“Billionaire population is down to one.”

While doing some research back in the 1970s, that American Press headline from Jan. 7, 1978, grabbed my attention. How could that be, I wondered, when there are more billionaires in this country today than you can count.

Actually, they have been counted, but the numbers don’t jibe. One news report said the United States has the most billionaires at 724, and China is in second place with 698. Another report said there were 614 billionaires in this country in 2020, so we can assume the exact number is somewhere in between those two.

The 1978 story that I saw was about the death of John D. MacArthur, 80, who died of pancreatic cancer in Palm Beach, Fla. It said “the era of the eccentric American billionaire moved closer to an end” with MacArthur’s death.

Shipping magnate Daniel K. Ludwig was acknowledged as the only billionaire left at that time. Howard Hughes, J. Paul Getty, and H.L Hunt were the only other men listed by Fortune magazine in a 1976 article as recent billionaires, but they had all died since 1974.

The 1975 edition of The Guinness Book of World Records said the earliest dollar billionaires were John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Mellon, who both died in 1937; and Henry Ford, who died in 1947.

MacArthur conducted the business of his empire from a hotel coffee shop, according to The Associated Press. He made his fortune selling mail-order insurance. The AP said he “swelled it with well-timed real estate investments that nobody — not even he, he said — could keep track of.”

As head of Bankers Life & Casualty Co and many other firms, MacArthur would never say what he was worth. But when asked about an estimate of $5 billion he agreed to let himself be called a billionaire.

The AP report said MacArthur displayed few signs of extraordinary wealth. He lived in an apartment at his Colonnades Hotel in nearby Palm Beach Shores. He had no mansion, no limousine, not even a secretary.

MacArthur preferred to hang out in the hotel coffee shop and meet visitors in casual dress that one said gave him the look of an “elderly beach bum.” He was amused when hotel guests would mistake him for the handyman.

Palm Beach was a winter playground for the leisure class, but MacArthur shunned the big names. Those people, he said, “have a party every night someplace … They’re yakity-yakking about nothing, boring the hell out of each other, I’m sure. They certainly bore the life out of me.”

Starting with profits from Bankers’ Life, MacArthur pulled together an estimated 100,000 acres of Florida land and vast holdings elsewhere, including a Chicago printing company, a brewery, and the PGA National Golf Club in Palm Beach.

A Chicago attorney for MacArthur said the bulk of his assets — which were held in trust and not included in his will — would go to charity. The rest of his assets went to his wife and two children.

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation was created to make grants each year to 20 to 30 citizens or residents of the United States. They go to individuals in any field who “show exceptional merit and promise for continued and enhanced creative work.”

The fellowship comes with a no-strings-attached grant of $625,000 to be awarded over five years for those individuals to continue their creative work. The grants are known as the “genius” award.

While reading about MacArthur’s life, I did some additional research about billionaires. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, is the top billionaire and the world’s richest individual. He is worth $177 billion.

The other four out of the top five are Elon Musk of Tesla Motors and SpaceX, $151 billion; Bill Gates of Microsoft, $124 billion; Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, $97 billion; and Warren Buffet of Berkshire Hathaway,  an American multinational conglomerate holding company, $96 billion.

So, there you have the billionaire story. Let me close with a 1978 question for Dear Abby from a reader named Dating Now:

“Is there anything wrong with a girl making out just a little to keep a fellow interested in dating her? I don’t mean a great big love scene or anything like that, just a little light necking and a couple of kisses during the evening, and maybe one extra special good-night kiss? I’m keeping my virtue as a matter of principle.

DEAR DATING: That’s a dangerous game. The kind of “interest” you could arouse might cost you your principle.