Harry G. John

Harry G. John, Jr. (1919–1992) was an American philanthropist, founder of the De Rance Foundation and heir to the Miller Brewing Company fortune through his grandfather, founder Frederick Miller.

Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. John's mother, Elise Miller John, was one of two daughters of brewery founder Frederick Miller. He graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 1941 and was president of Miller Brewing from 1946 to 1947, succeeded by his cousin Fred Miller (1906–1954). John married Erica Nowotny in 1956 and the couple had nine children.

As a young man, John funded leprosariums in India and camps for Milwaukee inner-city blacks. He donated money to dig wells in drought-stricken West Africa and provided seminary training in the Philippines.

In the early 1950s, John, a devout Catholic, utilized his inheritance - Miller stock valued at $14 million - to found the De Rance Foundation, which he named after Armand Jean le Bouthillier de Rance, the 17th-century abbot of the monastery at La Trappe, France. In 1972, Philip Morris bought Miller Brewing, resulting in the value of John's stock soaring to $97 million overnight. The De Rance Foundation thus became the world's largest Catholic charity.

In 1984, Erica John and Donald Gallagher, both De Rance directors, became alarmed at Harry John's increasingly extravagant expenditure of De Rance assets on such things as entire television stations (for which John envisioned a 24-hour-a-day Catholic broadcast network), treasure hunts for sunken ships, and risky investments in gold futures and junk bonds. Mrs. John and Gallagher filed a lawsuit along with attorney Tom Cannon in Milwaukee County Circuit Court to have Harry John removed as a De Rance director. After a five-month trial, on August 21, 1986, Judge Michael Barron announced that the plaintiffs had proven their allegations. Harry John was permanently removed from the De Rance board; he divorced Erica, and moved to California where he resided for the next six years, returning to Milwaukee in 1992.

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