Friends in High Places: The Bechtel Story : The Most Secret Corporation and How It Engineered the Wo by Laton Mccartney (books to read to be successful TXT) 📕

as an officer or without serving a day of active duty, continue in civilian life. Steve, who would later make much of his “service” in the corps and design a corporate logo similar to the Marines globe-and-anchor emblem, opted for the latter.

W hatever regret Steve may have felt at missing out on combat and Marine Corps life was offset by a girl he had met in high school who, in the summer of 1945, became his wife.

Her name was Betty Hogan, and she was everything a Bechtel wife was expected to be: ever-supportive, low-keyed (her hobby was collecting twine), pleasant-mannered. Steve senior and Laura: adored her.

They also approved of Steve junior’s enrollment in the MBA program at Stanford, where he came under the tutelage of Paul Holden, one of the leading business consultants of the day. They were less enthusiastic, however, when, following graduation from Stanford in 194 7, Steve announced he was going into business for himself, building houses on the Menlo Park peninsula. Rather than confront his son directly, Steve senior set out to change his mind by subtler meansnamely, by taking Steve junior and his bride along on a three-month round-the-world cruise. It would be a belated honeymoon, Bechtel senior promised-a chance to visit the Philippines, Tokyo, Shanghai, Hong Kong, India, the Middle East and the major capitals of Europe.

Though he did not say so, it would also give his son a chance to see the Bechtel Corporation at work around the globe.

By the time the Bechtels’ ship docked in the United States, all thoughts of house-building and 9:00-to-5:00 days had disappeared.

Steve junior had seen the world of Bechtel and he wanted to be part of it. Conveniently, one of Bechtel’s senior executives was waiting with a job offer. There was a pipeline down in Texas, he said. Was Steve interested? “Hell, yes,” he exclaimed.

The conditions in Texas and the other pipelining sites where Steve junior worked the next several years were nearly as difficult as those at Boulder twenty years before. Gradually and determinedly, though, Steve junior worked his way up-assistant superintendent, then spread supervisor, then division manager-never complaining, earning every raise and promotion. When, eight years after he joined the company, a Bechtel engineer was needed in New York, Steve, who was simultaneously handling projects in New England and Michigan as well, went off without a whimper, not only doing the job, but getting his New York State engineer’s license in the bargain. “Everybody in the outfit 131

FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES

company president, while he continued the next five years as chairman and chief executive officer. To no one’s surprise, the motion passed unanimously.

In the Bechtel household, the traditional Christmas feast was over, many of the guests departed, the dishes all put away. It was after 10:00, past Steve senior’s bedtime, when the old man motioned his son and Betty into his study. He wanted to tell them how proud of them he was .

T hey were an exemplary couple in every respect, a living representation of everything for which the Bechtel family and company stood.

And as a token of his esteem, he would give them a special gift-a big house in Piedmont with a swimming pool, a tennis court and a dining room that would seat fifty-a room in which Steve junior and Betty could themselves host the family Christmas dinners someday. “Merry Christmas, you