The little dyslexic boy who grew up in a tarpaper shack in Yuba City, Calif., and was called mentally retarded by teachers is now a giant.
The Salt Lake Chamber on Wednesday named Utah billionaire James LeVoy Sorenson "A Giant in Our City" at an award dinner emceed by former New Yorker and Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown and author and editor Sir Harold Evans.
Calling Sorenson "an American original," Abbott CEO Miles D. White said, "Jim would be a giant in any city."
Sorenson, 85, began building his empire when, in 1957, he co-founded Deseret Pharmaceuticals. That led to Sorenson Research in 1962, which was sold to Abbott, a Fortune 100 company, in 1980.
Today, he is chairman of Sorenson Development Inc. The Sorenson Companies include 12 enterprises, including medical devices and large-scale real estate development. He has become one of the country's richest men, placing 56th in Forbes magazine's 2005 list of the 400 richest Americans, with an estimated net worth of $3.9 billion.
Sorenson is the inventor and innovator behind a host of medical technologies, including the first disposable surgical mask, the first disposable plastic catheter and a real-time cardiovascular monitoring system.
During his career, he has received more than 40 patents for his inventions.
"Some individuals are gifted with the ability to recognize a need and then ask the question, 'Is there a better way?' " President Thomas S. Monson of the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said. For Sorenson, that gift has resulted in finding solutions to problems about which "others have but dreamed. . . . When he speaks, wise men listen."
Monson said Sorenson is "a cherished friend, tried and true, through and through," and praised Sorenson and his wife, Beverley Sorenson, saying, "Through his generous and her generous contributions, they have blessed the lives of countless individuals."
Sorenson is also know for his philanthropy, having contributed to the effort to identify victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami through Sorenson Genomics. He founded the nonprofit Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation to map the DNA of the world's family tree. His companies and foundations have donated to a Washington, D.C., university for the deaf and hard-of-hearing, an outdoor performing-arts pavilion in Herriman and the restoration of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' Nauvoo, Ill., temple.
Sorenson said the motivation behind his desire to help people through both charitable donations and inventions to improve lives is his conviction that "we're all children of God, all of us. There really isn't much difference."
Previous honorees of A Giant in Our City include LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley, Huntsman Corp. founder Jon Huntsman Sr., and Spencer Eccles, chairman emeritus of the Intermountain Banking region of Wells Fargo & Co.
E-mail: dsmeath@desnews.com