Stewart Mott, at 70; was 'avant-garde philanthropist'
WASHINGTON - Stewart R. Mott, 70, a
In the 1960s and 1970s, Mr. Mott was one of the country's most visible and controversial activists.
He invested heavily in causes including population control, abortion reform, and arms reduction. He was also a chief financial backer of two antiwar presidential candidates, Democratic Senators Eugene McCarthy in 1968 and George McGovern in 1972.
In a statement Friday, consumer advocate Ralph Nader called Mr. Mott "about the most versatile, imaginative philanthropist of his time."
Tall, irreverent, and fond of Turkish cigarettes, Mr. Mott attracted attention with his flamboyance. At one soiree in Washington in 1983, guests rode an elephant on the sidewalk while wearing gold sashes announcing in roughly translated French, "Shame on those who think badly of this."
He lived in a Manhattan penthouse, where he cultivated a garden with hundreds of vegetable varieties. Neighbors were not pleased when his agricultural interest led him to construct a compost pile and chicken coop.
Mr. Mott was described in profiles as an easygoing maverick with little regard for discretion in discussing his political interests, finances, or romantic conquests.
But beneath the surface eccentricity was a determination to address what he called "the two problems confronting planet earth that dwarf and aggravate all conventional problems, namely the threat of nuclear war and the continuing worldwide population explosion."
Alarmed by the course of the Vietnam War, he criticized the General Motors board for failing to speak out. To drive home the point - literally - he owned a
His $400,000 contribution to McGovern won Mr. Mott inclusion on the Nixon White House's enemies list with the notation, "Nothing but big money for radic-lib candidates."
Mr. Mott replied that the list was "an honor roll of decent Americans. I'd be insulted if I weren't on it, being the largest donor to McGovern and a regular supporter of liberal causes."
With some irony, he added that his tax lawyers at the time were partners at Nixon and Attorney General John Mitchell's old firm.
In the 1970s, Mr. Mott's political advocacy group, People Politics, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on similar organizations for women, African-Americans, young people, and good governance.
He also funded anticorruption efforts investigating political and business scandals and rented out a mansion he owned in Northeast Washington to the Fund for Peace and the American Civil Liberties Union. It also became a center to raise funds for causes including handgun control and gay rights.
For years, Mr. Mott cut large checks to causes and candidates. This approach was challenged by post-Watergate campaign finance reforms, leading Mr. Mott to ally himself with conservatives angered by the US Supreme Court's 1976 decision in Buckley v. Valeo that upheld the $1,000 individual contribution limit.
Stewart Rawlings Mott was born in Flint, Mich. His father, Charles Stewart "C.S." Mott, sold the family's wheel and axle business to General Motors and became the largest individual shareholder in the car manufacturer.
In 1926, the elder Mott established a family foundation that focused on social efforts around Flint, the hub of the American auto industry.
Stewart R. Mott was a product of his father's fourth marriage and was born when his father was 62. He described a neglectful upbringing in which he was left for months with a governess while his parents took vacations.
The relationship was further strained by his father's formal letters home, signed, "Very truly yours."
As a child, Mr. Mott was overweight and uncoordinated and resented being shipped away to summer camp. After he ran away from a camp at age 11, his father agreed to a bargain: half a summer at camp in return for working the rest of the time at Mott-controlled businesses.
He was a stock boy at a department store in Flint, a machinist at a pecan-and-goose farm in New Mexico, and an executive trainee at a refrigerator plant near Paris. He studied for three years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before quitting to hitchhike around the world. A year's travels cost him $1,500, he proudly related to interviewers.
He graduated from Columbia University in 1961 with degrees in business administration and comparative literature, and then returned to Flint, where his deepening interest in population control led him to establish a birth control clinic for Planned Parenthood.
Tensions with his father about the family foundation's direction - the son wanted the organization to expand its focus to global issues - caused Mr. Mott to decamp for New York in 1966. He also cut off contact with his father for a year while he spent time creating his own philanthropy.
Starting in the mid-1980s, he drastically reduced his profile but continued to oversee the Washington-based Stewart R. Mott Charitable Trust, which says its funding interests include "exposing government corruption and the protection of constitutional rights."
He married Kappy Wells, a sculptress, in 1979; they divorced 20 years later. He leaves a son and a sister. 