Peter Kiewit was born on September 12, 1900 in Omaha, Nebraska, United States, the fifth of six children of Anna Schleicker and Peter Kiewit. Although father and son bore the same name, the son never styled himself "Junior. " In 1884, Kiewit's father founded a small masonry contracting firm. Upon his death in 1914, two older sons took over the business, renaming it Peter Kiewit Sons in his honor.
Kiewit graduated from Omaha's Central High School in 1918 and worked for his brothers as water boy, timekeeper, carpenter's helper, and finally apprentice bricklayer before entering Dartmouth College, which he left after a year. In 1960, Dartmouth recognized his brief stay by awarding him an honorary doctor of law degree, a gesture amply reciprocated in 1964 when Kiewit donated $500, 000 to Dartmouth for construction of a computer center.
In 1919 Kiewit went to Omaha, where he worked for his brothers, first as bricklayer, next as foreman, and finally as estimator and construction supervisor. The construction business prospered during the 1920's as it acquired contracts for buildings in and around Omaha. Kiewit's older brothers left the firm, which he reorganized in July 1931 as Peter Kiewit Sons' Company (hereafter PKS) with assets of $125, 000 and himself as president and chief stockholder. Shortly before, Kiewit had undergone what proved to be one of the formative experiences of his life. In 1930 he was stricken with phlebitis, a chronic inflammation of the veins, and after nine months in various hospitals was told by doctors he could never again lead an active life. Kiewit ignored these warnings and resumed work, although for the next fifteen years he was often hospitalized by recurrences of the disease. Because he never knew when illness might incapacitate him, Kiewit developed a management style that would become his trademark--he sought out talented young men, gave them on-the-job training, promoted them to ever more responsible positions if they proved able, and finally allowed them to purchase (nonvoting) shares in the company so that they might prosper with it, with the proviso that they sell back their shares if they left the company. In this way Kiewit built a loyal and highly motivated management team capable of supervising jobs in his absence. However, he retained ultimate control of PKS by keeping all voting stock in his own hands.
PKS grew during the 1930's, for Kiewit felt that the government would attempt to stimulate the depressed economy by means of public works projects, and he borrowed money to buy heavy earth-moving equipment. Thus PKS was in a position to bid successfully for the dam and irrigation projects that soon began under the New Deal. This intuition was an example of what many construction men saw as Kiewit's uncanny ability to divine the future direction of their industry, for PKS always seemed poised to take advantage of the next boom in building. For instance, Kiewit's expansion of his company's scope of operations despite the depression of the 1930's gave PKS the capacity to undertake over half a billion dollars in defense contracts during World War II.
Meanwhile, in 1941, Kiewit created a holding company, Peter Kiewit Sons Inc. (hereafter PKS Inc. ) to control the various companies he had established or acquired. His original construction company remained the most important of the new parent company's subsidiaries. Where other contractors downsized after the end of the wartime boom, Kiewit diversified into strip mining and quarrying to provide employment for his earth-moving equipment during lean times. Thus PKS was able to take advantage of the highway building boom of the 1950's and in 1952 won a $1. 2 billion contract (the second largest ever awarded to that time) to build a plant for the Atomic Energy Commission at Portsmouth, Ohio.
Kiewit was frequently away from home during the years in which he built his business empire. Although he never neglected his various business enterprises, Kiewit became more involved in social, civic, and philanthropic endeavors after his second marriage, serving on the boards of trustees of a number of colleges, universities, museums, and hospitals, and giving over $20 million to such institutions before his death. In 1962, Samuel Newhouse, who owned a string of newspapers throughout the United States, secretly negotiated to buy the Omaha World-Herald from its local owners for $40. 1 million. Omaha business and civic leaders were outraged when news of the impending deal leaked out. Kiewit, who normally shunned publicity, dramatically stepped forward at the eleventh hour to save the paper from "foreign" ownership by topping Newhouse's offer, financing the deal himself with surplus cash and securities from the coffers of PKS Inc. During the 1960's, PKS won contracts for numerous urban transportation projects, and with the onset of an energy crisis in the 1970's, PKS Inc. soon became one of the nation's ten largest coal producers and its profits from mining would rival those of PKS from construction.
Perhaps because of his early brush with invalidism, Kiewit took a keen interest in medical affairs and physical fitness. In 1976 he gave $4 million for the construction of the Kiewit Physical Fitness Center at Creighton University. As his seventy-ninth birthday approached, Kiewit appeared to be in excellent health. However, in August 1979, he was thrown from a horse and hospitalized with broken ribs at Clarkson Hospital in Omaha--already the recipient of over $1 million in Kiewit gifts. In September, he was readmitted to Clarkson, where doctors removed his left lung after discovering a tumor. He left the hospital on October 19, only to be readmitted four days later with a bleeding ulcer. He underwent surgery to correct the problem but died a week later.
Kiewit's will provided for the transfer of PKS Inc. to its employees, for upon his death his voting stock was canceled and henceforth control of the company was based on ownership of common stock--60 percent of which was held by employees. The common stock still owned by Kiewit was transferred to the Peter Kiewit Foundation, which was gradually to sell it to employees and use the proceeds to continue the philanthropic work begun by its founder. Similar arrangements were made for employee ownership and control of the Omaha World-Herald. Nonetheless, an obituary in the New York Times introduced a measure of controversy concerning Kiewit's career by suggesting that PKS public works projects had often "dragged far behind schedule at exorbitant costs to taxpayers. " The charge did not go unanswered, for the president of Kiewit's Omaha World-Herald replied with an able defense of Kiewit's reputation. However, a posthumous taint of scandal arose in 1981 when PKS pleaded "no contest" to charges it had rigged bids for Army Corps of Engineer projects between 1970 and 1976.
Peter Kiewit was recognized for building the largest major construction companies (RKS) in the world with billions of dollars in annual revenue. His empire consisted of some thirty subsidiaries by the time of his death. His company was responsible for the construction of the Eisenhower Tunnel in Colorado, subways in New York City, and many major world-class projects throughout the world. His Peter Kiewit Foundation also became the largest charitable organization in the world. In 1976 he received the University of Nebraska's Distinguished Service to Medicine Award.
On January 22, 1922, Kiewit married Mary Drake, the daughter of a well-known bridge builder. They had two children. They separated in 1943 and divorced in 1951. On July 2, 1952, he married Evelyn Stotts Newton, the widow of an early business associate. Many who knew the couple credited her with changing her husband's outlook on life. In January 1977, Kiewit's second wife died.
On February 18, 1978, he married his third wife, Marjorie Harkins Buchanan, a widow with four grown children and a fellow member of the United Presbyterian Church's national board.
