Karl Eller, former Circle K CEO and University of Arizona alumnus, dies at 90

Karl Eller, a child of the Great Depression who went on to build an outdoor-advertising empire in Arizona and helped establish Phoenix as a major player in professional sports, died Sunday. He was 90.

His death was confirmed by the University of Arizona, where the business school was named in his honor.

Eller, a businessman and entrepreneur with a gift for squeezing triumph out of failure, was born June 20, 1928, in Chicago.

When he was 9 years old, Eller, his mother and older sister, Elaine, moved to Tucson at the insistence of Elaine, who was 17 and had enrolled at the University of Arizona partly to help manage her asthma.

Eller's father had left the family when Eller was 5.

Despite the sweltering heat and lack of air-conditioning at the time, Eller immediately embraced life in the desert, he said in a 2011 interview with The Arizona Republic.

"I was an Arizona kid from Day One," he said.

Early years in Tucson

Eller said he grew up "under the wings of the University of Arizona," in a boardinghouse his mother helped run, just across the street from the university's stadium.

To help the family financially, Eller became a paper boy for the Arizona Daily Star, getting up at 3:30 a.m. each day to embark on his bicycle paper route that had more than 500 homes.

Eller went on to attend Tucson High School, where he played fullback for the school football team and made friends he would keep for decades to come.

After his high-school graduation in 1946, Eller joined the U.S. Army and was stationed in Japan for two years.

Taking advantage of the G.I. Bill, which Congress had passed just two years before Eller entered the service, he returned to Tucson and enrolled at UA.

It was there Eller met the woman who would become his wife, Joan "Stevie" Stevens, to whom he remained married until his death.

Stevens' wealthy Illinois family didn't know what to make of likable but practically penniless Eller at first, Stevie Eller said in a 2011 interview.

Her father advised her at the time to pursue a teaching career to ensure the family would have enough money to survive, Stevie Eller said.

"He said, you know, 'Face it, this guy has no family, no clothes, no job, no car, basically, not a lot. You may be supporting him the rest of your life,'" she said.

The couple married two days after graduation.

Advertising venture brings success

In 1961, Karl Eller received the phone call that would set him on the path to financial success and everything that followed.

The surprise call came from John Kluge, president of Foster & Kleiser, a national billboard company where Eller worked for several years after college.

Kluge offered to sell Eller the company's Phoenix, Tucson, and Bakersfield and Fresno, California, operations for $5 million. Kluge said he would need the money within 90 days to close the deal.

The problem: Eller, then 33 and living in Chicago, had less than $50,000 to his name. He also had a wife and two young children to support.

Eller had found some success as an advertising agent and was making about $25,000 a year managing accounts for major brands including Morton Salt, Campbell's Soup and Mars Candy.

Still, for a man of Eller's limited means, coming up with $5 million in three months seemed an impossible task.

Undaunted, he pursued every available means of raising the money, calling every friend, associate and former colleague who might be a willing and able investor.

One by one, he persuaded them to invest in the business, and in March 1962, Eller Outdoor Advertising opened in Phoenix.

"I always wanted to move back to Arizona," Eller said in 2011. "It was like coming back home."

In the 1960s, Phoenix was a young and fast-growing city whose residents valued entrepreneurial spirit and had little reverence for blue bloods. It was the ideal place for a self-made man to build his empire.

Karl and Stevie Eller bought a modest, ranch-style home in a sparsely populated, bucolic neighborhood near the Arizona Biltmore. It remained the Ellers' primary residence despite the eventual encroachment of urbanization and gentrification upon their property from all sides.

In 1968, Eller Outdoor Advertising merged with KTAR radio and television to become Combined Communications.

An advocate for pro sports

Instead of simply reveling in the success of his growing business venture, Karl Eller became almost obsessed with another matter: bringing professional-sports teams to Phoenix.

He believed Phoenix deserved to have its own professional-sports franchises and that the city was sufficiently large and prosperous to support them financially.

Others disagreed, but Eller paid them no mind.

Using his own money to help renovate facilities and underwrite games, Eller became a founding investor in the Phoenix Suns basketball team in 1968.

Eventually, he hired a young assistant coach from the Chicago Bulls named Jerry Colangelo as the team's first general manager.

Eller didn't stop there. In 1971, he and six others succeeded in bringing the Fiesta Bowl to Phoenix. In 1988, he helped attract the NFL's Cardinals from St. Louis to Arizona.

But not everything in Eller's hands would turn to gold. In 1979, when Gannett acquired Combined Communications, Eller believed that Al Neuharth, then-CEO of Gannett, had promised him the presidency.

Neuharth disputed the claim, leaving Eller feeling he'd been shut out.

Gannett Co., is the parent of The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com.

Rapid expansion, then trouble at Circle K

It was around that time when Eller was called upon to head a burgeoning chain of convenience stores called Circle K. He jumped at the opportunity.

Eller had no prior experience managing a gas-station and convenience-store business, but he did understand how to successfully grow a company .

Under his leadership, Circle K expanded from about 1,000 stores to nearly 5,000 stores in 32 states and several countries.

Unfortunately for Eller, the expansion proved too rapid to sustain itself financially. Meanwhile, oil companies had begun opening their own convenience stores in earnest, creating a swarm of new competition.

Those two factors, combined with a mild recession in the 1980s, left Circle K in massive debt. The company's stock price plummeted from a high of $17 a share to $1 a share and then became worthless as Circle K entered into Chapter 11 reorganization.

A week before the company declared bankruptcy in 1990, Eller resigned as chairman and CEO.

Eller was 62, had accrued more than $100 million in personal debts and appeared to have destroyed his reputation as an able business leader.

A return to his roots

But Eller was not one to shrink away into disgrace and ultimate obscurity.

Instead of filing for personal bankruptcy, Eller contacted his creditors, one by one, and struck deals to repay them with interest if they agreed to invest in a new billboard-advertising venture he sought to acquire from Gannett, the same company Eller believed had snubbed him years earlier.

Enough investors agreed to take the gamble that in 1992, Eller was able to acquire Gannett's billboard business for $20 million.

He renamed it Eller Media. Within five years, it would become one of the largest outdoor-advertising companies in the U.S.

Eller sold the company for which he had paid $20 million to Clear Channel Communications in 1997 for $1.15 billion.

Entrepreneurial spirit, philanthropy

With his reputation restored and his financial situation better than ever, Eller became a champion for future entrepreneurs, donating more than $20 million to UA's business school, which in 1999 was renamed the Eller College of Management.

A bronze bust of Eller stands in the school's lobby.

Eller's contributions founded the UA entrepreneurship program, now known as the McGuire Center for Entrepreneurship, and supported student career development and teaching and research related to the free-market economy.

He served on the University of Arizona Foundation board of trustees for decades.

"What an honor it has been to know Karl Eller. He used his education, intelligence and a deep commitment to integrity to achieve the highest levels of success, while always keeping a little bit of Tucson ruggedness and authenticity," said Paulo Goes, dean of the Eller College of Management, in a statement released by the university Monday.

"An extraordinary friend and benefactor, he was a role model for tens of thousands of students and hundreds of faculty and staff, who will forever have their names associated with Eller. Karl's legacy will live on through them."

Eller is survived by his wife, Stevie, their two children, six grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

Includes information from Arizona Republic reporter Jessica Boehm.