Another charity, the James LeVoy Sorenson Foundation, was established in 1986 to assist Christian agencies and youth development and recreation services. It had more than $3.4 million in assets in 2001, according to The Foundation Center, a New York-based organization that tracks philanthropy.

This year, Sorenson gave $500,000 cash and 2.5 acres of property worth $886,000 to Salt Lake City to expand the Sorenson Multicultural Center in Glendale, a recreation center owned and operated by Salt Lake City Corp. for west-side youths. That deal, combined with $4 million from the Alliance for Unity, was instrumental in bringing about a resolution to Salt Lake's Main Street Plaza controversy.

"Without Jim Sorenson's help, the Sorenson Center would have never become a reality," Salt Lake Mayor Rocky Anderson said. "I think he really wants to leave this a better world, and he has made tremendous strides in doing that."

J. Michael Mattsson, vice president for development at the U., said the Sorensons have given hundreds of thousands of dollars to the university since the renaming flap.

Two years ago, Sorenson handed out $3 million to the Deseret Foundation, a charitable fund established by IHC to promote medical research, education and technology.

In 1991, Sorenson presented a $500,000 matching-fund donation to the Cathedral of the Madeleine restoration project.

His wife of 57 years, Beverley Taylor Sorenson, a philanthropist in her own right who has contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to causes like Art Works For Kids, said her husband has been secretive about his giving, even with her.

On several occasions, he has purchased homes for single mothers in financial distress.

"I find out years later," Beverley Sorenson said.

Sorenson Cos. spokesman David Parkinson said much of the family's philanthropy is not distributed through the foundations.

For example, Sorenson gave $113,000 to Primary Children's Medical Center and $500,000 to Utah State University's Center for the School of the Future, a research center focused on improving education. He gave another $200,000 to a diabetes foundation three years ago.

'Grapes of Wrath'

If Sorenson's focus on giving has come late in life, his stark beginnings may help explain why.

He describes his childhood years as a "sort of 'Grapes of Wrath' era."

His parents, Joseph LeVoy and Emma Blaser, failed at farming in Rexburg, Idaho — where Sorenson was born — and moved their young family to Yuba City, Calif.

Sorenson's early home was a world apart from his present-day palatial house in Holladay. Back then, the family's home was little more than a chicken coop with tarpaper wrapped around it.