University of Phoenix has moment of silence for eccentric, brilliant, beloved John Sperling

• To most%2C he will be remembered as the founder of the Apollo Education Group and the University of Phoenix%2C the businessman who revolutionized adult and online education.
• Sperling was a man of generosity%2C curiosity%2C vision and grit%2C his close friends say.
• Sperling invested heavily into causes%2C including plant genetics and seawater agriculture%2C anti-aging medicine and the decriminalization of marijuana.
• In his autobiography%2C %22Rebel With a Cause%2C%22 Sperling wrote that he was the youngest of five children. He was born in a log cabin in Missouri and raised in a home that had a coal-burning stove and an outhouse.

John Sperling was at once brilliant and eccentric, a dyslexic university professor, a billionaire animal lover who longed to clone his dog, a champion of legalizing medical marijuana.

To most, he will be remembered as the founder of the Apollo Education Group and the University of Phoenix, the businessman who revolutionized adult and online education.

Sperling, who died of natural causes Friday at age 93, was nothing if not a visionary, his colleagues recalled Monday.

"He was a man with a vision, and he didn't let anything stand in the way of that vision," said Joanna Acocella, senior vice president of Apollo Education Group's external affairs.

Acocella was among the employees who paused Monday for a moment of silence to remember Sperling, who died in a Marin County, Calif., hospital.

"He knew all of our names," said Nancy Jagger, vice president of the group's shared services. "For many years, he hand-wrote birthday cards…He was very personal."

Deuree Noel recalled an emotional encounter in the elevator with Sterling. Because of him, she said, she had earned two degrees, her husband had earned one degree, and her daughter had worked at the company for several years.

In the elevator, he was inches away. "At the moment, I was in awe," said Noel, director of talent and strategy.

"He's famous for, in meetings, listening intently with those piercing blue eyes and disarming speakers with his silence," said Ryan Rauzon, of external affairs.

His only child, Peter, said in a biography that his father was an activist, union organizer, educator-turned-entrepreneur, a prodigious writer, and an innovator who founded one of the nation's largest private universities with more than 1 million students, alumni, faculty and employees.

"(He) sparred with newspaper editors, legislators, higher-education accrediting bodies, and others he perceived resistant to change," wrote Peter Sperling, who is chairman of the company his father founded in 1973.

Sperling's is a poor-boy-makes-good story, the tale of a poorly educated, dyslexic, pneumonia-racked child who grew up alongside four siblings in a log cabin in Missouri with a possessively loving mother.

He went on to serve in the Merchant Marine and U.S. Army Air Corps, get an education with the G.I. Bill and eventually studied at the University of Cambridge before working as a professor at San Jose State University, according to his son.

"He had such a defiant intellect," Rauzon said. "It's amazing that we are all here because of one man and what he accomplished."

Sperling, who had homes in Phoenix and near San Francisco, is survived by his longtime companion, Joan Hawthorne; his former wife, Virginia Sperling; his son, Peter; his daughter-in-law, Stephanie; and his two grandchildren, Max and Eve.

Although he kept a low profile in Arizona, his philanthropy supported a variety of causes, from solar research to anti-aging efforts to the decriminalization of marijuana.

Companies held by the Apollo Education Group employ roughly 15,000 people, about 10,000 of whom are in Arizona. The company also has about 29,000 adjunct faculty, Rauzon said.

There are about 242,000 students enrolled as of the most recent count, Rauzon said, and about 860,000 alumni.

At its zenith, more than 80 percent of the university's revenue source was federally backed student loans. In 2008, for example, it collected more than $3 billion in federal financial aid.

Sperling founded the chain of schools in the 1970s. He retired as executive chairman from its parent company in 2012.

.