Jim Clayton

James L. Clayton Sr. (born March 2, 1934) is an American businessman, investor, and philanthropist. 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.

Early life James L. Clayton was born in 1934 in Finger, Tennessee. His father was a sharecropper. As a child, he aspired to become a country music singer. After becoming ill at the end of the first year, he transferred

Career While a student, Clayton started an informal business of fixing and reselling used cars, but a 2004 article in Fast Company magazine suggested that the story was not as simple as was widely reported.

2020 helicopter crash On August 3, 2020, Clayton, along with his brother Joe, Clayton Holdings VP Flynt Griffin, and developer John McBride, were onboard Clayton's Eurocopter EC130 when it crashed into the Tennessee River near the Sequoyah Hills neighborhood of Knoxville around 7:45 p.m.

Clayton, Griffin, and McBride resurfaced soon after the crash near to the wreckage, and were rescued by a nearby pontoon boat. Joe Clayton's body was recovered next to the wreckage of the helicopter at around 9:30 p.m. He was pronounced dead on arrival.