Tom Monaghan

Tom Monaghan finally understands Mark 10:25: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” But it took years and a book called Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis to help him realize that pride was not virtue. Let’s step back in time a moment to a boy who lost his father four years after he was born. Thomas Monaghan was born on March 25, 1937 in Ann Arbor, Michigan to Francis and Anna Monaghan. After his father died of peritonitis on Christmas Eve, 1941, his mother soon realized that she could not support young Tom and his brother, James on $27.50 a week. She relinquished the boys to the care of a Catholic orphanage in 1943 when Tom was halfway through first grade. He and Jim spent six years there. He never reconciled being abandoned by his mother.

After a fleeting ambition to become a priest, Tom entered the Marines in 1956 and served until 1959. It was here that he discovered that he was responsible for his own actions in life and his own self-worth. After an honorable discharge, Tom decided to attend the University of Michigan to study architecture, but dropped out in 1960 when he and his brother, Jim, decided to borrow $900 to by a pizza store in Ypsilanti. They renamed the store, “Domino’s Pizza, Inc,” and the rest is history—albeit through many ups and downs until a billionaire was born.