John B. Francis, 87, Was Executive, Philanthropist

John B. Francis, a Kansas businessman and philanthropist whose house on Chappaquiddick was first the center of controversy and years later the centerpiece of a remarkable conservation purchase, died on Sunday, August 15, after a long illness. He was 87.

Mr. Francis was the former chairman of Puritan Bennett Corp.; his retirement in 1986 ended family control of the business founded in 1913 by his father, Parker B. Francis. The company, now a part of Tyco Healthcare, develops ventilator systems and other respiratory care products.

Mr. Francis was active in many civic organizations during the course of his 46-year career and was generous in philanthropy, which prompted the Greater Kansas City Council on Philanthropy to honor him in 1986 as Philanthropist of the Year.

Together with his wife, Mary Harris Francis, he established the Francis Child Development Institute at Penn Valley Community College in 1990. With support from the Francis Families Foundation, the institute has received some $15 million for the training of early childhood teachers and day care providers.

Mr. Francis also oversaw the creation and funding of the Parker B. Francis Fellowship Program, which has granted some $30 million for more than 600 fellowships in pulmonary research over the past 30 years. And in his father's memory, he established the Parker B. Francis Chair in pulmonary medicine at Harvard Medical School.

On the Vineyard, Mr. Francis made news in 1973 when his family began construction of a summer home on Chappaquiddick, opposite Caleb's Pond near the beach club, just 25 yards from the harbor's high tide mark. In response to community protests, the Edgartown conservation commission called on the state Dept. of Natural Resources to send an expert to examine the site. The state expert affirmed that the tract was not a wetland, and construction was allowed to proceed.

A decade and a half later, the Francis family's five-acre estate was put on the market, and was listed exclusively by Conover Real Estate at a price of $1,775,000. But in the end, the property was not sold on the private market. In a remarkable bargain deal, the property went in 1997 to the Sheriff's Meadow Foundation for a price of $1 million, and the foundation set about to "unbuild" the property, returning it to a stretch of open, undeveloped beach.

Said Mrs. Francis that year in an interview from their Kansas home: "This completes the cycle. It was beach when we started in, and we protected it, and now it's going back to beach again." Expressing his elation at the purchase, Richard Johnson, executive director of Sheriff's Meadow, said: "Most times in conservation, the best you can hope for is that things will stay the same. This is unique because in ecological terms, we can take it back where it used to be."