‘Great tribute to our friend’

GARDEN GROVE — It was the funeral service John Crean would have hoped for and the memorial he deserved. “This is just what Dad would have wanted,” Andy Crean, one of John Crean’s sons, said. “The only thing that would have upset dad was that it went over schedule.”

More than 1,000 people gathered to honor the Newport Beach philanthropist and entrepreneur Thursday at the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove after he died Jan. 11 of congestive heart failure. He was 81.

The Rev. Robert Richards, Crean’s Lutheran pastor for 25 years, presided over the ceremony, which included eulogies from five men who represented various aspects of Crean’s life.

People young and old, famous and humble gathered to remember Crean as a generous, compassionate man. The crowd included television star Dick Van Dyke, businessman and former USC football player Paul Salata, and former county Supervisor Harriett Wieder. Friends noted that Crean was always impressed by large gatherings, which often led him to proclaim, “Wow, that’s a crowd.”

“It was a great tribute to our friend, John Crean,” said voice actor and comedian Stan Freberg, a longtime friend of Crean’s. “It was a packed house, and he would have liked that.”

Freberg — who wrote the forward to Crean’s autobiography, “The Wheel & I” — shared many stories about Crean, incorporating the humor that his friend loved so much. He recalled breakfasts at Denny’s, a restaurant Crean loved because it was “consistently mediocre,” and an instance when the pair contracted the local fire department to help them retrieve a model airplane stuck in a tree.

“He continued to be one of the most fascinating characters I’ve ever known,” said the friend who had his wedding ceremony at Crean’s Santa Ana Heights home, Village Crean. “He was eccentric, ultra-conservative, ultra-kind-hearted, ultra-rich and a Freberg fan — qualities I try to look for in a friend.”

Crystal Cathedral founder Robert Schuller was happy to welcome friends and family to the church that he called “a monument to John Crean.” He and his wife Donna Crean donated the first $1 million to make its construction possible and the tall steeple, Crean Tower, was later dedicated in their name.

Schuller was grateful that Crean followed the Lutheran teaching that people should give 10% of their earnings to the church and prosperity would follow. In his later years, Crean was giving 50%, the reverend said.

“I don’t think that I can recall any person who can compete with John Crean in the history of Orange County who could begin to match him for philanthropy,” he said, adding that Crean gave to numerous causes, including education, medicine and children’s organizations.

In an effort to demonstrate the extent of Crean’s charitable gestures, Chapman University President Jim Doti wished to read a list of each of the 300 organizations to which the Creans contributed in recent years but instead chose to emphasize the humility and boundless generosity of a man who adhered to philosophy of “the more you give, the more you get back.”

“John wasn’t out to change the world. He wasn’t out for notoriety,” Doti said. “In the end he just wanted to help people.”

Meeting Crean at Alcoholics Anonymous, a program that would change his life, Clancy Imislund reminded audiences that Crean, the man who dropped out of high school and was known to hand bologna to police officers he passed on the street, was not always so “saint like.” But as managing director of the Midnight Mission in Los Angeles, which Crean helped expand when it could not serve the community completely, Imislund was thankful for Crean’s redemption and that he stayed sober for the last 56 years of his life.

Fleetwood Enterprises Chief Executive Elden Smith spoke of the business accomplishments of the “very intense, very creative man with an entrepreneurial spirit” who founded the company that initially designed Venetian-blind systems for travel trailers and came to be the world’s largest producer of manufactured homes and motor homes.

The All American Boys Choir sang at the service, which lasted nearly two hours. After, attendees gathered for a reception at the church’s arboretum, where they swapped stories, laughed and admired photographs of Crean.

“John was one of the most magnificent men who ever lived,” said Bruce Herschensohn, for whom Crean hosted a fundraiser at his home when the politician ran for the U.S. Senate. “The fact that he had such wealth was just an extra.”

After laying their father to rest in a private graveside service at the Crystal Cathedral Memorial Gardens, Crean’s sons Andy and Johnnie Crean said they were impressed by the large turnout, though Johnnie Crean was hardly surprised, considering the generosity of his parents.