Nov 02, 2013 12:16 PM EDT By Staff Reporter, UniversityHerald Reporter

Jon Huntsman has given away more than $1 billion to charity, according to Forbes ($1.6 billion according to Huntsman). Four hundred and fifty million, including a $100 million dollar gift on Friday night, of that has gone to the organization that shares his name, the Huntsman Cancer Institute, The New York Times reported.

The 76-year-old has been giving money away since before he had much of it. According to The Times, he donated a portion of the $320 monthly salary he earned as a naval officer in the 1950's.

When his company, the Huntsman Container Corporation, designed packaging that would hold McDonald's Big Mac in 1976, Huntsman made his first billion. Two years later, he moved into polystyrenes with another company, The Huntsman Chemical Corporation, which eventually shortened to the entity its known as today, The Huntsman Corporation. Its annual revenue is $12 billion per year, according to The Times.

Growing up in rural Iowa, Huntsman didn't fit the early bill for a future billionaire philanthropist. He didn't even know people could be more than poor until he left his hometown, according to The Times.

"Being raised in Idaho, you think everyone is poor," he said. "Then you see the wider world.

"I don't know what took hold of me or why I gave," Huntsman said in response to the $50 million he gave to relief efforts in Armenia following an earthquake in 1988. "It just got to my heart. I was watching television and I saw these families were destroyed. I called my dear friend Armand Hammer and we went over there together."

Huntsman and his wife said they donated about 25 percent of the first billion they made, according to The Times. Early in their endeavors, they would make "small" gifts of $10,000 to $50,000 to around 30 or 40 different charities. After cancer struck Huntsman in 1992, he and his wife decided to narrow their causes to less than 10, of which cancer became the primary one. Both of Huntsman's parents died from the disease. Huntsman would fight two more cases after his initial diagnosis in '92.

"My wife and I determined that it was better to select a fewer number of charitable organizations and make a bigger difference," he said.

Huntsman is particularly suspicious of those who leave charitable donations in their wills.

"The people I particularly dislike are those who say 'I'm going to leave it in my will.' What they're really saying is 'If I could live forever, I wouldn't give any of it away.'"

After he was one of 40 billionaires to pledge half his wealth to charity by the Giving Pledge challenge issued by Warren Buffet and Bill and Melinda Gates, Huntsman questioned why more people didn't sign it and why couldn't the signees pledge even more money, The Times reported.

"My suggestion was to give 80 percent away," he said. "Why do they need half of $10 billion to live on?"

See Now: Covert Team Inside Newsweek Revealed as Key Players in False Human Trafficking Lawsuit