Those Guys Have All the Fun - James Andrew Miller [9]
Now in retrospect, we should’ve taken him across the street to UCLA, but I took the doctor’s advice and we went to another hospital, which was farther away but more discreet. I was protecting the company and J. Paul from this potential scandal, you know? Again, protecting George, I registered him in the name of Glenn Davis, who at that time was a very close friend of mine, a former Heisman Trophy winner from West Point. The whole night went on with George in ICU, and then I went with him into his hospital room, where I elected to sleep that night. About three hours later, a herd of people came running in—apparently the monitors went haywire. They rushed him out of there and within an hour they pronounced him dead. Well, there I was with nobody knowing, only me. So I tried to gather myself up, then went into the office in the morning. I called J. Paul Getty and told him George was in a coma, that he hadn’t died yet, but it didn’t look like he was going to recover in a reasonable fashion. I knew he had died, but I didn’t want to shock the old man first off. Then a little later I called back and said, “Mr. Getty, it’s hard for me to call you like this, but I must tell you that George has passed away.” He didn’t say much, quite honestly.
Then J. Paul Getty called me back and asked, “Who do you think should be temporary executive vice president?” And I said, “You will recall, Mr. Getty, that George had written you recently about the company’s management and he was very high on the current vice president of finance, Sid Peterson.” And I said, “You know, if you’d like to follow George, it seems to me that he would recommend Sid Peterson.” He said, “Would you issue a statement to that effect in the company?” So I gathered our top executives together and told them that George had passed away and that Sid Peterson had been named to succeed George, not in an official capacity, because that action would take the board of directors, but that Mr. Getty—J. Paul—had recommended that Sid Peterson act in George’s absence.
The following fall, tragedy struck the Gettys again: J. Paul’s grandson was kidnapped by the Mafia in Italy. When J. Paul announced he would pay “not one penny” of ransom, the kidnappers chopped off the boy’s ear and sent it home. Eventually the rest of the boy followed—alive—and when it was time for the young man to go to work, it was Evey who would get the call to find him a suitable job within the company.
For favors rendered, for doing his duty well beyond the call of it, Stuart Evey would be rewarded with what could only be called a glamorous position at the firm, vice president of non-oil operations, put in charge of everything Getty was involved with other than oil. While other Getty executives spent their time crunching numbers or traipsing through dirt to see if wells were dry duds or potential gushers, Stuart hung out at a luxury resort in Mexico, at wineries, or wherever Getty had investments.
As yet another desirable perk, Evey spent time with athletes and movie stars in Hollywood, magnetically attracted as they were to the Getty name and connection. This earned Evey envy, if not outright jealousy, from those other executives. But they knew what Stuart knew—that his power came from on high. After all, he was the one who had told J. Paul who should be the president of the company.
GEORGE CONNER, Finance Manager, Getty Oil:
I was hired by Getty in Los Angeles to be the finance manager. We had responsibility for the J. Paul Getty castle in England, the Getty Museum, the automobile fleets in Los Angeles, pistachio groves in Bakersfield,