He founded Clayton Homes in 1966 and built it into the United States' largest producer and seller of manufactured housing, a formerly publicly traded company that was sold to Berkshire Hathaway in 2003 for $1.7 billion.
[2] After becoming ill at the end of the first year, he transferred[2] to the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, where he was a member of the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity[3] and received an engineering degree in 1957.
[1] Clayton published an autobiography, First a Dream (FSB Press, ISBN 978-0-9726389-0-6), in 2002, cowritten with Bill Retherford.
[1] Clayton has made many charitable contributions in the Knoxville area, including a $3.25 million donation for construction of the Knoxville Museum of Art; a $1 million donation to the University of Tennessee College of Law for its Center for Entrepreneurial Law; and a $1 million donation to East Tennessee Baptist Hospital to establish the Clayton Birthing Center.
[4] With his wife, Clayton also made two $1 million donations to Freed-Hardeman University in Henderson, Tennessee, which is near his home town.