As the January dedication approaches for the great new monument to his vast business acumen, Leonard Samuel "Sam" Skaggs, as usual, is nowhere to be found.
The American Stores Center - a $100 million, 25-story building that adds substantially to Salt Lake's skyline - is out there for everybody to see.Skaggs, who founded the company but last year sold out and moved on to his quiet philanthropic pursuits, remains virtually invisible, however.
"He's a Howard Hughes kind of guy that way," said one acquaintance who didn't want his name used.
As has been his lifelong habit, Skaggs, 74, continues in his twilight years to steer deliberately clear of public scrutiny. He lives with his wife, Aline, in a mansion on Walker Lane in Holladay. Together, they run the Alsam Foundation out of Salt Lake offices where the staff is instructed not to talk to the press.
Access to Skaggs is via a man named Mike Miller, who was press secretary for former Gov. Cal Rampton during much of the time Rampton presided over state government from 1964-76. Rampton and Skaggs became friends over the years, and after Rampton left office, Miller became Skaggs' gatekeeper.
"I know for a fact he will probably not call you back," a secretary for Miller said last week.
And Miller did not, in keeping with the Skaggs code of silence, which is rarely if ever breached by close friends and associates.
"I know he's having trouble with his back," Rampton said a few days ago when a reporter pressed him for some revelations on the current life of the enigmatic multimillionaire. "He's cut down on his social contacts quite a bit.
"But he sounds all right, he sounds cheerful."
These details are as good as it gets.
"I don't think there's a reporter in this town who has ever talked to Sam Skaggs," said Larry Weist, a former assignment editor and business writer for the Deseret News and now the chief public information officer for the University of Utah.
Weist remembers that the publicly held company's mode of communication for years was the sudden and stealthy appearance of a press release dropped off at the newsroom by Miller with no fanfare.
"We'd look down, see this press release and Miller was already gone," Weist laughed.
The company was often in the news, especially during the 1980s, when it expanded in a series of buyouts that made it the second-biggest food retailer in the country (behind Krogers). American Stores traces its roots to Skaggs' father, a Baptist minister who opened Skaggs Cash Store in American Falls, Idaho, in 1915 to help keep his congregation supplied with groceries and dry goods. Over time, Sam Skaggs and his brothers expanded operations and eventually American Stores came to include Acme Markets, Jewel Food Stores, Osco Drugs, Sav-On and the Alpha Beta chain.
Skaggs ran the company until passing the reins to current CEO Victor Lund in 1995; in April of this year he finally retired from its board of directors.
While Skaggs is famous for his secrecy, his generosity is just as noted.
In 1996, Fortune magazine ranked him the second most philanthropic person in America, citing a $100 million endowment to the Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology at Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, a $50 million land grant to the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake and a $5 million gift to the University of Utah. He finished behind George Soros, of Soros Fund Management fame, but ahead of Bill Gates, who was third.
A few months later, Forbes magazine included - as it had for years - Skaggs on its roster of the 400 wealthiest people in the country. According to the magazine, Skaggs' net worth at the time was $945 million, 149th on the list. (Substantial though his wealth was, he ranked behind two other Utahns, petrochemical magnate Jon M. Huntsman (37th with $2.5 billion) and medical-equipment maker James L. Sorenson (80th with $1.4 billion)).
This year Skaggs slipped very quietly out of the running, appearing in the magazine's post-mortem notes on once-extremely rich people who have since either died or given their money away.
Skaggs, Forbes said, had "gifted" much of his wealth, most of it in American Stores stock, and could no longer be considered one of the richest people in America.
Among the local beneficiaries was the Salt Lake Diocese of the Catholic Church, which received its present largely in the guise of 57 valuable acres in Draper, where suburban sprawl has made such tracts almost priceless.
Projects currently under construction there will make up the Skaggs Catholic Center, which will include Juan Diego Catholic High School, an elementary and middle-grade facility called St. John the Baptist School and, eventually, a companion parish church.
The campus as a whole is designed to create a dawn-to-dusk and cradle-to-college facility for local families who want their children to grow up in a high-quality, private-school setting that would probably not have been built without the Skaggs endowment.
"This is a very important gift," said Galey Colosimo, coordinator of special projects for the diocese, adding that the project and its benefactor have remained low profile at the request of the Alsam Foundation.
"They've shunned publicity (and) I think most of what they do is anonymous," Colosimo said. "Ted Turner wants to announce to the whole world that he's giving $1 billion, but I think people who are anonymous benefactors and never seek the limelight and still are very generous have a different quality about them."
Other recipients are just as complimentary.
"The Skaggs are among the more gracious donors I've ever dealt with," said Mike Mattsson, vice president of development for the University of Utah, which is using a $5 million gift from the Alsam Foundation to pay for current construction of the Aline Wilmot Skaggs Biology Building.
Mattsson said the university was approached by the foundation in a query over how it might help pay for some higher-education needs.
A list was presented and the Skaggs showed an interest in the biology-school project. At the university's urging, it was named after Aline Skaggs, a practice that is typically followed to honor big-dollar supporters, Mattsson said, but also one that affords about the only avenue by which the Skaggs speak publicly.
"We encourage it," Mattsson said, "because we want our donors to be recognized in a visible or tangible way."