MONROE — According to multiple news sources, area native and founder of the Behring Senior Center, Kenneth Behring, died June 25 at the age of 91.
The announcement was made by his son, David, in a Facebook post noting that Behring “passed away peacefully” and in which David referred to his father as “both a Lion and a Dragon.”
Born June 13, 1928 in Freeport, Behring started out on a family farm lost during the Depression. At the age of 3, he moved with his parents to Monroe, where his father Elmer worked at a lumberyard and his mother Mae kept houses. Behring grew up attending school and playing football as captain of the team. He worked a number of odd jobs in adolescence, from mowing lawns to selling newspapers, and eventually went to work at Montgomery Ward at age 16 selling sporting goods.
Behring attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison but just for one semester. Losing an athletic scholarship to an injury and with little means to afford college, he moved back home and began working for a Chevrolet dealership, and then a Chrysler car dealer before going into business for himself at age 21 with Behring Motors in Monroe. That same year, he married his wife Pat. Despite the setbacks of limited resources, hard work and a bit of ingenuity paid off. By 27, he had $1 million in assets.
“I was very aggressive,” Behring said in an interview with the Times in 2016. “I wanted to make money. I wanted to be a success.”
In 1956, Behring moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to start Behring Con-struction Company. Dev-eloping land, he went into business in real estate and founded a community called Tamarac Lakes in 1962. The area, built on a mixture of wetlands and pastures, became incorporated as Tamarac, Florida, in 1963. After growing to become the 10th largest builder of single-family homes in the country, Behring moved with his wife to San Francisco in 1972.
Building his businesses, he celebrated the birth of five sons along the way. He eventually went on to develop the Blackhawk, California, country club and residential area in San Ramon, California. Behring purchased an NFL team, the Seattle Seahawks, in 1988 with business partner Ken Hofmann and sold the franchise in 1997 for more than twice the purchase price. Behring was named to the annual Forbes 400 list of richest Americans more than once throughout the 1990s.
Shortly after ending his time with the NFL, he founded the Wheelchair Foundation in June 2000.
The nonprofit organization leads an international effort to create awareness of physical disabilities throughout the world and those who need equipment, like wheelchairs, to live full lives, according to its website.
The foundation shared on its Facebook page in April that it has distributed nearly 1.1 million wheelchairs to more than 156 countries so far.