those who crawl, drag themselves, and piggyback untold miles to meet him, and to witness how their lives, so far without hope or a meaningful future, are changed in the brief moment it takes to lift them off the ground and into their own wheelchairs.

At the banquet in the Forbidden City's Royal City Restaurant, it is easy to pick out Behring in the sea of Asian faces. Throughout the 18 courses of shark fin soup, bird's-nest soup, abalone, chicken feet, and other delicacies, he keeps rising stoically—shifting a bit under the curse of an ancient football injury—through one glowing toast after another.

As the accolades flow over him, Behring's face remains strikingly impassive. At times he seems lost in thought, dwelling, in all likelihood, on his nagging obsession: "Outside of this building, there are still millions of folks who need my help." He has told me that, worldwide, some 150 million people need wheelchairs. "I had always thought of them as confining," he says. "But on these trips, I've seen firsthand how they provide freedom, mobility, and opportunity."

Behring's wheelchairs, engineered to his exacting specifications, are built in four plants in China. Each one costs an average of $150 delivered. Donors give $75, and his Wheelchair Foundation matches that. When a wheelchair is presented, a photograph is taken of the recipient as he or she holds a card bearing a name and the number of the wheelchair. The photo is sent in a folder to the chair's donor—but Behring, who personally witnesses as many chair presentations as he possibly can, insists there's nothing like being present for the big moment.

"I really encourage our donors to get out into the field to help distribute wheelchairs," he says. "Lots of donors will time their vacation trips to be where a distribution is taking place—Central America, or Asia, or Africa, even Tahiti. They take just one morning of their time to help put people into their new wheelchairs. Just one morning, but it changes their lives."

Indeed, to spend some time with Behring on one of his whirlwind, worldwide wheelchair-distribution tours—accompanied by his eight-member team of pilots and organizational staff—is to realize that just about the only time he seems truly happy, the only time his perpetual poker face finally breaks into a grin, is in the glow of the smiles, tears, and gratitude of each new wheelchair owner.

And when Behring's smile finally breaks through, it is beatific.

Day 1: San Francisco to Dalian, China

Behring bought this MD-87 jet eight years ago, when he owned the Seattle Seahawks. He used it to hopscotch the U.S., following his football team and sealing the myriad real-estate deals that made him one of America's richest men. He still wheels and deals globally—he is a businessman, after all—but for all intents and purposes, the Behring jet might as well be called Wheelchair One.

"I'm 75," he says, leaning over a table in the jet's sumptuous lounge. "But my life began just five years ago when I found a purpose. Before that, I'd had everything you could imagine, but something was missing."

He started out with virtually nothing. After losing the family's Wisconsin farm in the Depression, his dad went to work in a lumberyard for 25 cents an hour. There was no money for college, so the younger Behring cut lawns, worked in a cheese factory, and worked at Montgomery Ward before he finally scraped together $900, bought 27 used cars, and set up a business in an old chicken coop. At age 24, he had his own Lincoln-Mercury dealership. At 28, happily married and with a growing family that would eventually number five sons, he was a millionaire. By his mid-30s, he'd moved to Florida and built, from the ground up, the town of Tamarac, one of the nation's first planned senior communities. He owned the local utilities, banks, shopping centers—even the town itself, thanks to Florida's state legislature, which gave him the charter. When Behring entered a club in town, the band would play "Hail to the Chief."

Moving west in 1972, he built the high-end Blackhawk community near San Francisco and opened his own Blackhawk Auto Museum. In recent years, he's given $100 million in grants to the Smithsonian—the largest individual gift in that institution's history. Through it all, he says, "I believed that money would bring happiness. And I believed that I had acquired everything my quest for more could provide. Still, I had not found joy."

Then came the call. In 1999, as he was about to fly off for a hunting trip in Eastern Europe, Behring was contacted by a representative of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—the Mormons—who'd heard about the millionaire's globe-hopping habits. "They wanted me to deliver 15 tons of canned meat to refugees in Kosovo," he recalls. "I said sure, I was going that way anyway. 'And by the way,' they added, 'could you take a dozen wheelchairs to Romania?' "

It was a side trip that changed his life. Behring didn't just deliver the wheelchairs; he physically lifted a Romanian girl from the ground and placed her in one. "Before that experience, I had never thought about wheelchairs," he says. "After that trip, I could think of little else."

Day 3: Dalian, China

Behring presides over a symposium sponsored by the China Disabled Person's Federation, with which he has contracted to deliver 70,000 wheelchairs in 33 cities in the next two years. Numerous wheelchair recipients are there, and he moves from person to person, shaking hands and chatting with them in a practice that has become a ritual in every country he visits. And there is that smile, a visual echo of the expressions that greet him.

One young man grabs Behring's hands—and won't let go. His grasp is viselike, the grip of an athlete. His name is Xie Yanhong. Through an interpreter he tells his story: after receiving his wheelchair on an earlier trip, he became mobile enough to go to Europe, where he became the first disabled Chinese person to swim the English Channel.

"You gave me my life back," says Xie. "How can I ever thank you?"

The two men regard each other for silent moments. And in Behring's eyes—eyes that have stared down hard-nosed investors, eyes that have stared down the outrageous demands of spoiled athletes—tears begin to well.

Days 4-14: Beijing and Southern China

Following his ceremonial dinner at the Forbidden City and days of meetings in Beijing, Behring heads out to visit the four factories that produce all of the foundation's wheelchairs. The chairs are red, with heavy-duty wheels for rugged environments, and standard nuts and bolts for easy repairs.

Behring is a rare animal: a wheelchair enthusiast. He's constantly tinkering with the design of the chairs. An early modification made it easier for a user to slide sideways onto a chair. When TV pastor Robert Anthony Schuller commented that the chairs seemed uncomfortable, Behring almost immediately had designs started with new, cushioned seats. On this trip to China, he's picking up the foundation's first athletic wheelchairs, with slanted wheels for stability and speed. And he's also bringing home a prototype electric-drive motor that can be attached to virtually any wheelchair.

"I'm not as satisfied as I used to be with simply putting someone in a wheelchair," he says. "We can do other things to the chairs to improve the recipients' quality of life even more."

Day 16: New Delhi, India

As the chartered bus picks through the crowded streets of New Delhi, it's clear that anyone on a bicycle—or in a wheelchair, for that matter—would make better progress. Flying dust, stirred up by the endlessly milling humanity, chokes the group's throats and obscures their vision. Along the streets, entire homeless families have set up their beds. Their children scavenge for food.

Behring's bus finally stops at a ramshackle building that, according to his Mormon hosts, is a center for the disabled. And on this morning, it is a busy place. No sooner has the team entered and have the wheelchair shipping boxes been cracked open than the large day room is teeming with needy people—virtually all of them crawling or dragging themselves. Disturbing as that is, it is a scene that Behring has gotten accustomed to seeing.

"These people just can't believe that anyone cares for them," he says. "Here, and in a lot of countries, when you can't walk, your family treats you like you don't even exist. They hide you in a back room, and you spend your entire life sitting there, staring at the walls.

"But now these people have hope. They have freedom. And most important, they have dignity. They can go to work, or go to school, or just be with friends. I'll never forget one young man's father who looked me in the eye and told me simply, 'For the first time in his life, he can sit in the sun.' "

Day 18: Istanbul, Turkey

In this city that bridges Europe and Asia—at the heart of a region divided by religious differences—Behring brings to bear his uncanny knack for capitalizing on the most noble qualities of virtually any faith. He has just spent several days in India with the Mormons, helping Hindu people; today, he and His Holiness Bartholomaios, ecumenical patriarch of the Orthodox Church, are heading 10 miles out of Istanbul to help a largely Islamic population. (Tomorrow, not incidentally, he'll be meeting the pope.)

At a rehabilitation center run by the Society of Spinal Cord Paralyzed, dozens of people—many of them coming in borrowed wheelchairs—gratefully settle into the bright red chairs that now belong to them alone. Many seem in awe of the patriarch, imposing with his long beard and flowing robes. And Behring seems satisfied to stand back and watch him receive their attention.

"It's the gratitude of people that never ceases to amaze me," he says. "In Guatemala, there was this young man with gangrene in his leg who told me he only wanted to borrow a wheelchair until he could earn the money he needed to have the leg taken off. The doctor wanted $100 to cut off the leg and another $25 to put him to sleep during the operation. Well, right then and there I handed him $125. He handed me back $25 and said, 'It's okay. I don't need to be put to sleep.' I handed the money back to him and convinced him otherwise."

Behring's plane takes off from Istanbul, making a big sweep over the city at the mouth of the Black Sea. Below, the two shores of the narrow Bosporus are beginning to twinkle with light, joined by the pearl necklace-like lights of the Bosporus suspension bridge. In the blue-gray dusk, the domes of the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia, the Emperor Constantius's church-turned-mosque-turned-museum, crouch near the shore like great sea turtles.

Carol Vanderwilt, the plane's flight attendant, serves the chicken dinner she has just prepared in the MD-87's full kitchen between the plane's two luxurious passenger cabins. Her husband, Phil, has been piloting Behring's worldwide jaunts for four years. "The guy's really something," he says in the familiar drawl seemingly genetically inherited by airline pilots. "He won't turn anyone away. I've seen him walk out of his hotel on the way to some important meeting and see someone who needs a wheelchair. He'll stop what he's doing and send someone back to the plane to get one."

Day 19: Vatican City

The rain has stopped, and now the stones of St. Peter's Square are glimmering in the late-morning sun. Tens of thousands have crowded into the square to catch a glimpse of Pope John Paul II on this the day before Annunciation Day, but Behring is among the select few who are invited to step forward and kiss the pontiff's ring. It's a solemn moment, and even Behring—who counts as friends some of the world's most powerful people—appears reverential. But in the end, it's clear he sees the pope primarily as an influential ally in his worldwide mission.

"The Vatican has become a partner in our work," says Behring. "They're helping us reach disabled people associated with the Catholic Church throughout the world." Indeed, after his audience with the pope, Behring heads straight to a business meeting with Vatican officials. They discuss using the church's worldwide connections to get wheelchairs to needy people.

Days 21-22: Salamanca and Madrid, Spain

Behring spends the next few days relaxing with an old friend, King Juan Carlos of Spain. They hunt partridge in Salamanca, then fly in the king's helicopter to Madrid for more hunting. "We enjoyed two days in the woods together," says Behring. "We relax, and we always come home with some good game." The king and his wife, Queen Sofia, are in last-minute preparations for the upcoming wedding of their son, Crown Prince Felipe, to former TV anchorwoman Letizia Ortiz. The extravaganza was watched by an estimated 1.2 billion people around the world. Nevertheless, they make time for Behring, not only because he's a pal but also because the king and queen happen to be cochairs of the Wheelchair Foundation.

"Ken is not only a good friend; I firmly believe in what he is doing," says the king. "Like so many, I have caught his vision. I guess you could say he's infectious."

The king has a personal connection to the mission, as well, Behring confides. "His mother spent the last 15 years of her life in a wheelchair. We have the same worldview of helping the disabled. But mostly, our time here is to help me gather the energy I'll need for the final leg of our journey, to the Middle East."

Days 23-25: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

These three days pose the biggest challenge for the three women among Behring's eight-person entourage. Before they can even leave the airport, they must stop in a shop and buy black head-to-toe hooded robes. In Saudi Arabia, visiting women are required to observe all the social requirements Saudi women adhere to—and that usually involves segregation from the men. Even most areas of the sleek, black-windowed Four Seasons Hotel where the group is staying are strictly off-limits to the women of the party.

"It's not so bad," offers tall, blond Charli Butterfield, who arranges Behring's complex worldwide schedules. She admires the wide sleeves of her black robe. "It's actually kind of fashionable. The nice thing is you never have to worry about what to wear when you go out."

The Sultan Bin Abdulaziz Humanitarian City looks more like a futuristic metropolis than a rehabilitation hospital. The glass-buildinged campus, connected by glassed-in walkways, is home to one of the most advanced treatment and rehab facilities in the world. Clearly, there's no need for foundation wheelchairs here, but the directors are speaking with Behring about ways to help him get chairs into some of the Arab world's most closed societies.

There's one thing Behring's hosts all seem to love doing, and that is feeding him. The Saudis are no exception: tonight, he and his group (including the women, in a rare exception) are invited to the desert home of Prince Sultan bin Salman. Under a sky of endless stars, they lounge on pillows in front of huge stacks of vaguely described Saudi delicacies. The procedure, they are told, is to reach into the mounds, bare-handed, and simply pull off hunks. The visitors, who apparently have seen it all in their travels, dig in.

Day 26: Amman, Jordan

When you think of the Rotary Club, you probably envision a luncheon headed by a local car dealer somewhere in a small-town seafood restaurant. But Rotary, thriving worldwide, has embraced the Wheelchair Foundation as one of its major causes. What's more, a sizable delegation has turned up at the Amman airport to greet Behring, along with his local hostess, Princess Majda Ra'ad, a member of the Hashemite royal family. (Admittedly, as in most royal families, Hashemites have no shortage of distant relatives claiming a substantial link to the crown. But Majda and her husband, Prince Ra'ad, are indeed prominent members of the dynasty.)

An evening reception at the prince and princess's home, set in a lovely pine tree-shaded yard with tablecloths and formally dressed servers, is a stark contrast to the Saudi experience. Exotic-looking drinks with unfamiliar ingredients are followed by a buffet of chicken, prawns, lots of vegetables, and stuffed grape leaves. About 5 p.m., the still evening air is pierced by a call to prayer from a loudspeaker in the tall spire of a nearby minaret, but the party goes on uninterrupted. Inside the house come the speeches—welcome from the hosts, acknowledgment from Behring, and the big announcement of the night: Jordan's Rotarians have pledged to raise enough matching funds to distribute 5,000 wheelchairs around the country. Behring, predictably, is all smiles.

Day 27: Amman, Jordan

The sun rises over Amman's white rooftops, framed by the uncountable minarets that sprout skyward from this ancient city known to the Romans as Philadelphia. Just a few blocks from the group's hotel, carved into a hillside, stands a perfectly preserved Roman amphitheater, a reminder of just one of the many powers that have held sway here, at the crossroads of the world.

The morning is spent at the Al-Hussein Society for the Habilitation/Rehabilitation of the Physically Challenged. The group arrives at the modest facility to find some 40 red wheelchairs already unpacked and standing, folded flat, at one end of a large room. They come in five sizes, selected to match a patient's age. Already, patients—mostly children—are lined up in the hallway in wheelchairs of varying quality and age. One thing is common to all of those old chairs: they belong to the facility, not the patients.

One by one, each child's name is called. They roll forward to be lifted into their new chair by two center workers. As one boy settles into his chair, a worker looks him in the eye with a gaze that seems to say emphatically, this is your chair. The boy smiles, and to a Westerner's eyes, the look is gloriously familiar: it is the smile of a child on Christmas morning.

A tour of the facility reveals it to be functional but in need of some upkeep—a sharp contrast to the sleek modernity of the Saudi facility. As the group prepares to leave, the boy who loves his wheelchair careens around a corner. He's racing another kid.

On this day most of the children are accompanied by their parents, and Behring seems noticeably touched by their interactions. At Christmas a couple of years ago, he took his own family—his wife, Pat, their five grown sons, and their 10 grandchildren—to deliver wheelchairs in Mexico. It was one of their last times together; last November, his oldest son, Michael, died suddenly.

The day ends with a sightseeing trip to the Jordan River, to the reputed site of Jesus' baptism. The Jordan at this point, just a couple of miles north of the Dead Sea, is barely 20 feet wide—it's easy to imagine getting a good running start and leaping all the way across. (Of course, that would involve having to deal with the armed Israeli troops stationed on the other side.)

As the group tours the site, including the ruins of churches dating back nearly 2,000 years, Behring remains in his car. It has been a long, exhausting trip, and there's lots of walking involved in the visit, but there may be something else. Despite his worldwide involvement with clerical leaders, Behring remains surprisingly detached when it comes to matters of traditional religion.

"We work with people from just about all faiths," he says the next day as the jet makes its way across the North Atlantic Ocean, heading back to North America.

"We gave a wheelchair to a nun in Central America, and she told me, 'Who would have believed that a gift from the Mormons would allow me to continue my work as a Catholic?' That's what true religion is to me.

"No one can do this alone. The foundation has shown that it's possible to end immobility. We'll deliver a million wheelchairs within the next few years, but there are 150 million people worldwide who need help—and I mean everyone's help. Not just in buying wheelchairs but in taking vacation time to travel to a country we serve, to actually experience lifting people into their new wheelchairs. To experience the joy that only comes from giving."

He looks out the window. Below, fleets of icebergs clot against the shore of Greenland.

"I suppose I should be sitting here reflecting on a job well done. But all I see are millions of outstretched arms, pleading for help."

Additional reporting by William Nixon.

Additional Related Links:

Read Letters from Recipients of Behring's Generosity

Extended Interview with Behring on AARP's Prime Time Radio Show

AARP.org's Community Service Channel