John B. Francis, 87, Was Executive, Philanthropist
John B. Francis, a Kansas businessman and philanthropist whose house
on Chappaquiddick was first the center of controversy and years later
the centerpiece of a remarkable conservation purchase, died on Sunday,
August 15, after a long illness. He was 87.
Mr. Francis was the former chairman of Puritan Bennett Corp.; his
retirement in 1986 ended family control of the business founded in 1913
by his father, Parker B. Francis. The company, now a part of Tyco
Healthcare, develops ventilator systems and other respiratory care
products.
Mr. Francis was active in many civic organizations during the course
of his 46-year career and was generous in philanthropy, which prompted
the Greater Kansas City Council on Philanthropy to honor him in 1986 as
Philanthropist of the Year.
Together with his wife, Mary Harris Francis, he established the
Francis Child Development Institute at Penn Valley Community College in
1990. With support from the Francis Families Foundation, the institute
has received some $15 million for the training of early childhood
teachers and day care providers.
Mr. Francis also oversaw the creation and funding of the Parker B.
Francis Fellowship Program, which has granted some $30 million for more
than 600 fellowships in pulmonary research over the past 30 years. And
in his father’s memory, he established the Parker B. Francis Chair in
pulmonary medicine at Harvard Medical School.
On the Vineyard, Mr. Francis made news in 1973 when his family began
construction of a summer home on Chappaquiddick, opposite Caleb’s Pond
near the beach club, just 25 yards from the harbor’s high tide mark. In
response to community protests, the Edgartown conservation commission
called on the state Dept. of Natural Resources to send an expert to
examine the site. The state expert affirmed that the tract was not a
wetland, and construction was allowed to proceed.
A decade and a half later, the Francis family’s five-acre estate was
put on the market, and was listed exclusively by Conover Real Estate at
a price of $1,775,000. But in the end, the property was not sold on the
private market. In a remarkable bargain deal, the property went in 1997
to the Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation for a price of $1 million, and the
foundation set about to “unbuild” the property, returning it to a
stretch of open, undeveloped beach.
Said Mrs. Francis that year in an interview from their Kansas home:
“This completes the cycle. It was beach when we started in, and we
protected it, and now it’s going back to beach again.” Expressing his
elation at the purchase, Richard Johnson, executive director of
Sheriff’s Meadow, said: “Most times in conservation, the best you can
hope for is that things will stay the same. This is unique because in
ecological terms, we can take it back where it used to be.”