The new issue of Businessweek has an interesting piece comparing and contrasting Michigan’s aging pizza barons, Tom Monaghan and Mike Ilitch. And, as it’s been a while since we’ve discussed Monaghan, who started Domino’s here in Ypsilanti in 1960, I thought that I’d share a bit.

Tom Monaghan was once a billionaire. He owned 244 classic automobiles, including a rare Bugatti Royale. He built a $30 million resort on a Lake Huron island. He hopped helicopters from the headquarters of the company he founded, Domino’s Pizza, to watch the Major League Baseball team he owned, the Detroit Tigers…

The Tigers, the resort, and the cars are gone. The man who invented 30-minute pizza delivery sold Domino’s and eats less pizza these days because he’s gluten-free. He spent most of his fortune creating a foundation, a university, a law school, a mutual fund, and a radio station that embrace his Roman Catholic beliefs. At 77 years old, he rises each day at 1:50 a.m. After prayer, reading, exercise, and Mass, he goes to work in his cubbyhole of an office in the building that houses his old company, surrounded by milky glass statuettes of the Virgin Mary. Monaghan says his ultimate goal is “to get into Heaven and take as many people as I can with me.”

…In 1998 he sold his company to Bain Capital for more than $1 billion. His legal pads were crammed with ideas for building a conservative Catholic university that would churn out theologians, priests, nuns, and school principals. “There’s so much you can do at a university that can change the whole world,” he says. “I didn’t want a diploma factory, I wanted a saint factory.”

He put $300 million into the construction of Ave Maria University and a new town, also to be called Ave Maria, on a stretch of tomato fields inland from Florida’s Gulf Coast. The media lit up when Monaghan suggested condom sales would be prohibited in the town. Construction costs soared. Accreditation took longer than expected. Monaghan tangled with professors and others he’d hired at Ave Maria. He twice fired Catholic priest Joseph Fessio. “Tom is intelligent, very energetic, but nobody will contradict him,” says Fessio, who was fired the second time when he told a board member that the school’s finances were in disarray. “Just because you can afford a 747 doesn’t mean you should try to fly it.”

Enrollment at Ave Maria today is 900, with an expected incoming class of 400. The budget, once $10 million in the red, is balanced, says university President Jim Towey, formerly President George W. Bush’s head of faith-based matters. Monaghan loves pointing out that 20 percent of Ave Maria’s graduates are married to each other and that the most popular campus organization is a pro-life club.

Monaghan’s investment in the town, however, “has been a bloodbath,” he says. The town has grown slowly, partly because of the recession, forcing Monaghan to pay $5 million a year for roads and other upkeep. Although he’s far from broke, he’d like a steadier source of revenue to plow into his philanthropy. Monaghan’s trying to build a chain of hamburger delivery joints modeled on early Domino’s. So far he has one, called Gyrene Burger, in the college town of Knoxville, Tenn. “If it gets to 100 units, that could make me $3 million to $4 million a year,” he says.

Domino’s went public in 2004. Monaghan says he admires how the company has evolved, but he doesn’t own any shares. With a wife of 51 years (whom he met while delivering a pizza), four daughters, 10 grandchildren, and one great-grandchild, he says he has everything he needs. He drives a two-year-old Ford Taurus. “I’ve got better things to spend my money on,” he says…

OK… Upon further reflection, I think I may have overstated things a bit when I called Monaghan Ypsi’s least favorite son. While it’s true that he’s roundly disliked for his attempts to criminalize homosexuality, and his views on birth control, among other things, there are likely worse people who have lived in Ypsilanti since its founding, like the serial killer John Norman Collins and Henry Ford’s right hand man Harry Bennett, who almost assuredly is responsible for having killed people on behalf of the company. Monaghan, sadly, is just the most recent in a long line of mother fuckers to call Ypsi home.