Adolph Coors IV to speak at local Prayer Breakfast

by Clem Boyd

As a former special forces Marine, you might expect Adolph Coors IV to have a gruff, drill sergeant demeanor. As a former executive with one of the world’s largest breweries, you might expect him to be blunt, no-nonsense, to the point. As a son raised amidst tremendous wealth, you could reasonably expect a flippant, aren’t-you-lucky-to-know-me attitude. As a man who’s suffered tremendous personal trauma, you could expect a cynical, bitter and hopeless spirit. But Adolph Coors is nothing like you’d expect.

Coors will tell his amazing life story, including his commitment to Jesus Christ, during this year’s Dayton Prayer Breakfast. The event is scheduled for Monday, May 20 at the Dayton Convention Center.

Coors is the great grandson of Adolph Herman Joseph Coors, who, in 1873, founded the Colorado-based brewery. His father, Adolph Coors III, was chairman of the board of the family business. “I was raised in a family where business success was the only important thing,” he explained in an interview with Christian Citizen. “That will bring a person a lot of money, fame and power, but it also brought emptiness. You never have enough, you always want more, and I had a taste of that.”

Coors has described his life as a Norman Rockwell existence prior to 1960. Then tragedy struck. When Adolph was 14, his father was kidnapped and murdered by an escaped convict, Joseph Corbett. A total stranger had taken his best friend and greatest hero. Corbett served 18 years and was paroled in 1978.

His mother, Mary, turned to alcohol to quiet the anguish. Adolph turned to personal pleasure and accomplishment. “I don’t knock success and people working hard, that’s what God commands,” he said. “But we should do well to His glory, and I was putting it to my glory and my prowess.”

He graduated from the University of Denver School of Business and spent two years with the Wall Street firm of Shearson Hammill & Co. as a commodity specialist. Then he went into the Marines for three years, serving as a cold weather survival training instructor at the Marine Corps’ Mountain Warfare Training Center in Northern California. His unit was the kind that now would be fighting in the rugged and desolate terrain of Afghanistan.

While in the Marines, Adolph suffered another personal setback with the death of his sister, Mary Brooke, who succumbed to lymphoma in 1968. Though he was married to his childhood sweetheart, Betty Jane (BJ) McCullough, things were not going well there either.

After his tour of duty, he went back to the company bearing his family name. But it was no cakewalk. He was made to climb the company ladder, like anyone else. He spent over 10 years at the Adolph Coors Company working in administration, sales, marketing, quality control, brewing, research and development and financial planning.

One night on his way home from work Adolph fell asleep at the wheel, ending up in a head-on collision, which nearly claimed his life. He spent two years recovering.

Near the end of that recovery period, he invited an old family friend and his supervisor at the brewery to dinner. Lowell and Vera Sund spent the evening, not talking about business, but about the importance of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. "“ grew up in church and I had been confirmed,” Adolph said. “But I never knew the importance of knowing Christ personally. They were just tremendous people and they talked to us for five hours that evening. It absolutely blew us away.”

BJ made a decision within a few days to accept Christ. Adolph decided to get out of the marriage. “The Lord really began to impact me,” he said. “The Sunds were different and I thought maybe they had something I needed. But it took six more months before I asked the Lord into my heart.”

That was 1975. It was two more years before he could face one of his greatest challenges of faith - meeting his father’s killer. He went to the maximum security section of Colorado’s Canon City penitentiary.

“He wouldn’t see me that day, but he did receive a Bible I gave him,” Coors related. I also gave him a personal letter, which asked for his forgiveness for the hatred I’d held in my heart for the prior 17 years. Several months later, another inmate told me Corbett had read the letter and passed it through every cell block of that prison and had begun reading the Bible. That was God’s way of showing me He had things under control. I pray for him on a regular basis that he will receive Christ some day.”

With the state of the world and the country in upheaval since Sept. 11, Coors sees even more relevance for the message which brought him out of his personal morass. “How perilous and tenuous is life,” he commented. “Not only did people lose their lives, but others lost fortunes when the stock market plummeted. Fortunes were wiped out. We need to get our eyes focused on what’s important.”

Tickets for the prayer breakfast may be purchased at local Christian bookstores and churches.