A Tale of Pizza, Pride and Piety

By RON STODGHILL II

Domino's founder Tom Monaghan, 61, has always been a larger-than-life contradiction. He made a fortune pioneering a no-frills pizza-delivery business, then nearly squandered it on his own ostentatious life-style. He struggled for years to rebuild his empire and finally succeeded. Then last month he walked away from it all for the second, and presumably final, time by selling his family's 90% stake in Domino's for an estimated $1 billion to a private investment firm called Bain Capital.

The sale marked the end of one of the most colorful and controversial stewardships of a pizza company--or for that matter any other type of business. Monaghan, a devout Roman Catholic and an antiabortion crusader, has for years been drifting away from Domino's, which he founded with his brother in 1960, toward charitable pursuits at home and in foreign countries. He has opened a mission in Honduras and supervised construction of a cathedral in Nicaragua. More recently Monaghan has bankrolled Catholic elementary schools in Ann Arbor, Mich., and a Catholic liberal arts college in nearby Ypsilanti. "He loves his charities," says daughter Maggie, a Domino's spokeswoman. "He wanted to leave before he becomes too old to enjoy the benefits of his charity work."

Monaghan was long known more for self-indulgence than for selflessness. He amassed a gaudy mix of Bugatti autos, Frank Lloyd Wright drawings and artifacts, and a dream ranch in Ann Arbor where herds of buffalo roamed. Monaghan explained those sprees as compensation for the fact that his mother abandoned him at the age of four to foster homes and an orphanage. As owner of the Detroit Tigers, he liked to swoop down on home games in his helicopter. He once considered building a 35-story slanted tower dubbed--what else?--the Leaning Tower of Pizza.

Yet none of those extravagances really made him happy. So in 1989 Monaghan took a two-year leave from Domino's to devote himself to Catholic charities and soon began to dump his toys. (The Tigers went to Little Caesars owner Michael Ilitch in 1992 for $85 million.) "Most of the time I was buying things to get attention, to have people notice me," Monaghan once remarked. "That's the sin of pride, the worst sin of all, and I'm the guiltiest person."

When a debt-laden Domino's foundered in 1992, Monaghan returned to restructure the company and revive its fortunes. Domino's falling market share turned up again, and its worldwide sales have grown impressively--from $2.2 billion in 1993 to $3.2 billion last year. In his farewell letter to employees, Monaghan wrote--with perhaps a touch of pride--that the new owners of Domino's "are not buying a company in crisis, needing change to survive." Not at all. For years it was the flamboyant Monaghan himself who was in crisis, making his departure from Domino's only the latest in a string of soulful changes.

--By Ron Stodghill II