Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Bush host: a private pioneer

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 22 Aug 2003 20:51:43 -0400

Bush host: a private pioneer
2003-08-21
by Clayton Park
Journal Business EditorBush host: a private pioneer

HUNTS POINT -- The man whose Eastside waterfront home will be the site of a
fund-raising luncheon for President Bush on Friday has been described by
acquaintances as intensely private, low-key and introspective, but also quick
witted with a dry sense of humor.

Craig Oliver McCaw, who recently turned 54, has also been called a devoted family
man, the proud father of three young children, and a visionary in business who
made his fortune by building the first nationwide cellular phone network in the
1980s.

He became a billionaire in 1994 when he sold his company, Kirkland-based McCaw
Cellular Communications to AT&T Corp. for $11.5 billion -- a deal hailed at the
time as the biggest friendly corporate takeover in U.S. history.

Forbes magazine listed McCaw earlier this year as one of the world's richest
people -- No. 147, with an estimated net worth of $2.5 billion.

What remains unclear is whether McCaw is a Republican.

``I've never asked him about his political leanings, but I've always assumed he
was,'' said Pat Herbold, chairwoman of the King County Republican Party, a member
of the host committee for Friday's luncheon at McCaw's Hunts Point mansion.

McCaw's wife, Susan, is finance co-chairwoman of the Bush-Cheney re-election
campaign here. The host committee for Friday's luncheon includes several former
McCaw Cellular executives and/or longtime McCaw colleagues who are currently
involved in McCaw's various business ventures.

The Journal was unable to reach a McCaw spokesman for comment late Wednesday
afternoon. McCaw, a self-described dyslexic, rarely gives interviews and is said
to shun publicity about himself.

However, interviews with acquaintances and published reports about McCaw's many
business dealings and philanthropic efforts -- as well as a highly publicized
divorce from his first wife, Wendy, in the mid-1990s -- provide many insights
about the man who once said he wanted to be the ``Wizard of Oz'' of the wireless
industry.

* He is the second eldest of four brothers, who grew up in the exclusive Highlands
community, just north of Seattle. Their father, the late John Elroy McCaw, was an
entrepreneur who became wealthy by buying and selling radio and television
stations.

* Craig McCaw began helping his father's business as a teenager by spending his
summers selling cable television subscriptions door to door. At age 13, he was
entrusted by his father to deposit a check for $10 million from the sale of a
radio property.

* Upon his father's sudden death of a stroke in 1969, Craig McCaw, a 19-year-old
student at Stanford University at the time, took over the family business, along
with his brothers and their mother, Marion, who was an accountant.

They discovered that the elder McCaw had buried his media business in so much debt
that only a single cable-television system in Centralia -- where Craig had been
born -- remained when all the creditors had been paid off.

Craig was named manager of the company and oversaw its operations from his dorm
room while continuing his education at Stanford. He graduated in 1972 with a
degree in history and proceeded to go to work for the company full time. He
borrowed money to rebuild the business by buying other small cable operations in
remote areas, quadrupling the company's revenues.

* In 1981, he began researching the fledgling cellular telephone market and,
sensing an opportunity, began buying licenses as they became available from the
Federal Communications Commission.

* The McCaw brothers sold their cable-television holdings in 1987 for $755 million
to concentrate on their cell-phone business. McCaw Cellular Communications went
public, raising $2.39 billion through its initial public offering of stock.

After selling McCaw Cellular to AT&T in 1994, which renamed it AT&T Wireless,
Craig McCaw became one of the telephone giant's largest shareholders but refused
to sit on its board of directors because of his dislike of lengthy meetings.

Instead, McCaw launched several new business ventures, mostly via Eagle River
Investments, the Kirkland-based company created to handle his personal
investments.

* In March 1994, he took the wraps off of Teledesic LLC, a Kirkland company he
actually formed a few years earlier with Microsoft chairman Bill Gates and venture
capitalist Ed Tuck with grand designs on building an ``Internet in the Sky''
network of orbiting communications satellites.

* In 1994, he founded Nextlink Communications to build a state-of-the-art
telecommunications network. That company, which later moved its headquarters from
Bellevue to Reston, Va., and changed its name to XO Communications, filed for
Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2002.

* In 1995, McCaw bought a controlling interest in Nextel Communications, a
company, now located in Reston, Va., that offers mobile phone services to
customers in major cities across the country.

* In 1998, he founded Kirkland-based Nextel Partners, whose headquarters are
located across the street from the offices of Eagle River. Nextel Partners, which
is headed by CEO John Chapple, a former McCaw Cellular executive, offers Nextel
mobile phone services to mid-sized markets throughout the U.S.

* McCaw is a well-known philanthropist who donated $1 million to Seattle Public
Schools in 1997 and who formed the Free Willy-Keiko Foundation in the mid-1990s
and contributed millions of dollars to seek the release of the captive killer
whale featured in the 1993 movie ``Free Willy.'' He described a brief swim he took
with Keiko as ``the high point of my entire life, spiritually.'' He also hosted
Nelson Mandela at his Hunts Point home during the South African president's visit
here for the World Trade Organization meetings held in Seattle, and later donated
$15 million to Mandela's charity. He sponsored the construction of the new home
for the Seattle Opera, Marion Oliver McCaw Hall.

* McCaw divorced his first wife, Wendy, in 1997 to the tune of $470 million and
remarried the following year to his current wife, Susan, an investment banker he
met when the two participated in an AT&T-sponsored Pro-Am golf tournament at
Pebble Beach in Monterey, Calif.

* McCaw is known for preferring casual attire to fancy suits and ties.
Acquaintances say he is most often seen wearing khaki pants and dress shirts with
unbuttoned collars. He has been known to kayak to his offices at Carillon Point
from his home, a 12,200-square-foot mansion that formerly belonged to musician
Kenny G.

* His hobbies include flying -- he owns several aircraft, including seaplanes,
helicopters and jets, and is a licensed pilot -- and boating: he is a longtime
member of the Seattle Yacht Club and has been a sponsor of a racing yacht that
recently competed in the America's Cup tournament.

* McCaw is the only one of his brothers who is not into car racing, according to
an Eastside auto dealer who asked not to be identified. The dealer said Craig
McCaw drives an older model four-door Mercedes, but it isn't a vintage collector
car. ``He doesn't like cars that are showy or flashy,'' the car dealer said. ``He
doesn't like to make statements. He's low-key. He's the business guy.''

Clayton Park can be reached at [email-masked] or at
425-453-4224. Sources for this article include the Journal-American and Eastside
Journal, Associated Press, Seattle Times, New York Times and online publication
thealarmclock.com.

http://www.kingcountyjournal.com/sited/story/html/140934

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