28 Facts About Ken Behring

Kenneth Eugene Behring was an American real estate developer, and former owner of the National Football League's Seattle Seahawks.

Ken Behring grew up in poverty; his father worked in a lumber yard making 25 cents an hour, and his mother cleaned houses.

Ken Behring started working a variety of jobs around town starting at age seven: mowing lawns, caddying, transporting milk, selling newspapers, working at a grocery store, and at a lumberyard.

Ken Behring became a salesperson at Montgomery Ward at age 16, and started a side business selling sporting goods in town while attending Monroe High School.

Ken Behring moved from Wisconsin to Florida in 1956 and started the Ken Behring Construction Company in Fort Lauderdale.

Ken Behring became a land developer, founding Tamarac Lakes, a new active-adult community in 1962.

In 1972, Ken Behring moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he was involved in developing the country club at Blackhawk, California, and later, the Canyon Lakes Development in San Ramon, California.

Ken Behring had failed to properly apply for relocation, on top of having his plans for a full move being scuttled when lawyers discovered that the Seahawks were locked into the Kingdome through 2005; in addition, the NFL threatened Ken Behring with fining him $500,000 each day if he did not return the team from Southern California.

Ken Behring has been listed several times on the annual Forbes 400 list of richest Americans, including 1991,1995, and 1997.

Ken Behring has since been described in the press as a billionaire.

In 2004, Ken Behring published a memoir called Road to Purpose: One Man's Journey Bringing Hope to Millions and Finding Purpose Along the Way.

Ken Behring was involved in founding the Blackhawk Museum in 1988, created, in part, to house his personal collection of vintage cars; he was criticized for the tax exemption he sought and received for donating his cars to his museum.

Ken Behring pledged $20 million to the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in 1997, with the intention that it be used for educational purposes.

Ken Behring pledged another $80 million to the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History in 2000.

In return, Ken Behring's contract required that the museum rename its main facility the "Ken Behring Center".

In 2000, Behring donated $7.5 million to expand the University of California, Berkeley's Principal Leadership Institute; the newly established Kenneth E Behring Center for Educational Improvement focused on training programs for public-school principals, providing scholarships for fifty aspiring principals every year.

Ken Behring founded the Wheelchair Foundation in Blackhawk, California in 2000, to provide free wheelchairs for people with physical disabilities in developing nations unable to afford one.

Ken Behring founded the WaterLeaders Foundation, a nonprofit group working to support safe drinking water around the world, in 2005.

In 2014, Ken Behring added a section to the Blackhawk Museum called The Spirit of the Old West, a permanent exhibit focusing on the Old West of the 1800s.

Ken Behring was a former president of Safari Club International and was at one time its largest donor.

Ken Behring has made multiple safari trips to East Africa, and has shot lions, leopards, rhinoceroses, an elephant, and an endangered bighorn sheep.

Ken Behring has been criticized for his trophy hunting practices and animal conservation ethics.

In 1997, Ken Behring shot an endangered Kara Tau argali sheep in Kazakhstan.

Ken Behring claimed he had permits to shoot the sheep and had Russian scientists in his hunting party; he was issued export permits two days before the enactment of a prior international decision to move Kara Tau argali to the most-endangered status Per American law, the remains of the endangered animal could not be legally imported into the United States.

Ken Behring donated $20 million to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History six weeks later, offering his private collection of stuffed hunting trophies to the museum, including four rare bighorn sheep, one of which was the Kara Tau argali sheep.

In 1998, Ken Behring shot and killed an elephant in Mozambique, where the sport killing of elephants was banned in 1990.

Ken Behring's hunting companions, the then past and current presidents of Safari Club International, killed two more elephants.

Ken Behring died in 2019 at age 91 in Contra Costa County, California.