What would you do with three-quarters of a billion dollars?

Karen and Alan Ashton decided to do some thanksgiving on a grand scale, literally.

Alan Ashton retired as a BYU professor in 1987 to oversee WordPerfect, which Ashton had created with his student, Bruce Bastian. The privately owned company was sold in 1994 for $1.4 billion, according to the New York Times. Ashton was once listed by Forbes as one of the 400 wealthiest people in America.

Since then, the Ashtons have used their windfall to create Thanksgiving Point in Lehi, a not-so-small 750-acre gesture to the community that nurtured their business. More than 1.6 million people visited the area last year alone. The couple have generously supported the arts, famously given $1 million to defeat California’s lightning rod of controversy known as Prop 8, from 2004-2007 served as mission president in Canada for the LDS Church, and helped found the hugely popular Timpanogos Storytelling Festival.

In an interview with the Daily Herald, 62-year-old Karen Ashton said she and her husband plan to give their fortune away before they die. One of their latest projects is to add a children’s museum to the Thanksgiving Point campus.

“I figure I have 20 solid years ahead of me and that is really not very long,” she said. “They [the wealthy] die just like everybody else. They can either die having really experienced having done good things, or they spend time trying to accumulate more and they don’t get to keep it. I’m probably not going to have any left by the time I go. … WordPerfect was the vehicle that gave us the opportunity to do the extra things that we have wanted to do.”

Today, 50 of the 750 acres of the former historic Fox farm that the Ashtons purchased in 1995 have been turned into exquisitely manicured gardens that are open to visitors.

“I love the gardens,” Karen Ashton said. “There are tons of little nooks and spots.” She finds tranquility in coming across “a spot that no one else has discovered. … We’ll call it work, but I hope everyone knows I’m having a good time.”

It may be cliche, but wealth isn’t what brings happiness, she said. It’s all in how you use the cash.

“We are like everybody in one way and that is [being concerned about] the health and well-being of our family, and wealth doesn’t change that,” she said. “It doesn’t secure it. … In every way that matters, we are doing the same work as every other mother and father. If anything, we want to be able to do more in our life. If I told people that money doesn’t make you happy, they would laugh. It’s nice to have enough money to pay your bills. The rest of it has nothing to do with money.”

While philanthropy is great, Karen Ashton said the she and her husband’s central focus is their 11 children and 47 grandchildren.

Alan Ashton today serves in the LDS Church as a bishop in a BYU stake, and is a former stake president. Rather than retire, a decade ago he founded ASH Capital, a venture investment company.

Education is important to the Ashtons. Myriad classes are available to the public at Thanksgiving Point, where more than 300 volunteers help with programs. For information about Thanksgiving Point, visit thanksgivingpoint.com.