Those Guys Have All the Fun - James Andrew Miller [8]
SCOTT RASMUSSEN:
My father and I were amazed when we got the down payment from J. B. Doherty and K. S. Sweet Associates. We thought he’d give us $35,000 so we could pay a few other bills—but they gave us the exact amount, $34,167.
No matter. The transponder had been purchased, and it was now the new network’s most prized possession. Over the coming years, it would become the Hope Diamond, Holy Grail, and best asset for ESPN, the critical factor in making so many of the possibilities the Rasmussens discussed a reality.
Bill and Scott Rasmussen’s decision to buy a transponder on RCA SATCOM 1 in 1978: Step Number One in ESPN’s rise to world dominance.
J. B. DOHERTY:
Bill and Scott were floundering around trying to find a permanent financing source while we were funding the thing on an interim basis. We were looking for the big institutional investor and talked to various venture funds and insurance companies. We went to six or seven places but they all said no.
We were responsible for overseeing one of our insurance company’s institutional-investor clients who had an investment in a hotel property in Hawaii, and Getty Oil was involved. Getty had a division that held all the non-oil parts of Getty, like hotels, nut groves, and other very strange things. It was run by a guy named Stuart Evey, and we took the idea to him.
Jean Paul Getty had five wives and five divorces, so his money suffered, but there always seemed to be “more where that came from”—meaning the ground. Oil made Getty a millionaire, starting in 1916, when a million bucks still meant something, and it made him a billionaire within a few decades, especially once his oil holdings were extended to encompass wells in Saudi Arabia.
Six sons were born to Getty over the course of his five marriages, but only one—the first—was named after Jean Paul’s father, George. George Getty II was deeply troubled in the way rich men’s sons are widely expected, and some perhaps doomed, to be.
On the evening of June 5, 1973, the son reached his breaking point. That night George had been especially upset and irritable, downing many a beer, two bottles of wine, some pills, and talking bitterly about the desirability of death. Eventually, he managed to get hold of a barbecue fork and poke an inch-deep gash in his gut. As blood spewed, George threatened to shoot everyone in sight, then locked himself in his bedroom. When none of the family could coax him to open the door, the family decided the only alternative was to summon George’s executive assistant and family confidant, Stuart Evey, who rushed over in the middle of the night to take charge. The first thing Evey did was send two Bel Air security guards away; Evey was determined to keep this a private matter.
Cleaning up family messes and keeping them out of the papers was unofficially part of Evey’s job. But this was personal, too, since George had, in fact, been Evey’s mentor at Getty Oil.
STUART EVEY, Vice President, Getty Oil:
George Getty was not a big daily drinker. He was impulsive. Every once in a while, about every four months, he might go on a kick where he’d drink like a sieve, you know, ten, twelve beers at a time, but then he wouldn’t have anything for six months or so. I was loyal to him, but I was also close to his wife, Jacqueline. She had a separate schedule, and we spent a lot of time together. I dated her for a while when George was still alive. I was still married, but you know, kind of on the outside of it.
George and his wife had had an argument earlier and he’d taken a barbecue fork and punched his stomach. He tried to kill himself, I think to spare her, I know him that well. George’s wife called me about midnight and said that George was not doing well and could I come over. So I went to the house and found out that he was in his bedroom and that he wouldn’t open the door. I could hear snoring as loud as I’ve ever heard in my life. So I tried to be gentle, but then finally he just wouldn’t come to the door so I called