By unseen chance along the way we met
And briefly joined to dance life's minuet.
And briefly joined to dance life's minuet.
There are many people in the world, more every day, and, it seems, more mobility as well. One cannot live for several decades in today's world without meeting, by chance or design, many, many people. Some are famous, some notorious, but most not known beyond the sphere in which they customarily make their way.
The vignettes below touch on a few of the individuals with whom I have had contact. The range is from incidental encounter to close friendship of many years standing, drawn from school days, the work place, or merely social, illustrative of, if anything, intersecting lives in a period which has seen depressions, wars, undreamed of technical advances, a greater interdependence among nations. In short, of change.
Richard L. Conolly, Admiral U.S. Navy
The highest ranking officer for whom I worked directly was also the youngest four-star admiral in our Navy's history. At the time of our first meeting I was working in Washington for Captain Robert L. Dennison, assistant chief of Naval Operations (ACNO) for Politico-Military Affairs. (Dennison later became Naval Aide to President Truman, skipper of the USS Missouri, and, with four stars of his own, CINC Atlantic Fleet.) Conolly then was deputy CNO for administration.
One day in July 1946, the captain asked me how I would like to go to Paris. Secretary of State Byrnes, then in London with the Council of Foreign Ministers, would be staying on in Paris for the Peace Conference. Unhappy with his present naval advisor, Commander 12th Fleet, the Navy would be sending Admiral Conolly, then a vice admiral, to replace him.
So I was interviewed by Conolly, and apparently satisfied him I could be of help. I was to get some "eagle guts" for formal wear and the auguilettes of three strands of gold for everyday because I would serve in a dual capacity: as assistant to the naval advisor and as his aide.
This I did from July until November when, after the conference I moved with him to London when he got his fourth star and took over the US 12th Fleet (soon to be renamed Northern Atlantic and Mediterranean Fleet of which he was CINC).
Conolly was an able and interesting man. During WWII he had developed an enviable reputation as the Navy's best commander of amphibious operations, having participated in both the Mediterranean and Pacific theaters.
He was not prepossessing in appearance. Rotund, about 5' 9", his face seemed at times to bear the marks of having had a slight stroke, though I do not know this to have been the case.
He was totally devoted to the interests of the Navy, served his superiors admirably and, in his personal life, was very close to his wife and children, from whom he was separated during our time together.
In my interview with him, I had made clear my shortcomings to serve him as aide, having had limited experience in this field of endeavor. This I proved on more than one occasion.
As the special plane that was to take us from Washington to Paris was being loaded, I stood calmly by, only to be reminded by the Admiral that my primary duty at this juncture was to make sure that his gear had been properly brought on board.
On another occasion, we had cruised aboard the USS Houston, flagship of the 12th Fleet. As we came ashore, the admiral's car, four-star flag flying, was waiting at the bottom of the gangway. Being polite, I let the Admiral go down first, then followed, only to be told later by the Houston's exec that protocol called for the reverse. That way I would be in the car waiting for the admiral and not he for me. Conolly had said not a word.
He was a man sure of himself, but modest, on occasion surprising me. Since for several months we spent 12 to 14 hours a day together, we had many talks on many subjects, including his future and mine. When writing Secretary of the Navy Forestall to thank him for reposing the confidence in the Admiral evidenced by the promotion to four stars, Conolly passed the draft letter to me and accepted gratefully several suggested changes. He spoke of "not being as dumb as I look" and asked what I thought of his possibly going to law school after his retirement – which, when you've gone as far as he had, would not be far away.
He was a kindly man, always thoughtful of others. We had a trip planned to visit the cathedral at Chartres. When he found out my parents would be in Paris that day, he cancelled and gave me his car.
There were amusing incidents too. One night he wanted to see a movie. We started out and found one showing a John Wayne film (with French subtitles). But military personnel needed script to gain entrance. We had none. I got busy, negotiating with a GI in line with what means I had for what we needed. The place was packed. The aisle next to the wall narrow. At one point we encountered a radiator and had to turn sideways to stand a chance of clearing it. The movie sound was at that point low, but compensating for it came the tinkle played by the admiral as the buttons on his uniform struck the radiator turned glockenspiel.
On another occasion we were guests of the French government for an operatic performance of Pucini's "Madame Butterfly." The tenor playing the part of Lieutenant Pinkerton, USN, so impressed upon us his shameful treatment of Butterfly that the admiral and I would both have given a pretty penny to hide on exiting the gold and blue splendor of our naval uniforms.
Following his tour in London, Admiral Conolly had many important things still to do. He took a reduction to three stars to become president of the Naval War College. He became president of Long Island University. With the help of Zeckendorf, the real estate tycoon, he transformed that university, expanding it greatly. And he served on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB).
We kept in touch, and occasionally got together. It was a keen loss when, one day, his wife and he boarded a plane in New York to go to visit President Eisenhower in Palm Springs, California, only to have the plane inexplicably crash over the Brooklyn flats, killing all on board.
Edward Bennett Williams, Esquire
Williams is a Washingtonian who by any standard has had a remarkable career. He has been for years and is still constantly in the news, as defense counsel labeled "the prodigy of the criminal courts," having defended the likes of Joseph McCarthy, Frank Costello, and Jimmy Hoffa. He has been and is still a prominent figure in the world of professional sports, formerly as president of the Washington Redskins, and currently as president of the Baltimore Orioles.
I met him only once, or rather several times in connection with the same piece of business, in the early 1960's. He was then already a household word.
The occasion was a negotiation between CIA and Georgetown University, I representing CIA and Williams sitting next to Father Bunn, president of Georgetown, as the University’s counsel. Having as part of my responsibility the conduct of research in Mechanical Translation (MT), I had contracted with Georgetown to do a project in Russian to English translation of texts in physics. The amount involved was, I believe, some $150,000.
Now the researchers in MT were often volatile people, not given to cooperating among themselves, each fiercely convinced of the correctness of his or her own approach to a solution. The principal researcher in this case, a Polish woman, led the pack in this regard. (She worked under the general direction of Leon Dostert, head of the School of Languages and Linguistics, who introduced simultaneous translation in the UN. The project director was Father Hedin, a famous astronomer.)
The problem was this: Ms. Researcher Highstrungski had plain quit, walked out. The University wanted reimbursement for her efforts. I was not about to pay out good CIA dollars unless I got a report of work accomplished in a form useful to us.
So here we sat, I alone on one side of the highly polished table in the ivied halls of Georgetown. Across from me sat Bunn, Williams, Hedin, and Dostert.
I found my adversaries pleasant, not unreasonable, but persistent – qualities I strove to match stride for stride. I was awed neither by their number nor their eminence, though I got the impression they expected me to be.
In the end we arrived at an amicable settlement, for they had my sympathy and they acknowledged that I should have something tangible for monies to be received. It was agreed I would authorize payment of $50,000 upon receipt of a report documenting research done to date. We had a deal.
But I had underestimated the persistence of these good people. Shortly after our "deal," I went on a trip, leaving Washington for several weeks. On my return I found that Georgetown had gone over my head to the Director's office and talked CIA out of an additional $50,000 as part of the settlement.
I was never to know what part, if any, Edward Bennett Williams had in this finale. In any event, I, a graduate of George Washington Law School, felt I had been bested by Williams, a graduate of Georgetown Law School. Further deponent saith not.
Rao, Citizen of India
I do not know that Rao was his name, but will so call him. Our encounter was very brief, I being but one passerby at one moment in his life.
Still, his face is as clear to me today as it was the day I saw him, in November 1957, in the courtyard of my hotel in Old Delhi.
Tall, slender, with carefully combed ebony hair, his smooth shaven face the deep purplish-brown common among people of the Indian subcontinent, he stood quietly, even meekly, behind a table on which lay the finely crocheted needlework he sold to make his living. He had the blackest and saddest eyes of anyone I have ever seen.
I approached to view his goods, which he seemed diffident to show. I engaged him in casual conversation, partly to put him at his ease, partly to satisfy a growing curiosity about him and his way of life. In Calcutta, I had toured a village with the headman. The night before, in my Delhi hotel, I had felt uneasy as I dined alone in regal splendor attended by a platoon of waiters, servers, and assistants, some seemingly only standing by to be at my call. I had read of such things, but experiencing it was something utterly different from reading about it.
Rao, it developed, had been orphaned at an early age, and reared in the orphanage of Christian missionaries from America. He may have been lying about this to gain my sympathy, but that is of no importance to the point of my story. There he was, like the village headman, like the servants at the hotel, trying to make a living.
The sheer numbers striving to make ends meet, in India and elsewhere, under seemingly hopeless conditions, weighed upon me heavily. So many people! And here were animals destroying crops at will, undeterred because they were considered sacred. Here were people dying on the street for lack of attention. Here were religious and national differences so deep that periodic flare-ups brought on the slaughter of the innocents.
I bought more than I wanted of Rao's needlework. I overtipped the servants. I hardly begrudged the loss of my pen and pencil set, taken from my person in the jostle of the crowd.
But, over the years, as I have read of rapidly increasing populations, of the gap between the haves and the have-nots, I have thought of Rao, and wondered what we might do, individually and collectively, to give him a hand.
Georges Frederic Doriot, Professor
Having attended five universities and earned degrees from four of them, I have met all manner of teachers. None was more colorful or exciting as teacher than Professor Doriot, whose classes in industrial management I attended for two years at the Harvard Business School.
Doriot, a Frenchman by birth, graduate of the University of Paris, was a slender man of medium height who carried a small mustache that seemed to add merriment to the sparkle of his eyes. He had a noticeable accent, and gave it full play in pronouncing certain words. "Subtract" in his mouth became "soobs-traack," for example.
He knew everybody, and often invited key corporate officers to address his class. Chrysler was a favorite company, and he obtained from the company for the school the magnificent model of the new Plymouth plant, then a marvel of automated engineering design. He had been a Budd official. He was the founder of American Research and Development, a company that provided venture capital to promising enterprises, and which later became a division of Textron.
Doriot was always on the go, pacing up and down aisles during his lecture. But, to me, his major contribution to his students was to insist that they think and rethink. My engineering training had to some extent led me to accept what my teachers said in their classes and wrote in their books, believing that knowledge to be a sufficient basis for my actions. This was not Doriot. There were no final answers, always new questions. Better ways to do things. Other ways to try.
During World War II, Doriot was commissioned a brigadier general and put in charge of the Army R&D. He had a profound influence on our entire materiel program. One day he invited me to lunch, asking me to join him in his office in the Pentagon. I was not only glad to see my old professor, but looked forward to a meal in the general officers' mess, which, I had heard, had fine food.
I was never to find out. "You don't mind if we have our lunch brought in, do you? That way we can have a good talk, without the dining room bustle." I was to find out how the General kept his trim figure, for we were served the slimmest of fares.
In September 1979, to celebrate Professor Doriot's 80th birthday, I joined a couple hundred of his former students in Boston. Our old teacher had prepared a special lecture for us. Things in the world had changed, but his principles, proven sound over the years, were still his clarion cry: insist endlessly that old ways be challenged, that assumptions be tested, that mediocrity be rejected.
He was going strong, and sought, as ever, the higher ground.
Sherman Kent, Intelligence Officer Extraordinaire
Sherman Kent died on March 11, 1986, while I was in Florida. News of his death did not reach me until after a small gathering of his friends had shared with the family an evening at his home to pay their respects to his memory. I was not surprised when his wife, Elizabeth Gregory Kent, told me it was in many ways a joyful occasion, for thus had been life with Sherm.
To me, at one time or another since the fall of 1950 he had been an inspirational leader, a colleague, a confidant, and always a friend.
A Californian who became a historian who taught at Yale, he then turned to intelligence. He was one of the real stars of OSS, and later, of CIA. His seminal book, Strategic Intelligence for American World Policy, was but one aspect of his influence on the U.S. Government which he served for years as chairman of the Board of National Estimates.
Sherm's talents were wide-ranging. He wrote also on how to write history, on French politics, and a book for younger readers called A Boy and a Pig, But Mostly Horses. He was an accomplished woodworker, whether making furniture or "Buffalo Blocks" (handmade multi-wood blocks produced for commercial sale). He was a chef supreme.
Sherm was a colorful character who sported red galluses, chewed tobacco, and fashioned phrases as unexpected as they would have been crude if uttered by anyone else. He once told me to get rid of a secretary because "she's not worth even one little pinch of shit."
As Sherm's deputy at the time, I shared with him a suite of offices. I can still see us, one Saturday morning, both on all fours sniffing like a pair of bloodhounds following the scent. An objectionable odor, a stink, emanated from my office. On the previous afternoon this had raised unjustifiable suspicions on my part, as well as on the part of any visitor I had had, as to its source. Eventually we discovered the source of the offending smell. On slamming shut a drawer of my safe I had caught a luckless mouse, whose flattened, deteriorating remains now had to be removed. I had no stomach for this, but Sherm was there to take over.
I think now of two telephone calls from Sherm. One, in 1957, shortly after I had left National Estimates. Miriam and I had had supper and were taking it easy in our home. The telephone rang. It was Sherm. "Paul, something terrible has happened," he shouted. What was it? War with Russia? No. "We're having a dinner in your honor at the Peking Palace, and we neglected to invite you!" That night I ate my second dinner and joined in gay camaraderie.
Another telephone call came many years later, perhaps in 1983. Again it was Sherm: "Paul, I'm dying and need to talk to you. Can you come right over?" Needless to say, I was shaken, and wondered how I might cope with this development in a way to be most helpful. I started immediately, but en route, detoured so I could first spend a few quiet moments, alone, in the sanctuary of the National Presbyterian Church not far distant from Sherm's home on Chain Bridge.
As it happened, the end came later than had been supposed. In the months that followed, I was a frequent visitor. Sometimes he was in bed, sometimes seated in his living room, sometimes, he in a wheelchair, we sat in his kitchen over a snack – always we shared some California white wine. There we reminisced. It was a welcome reference to better times, and discussion came easily, for we were both working on autobiographical notes for our respective families. Happily, while his body failed him, Sherm's mind remained keen, and his memory of events remarkably clear.
On October 3,1983, Sherm, who had a number of watches he cherished greatly, wrote to my brother John, stating, in part: "I am sending this to you via Paul, not only because I am innocent of your address, but also by way of telling him that I am probably trying to thank you for your kind and expert service for yet another ailment of my Patek Philippe with which you must be very familiar and bored by now. . . I want to thank you in the most personal and profound fashion for once again restoring the heartbeat to this, my most treasured possession."
On May 19, 1986, Beth Kent wrote me, in part: "How many times you have come in to raise his spirits and lift our hearts, how many good laughs we have had together!"
Thus terminated my association with Sherman Kent.
Allen Welsh Dulles, DCI
"It was as a splendid watchman that many of us saw him, a famous and trusted figure in clear outline on the American ramparts, seeing that the nation could not be surprised in its sleep or be overcome in the night."
Thus intoned the minister at a memorial service for Allen Dulles, who had died on January 29, 1969. Even in the reading of the eulogy, the element of deception, so important to the conduct of intelligence operations, was preserved, for the eulogy had been written by one of Dulles' former staff officers. And Dulles would have appreciated this deception more than anyone. I can hear his laugh now – Ho-ho-ho – contagious as ever.
When I think of our best known chief, I think of several simple episodes, for I was neither a professional confidant nor a member of his tennis playing coterie.
As secretary of the Intelligence Advisory Committee, of which Dulles was chairman, I met with him in his office when we gathered those who would brief him concerning the items to come up in the meeting to be held the following morning. Space was at a premium, and I was wont to lay some of my papers on one corner of his desk. He soon let me know that this was risky business, for the danger of walking off with one of his papers when I later picked up my own was greater than he wanted to chance. On the very few occasions when I forgot this I was given a reminder. I was fined 25¢.
Shortly after my Class of '34 reunion in 1959, the Kansas City Star got permission from Mr. Dulles to do a feature article on me. Not much was in the press about CIA in those days, but he thought this good publicity for CIA, and was very pleased with John R. Cauley's article which appeared in the Sunday Star on July 19, 1959, headlined "He Piles Up Top Secrets In Our Intelligence Agency." [On July 5, the Star had run an article on Charlie Spahr: "Former Table Waiter at K.U. Heads Standard Oil of Ohio;" and on August 2, ran an article on another classmate: "Glenn Cunningham Brings City Youths to Flint Hills."]
Dulles was interested to learn that he in fact had signed, on behalf of the American Legation in Bern, the passport permitting our family to emigrate from Switzerland to the United States. We spoke of this again when he presented me with my highest promotion, it being his custom to have a private meeting with him for the occasion. I mention this to illustrate an interest on his part in the people who worked for him – an interest I did not see any other director of CIA match.
My family will well remember a Saturday afternoon. Miriam and I had been invited to the Dulles house on Wisconsin (now the Sidewell Friends School). The affair was in conflict with a piano recital for which three of our children had diligently prepared, so we did not wish to miss either event. The recital dragged out interminably, and we had no time to take our children home, for one of ours had begun the recital and another had closed it. A family conference was held and a course of action set. From the recital we rushed to a store, picked up games and coloring books to keep the children happy while Miriam and I paid our respects at the Dulles house and left.
But Dulles had among his guests a lady from Switzerland who spoke no English. Clover, Mrs. Dulles, quickly made it my business to entertain her.
Meanwhile, another guest, on arrival, had spotted our station wagon full of kids and reported this to Clover. Gracious hostess that she was, she insisted that Allen fetch them. I set off with him, trying but failing to match his long stride to the parking lot. They were brought in and had a fine party of their own. Indeed, as far as Mrs. Dulles was concerned, the main party ended with the arrival of the Borel youngsters.
On another occasion, my phone rang. Allen Dulles was on the line: What are you trying to do to me on the Hill? he asked. I had no idea what he was talking about but soon found out. I had recently decided to reduce the Agency's contractual obligations to the Library of Congress. After discussions with the Librarian of Congress, Quincy Mumford, we agreed to stop publication of the East European Accessions Index, a monthly bibliographic reference covering Eastern European publications of the states within the Soviet orbit. The scholars working on this publication were mostly emigres under contract, not protected by Civil Service. One employee, about to lose his job, beat a quick path to see Senator Claiborne Pell of Rhode Island. Years before when in the diplomatic service, Pell had been stationed in Czechoslovakia and the now jobless scholar had been Pell's landlord. Could Pell help? Pell could and would. He called his friend Allen Dulles.
But it all came out all right. Pell was a friend of mine also. I went to see him. All he wanted was for us to take care of one man – his, not all. I promised to do so, called Mumford, asking him to assign the scholar to one of our other projects. The scholar was pleased. Senator Pell was pleased. Allen Dulles was pleased.
Glenn Cunningham, World Class Miler
It was the evening of May 11, 1984, at the Adams Alumni Center of the University of Kansas. The occasion was a dinner attended by those who had returned to celebrate the 50th year reunion of the Class of '34.
It was quite a turnout, some 200 in all including spouses. There was Bill Avery, a former Congressman and Governor; Nick Gerren, composer; Charlie Spahr, industrialist; Kermit Phelps, psychologist; Ping Senate, journalist; Bev Berns Herschman of Walt Disney Studios; Howard Hoover, attorney, our class president; Howard Turtle, journalist, who had played his trumpet for our school proms and would play again on this occasion.
Some couldn't make it: Dick Porter, scientist; Bob Ganoung, engineer; Pete Mehringer, wrestling gold medalist of the 1932 Olympics. Others who had attended other reunions had passed on.
But Glenn Cunningham, Class Honor Man, was there, and, at the moment, speaking, telling us something of what he and his wife Ruth had done over the years at the Cunningham Youth Ranch. There over a 30-year period some 9,000 troubled boys and girls had been touched and helped.
As he spoke, I thought back to experiences we had shared in the days just prior to his becoming the world's premier miler, setting a world's record of 4:06.8 in 1934, a record which would stand until 1937. (He had run an even faster mile indoors, 4:04.4.)
There were the constant practices, all year around. In the fall we ran cross-country (two miles around the track during the half at football games); in winter we ran indoor track; in spring it was outdoor track. Under Cunningham’s captaincy our team won both the indoor and outdoor championships of the (then) Big Six Conference in the 1933-34 school year.
I thought too of less exhilarating moments. One time, at the Drake Relays, our medley relay team was fielded. As the race proceeded, the quarter miler passed the baton to the half miler, who passed it to me, the three-quarter miler. At the end of my distance, spent, I thrust forward the stick, and, unpardonably, let go before Cunningham had it firmly in his grasp. The neutral baton followed laws of its own and fell to the cinder-path, only to be kicked off the track by a subsequent runner. Cunningham stopped, retrieved the stick, and now, last in the field, resumed the chase. Yes, he caught up, and came in first. But having had to step off the cinders disqualified the team and we were denied the prize. A dark moment for me. All Cunningham said, as he put his arm around my shoulder, was "Forget it, we'll take 'em next time."
In 1979, Cunningham was named "outstanding track performer of the century" by Madison Square Garden. How he became world champion, against great odds, and the story of a life dedicated to the service of youth, is told by him in his book Never Quit, Chosen Books, Lincoln, Virginia, 1981, (from which a six-page adaptation appeared in the December 1981 issue of Guideposts). In his book Cunningham makes this eloquent statement:
For this is the ultimate challenge for all of us. Despite the obstacles thrown up by the world, we can speak out of our years of experience that this inner victory – the biggest and the toughest to achieve – can be won.
Not long after the class reunion, Miriam and I spent a few days at the Cunningham home in Conway, Arkansas, en route to the Olympics at Los Angeles.
It was a modest home, rich in love, surrounded by members of the Cunningham family, for Glenn and Ruth have ten children.
At a church service we attended we found Ruth playing the piano, a son welcoming the worshippers, another son reporting on his evangelical mission in Mexico, and another son preaching the sermon.
After the service, three generations of Cunninghams gathered at the homestead for ice cream and a good visit.
The next morning, at breakfast, Glenn astounded me by eating four eggs. "Oh," he said, "when I worked on the farm, I regularly ate six each morning."
After breakfast, we went to feed the animals. We crowded into a truck of uncertain vintage. A grandson and one of his friends hopped in the back. We picked up hay and grain at a local feed store, and bounced over rough ground for some ten miles. There, we found a veritable zoo: water buffalo, llama, boar, goats, sheep, cattle, horses, jackasses, deer. Some 160 animals roamed the rolling wooded area. These, particularly the donkeys, form the basis for a business with zoos and other buyers of livestock. In earlier years the animals had played an essential role in the therapy designed to rehabilitate troubled youngsters, supplementing love, discipline and work.
Our Class indeed had stars among its members, but none shown more brightly than did Glenn Cunningham.
Charles Eugene Spahr, Industrialist
Throughout my years I have been blessed by many friends. But no friendship has been closer or more enduring than has my friendship for Charlie Spahr, known to my children as Uncle Charlie.
I first met Charlie in the fall of 1930 when we both entered the University of Kansas as freshmen civil engineering students in the School of Engineering and Architecture. Over the next four years we shared just about every experience college life had to offer two serious students who were on a tight budget balanced by part-time work.
Six times were we initiated together into fraternal organizations of social, professional or honorary character. We both took ROTC, both served as officers of the Engineering School, both as editors of the Kansas Engineer. For most of the four years, we were roommates. Often we double dated. At the AKL house, when he waited on tables, I washed dishes; when he was Steward, I was Treasurer. We maintained a friendly competition for academic honors, he ultimately edging me out. We both went out for track, I edging him out by winning six letters.
Perhaps most memorable are the hours we studied together, at times economizing by sharing a single book. For a time we experimented by going to bed after our chores were done to get some rest. Then we would rise in dead of night, at two or three o'clock, and study calculus, chemistry, or physics. I attribute much of the vigor and persistence with which I pursued academic and extracurricular tasks to the fact that when I was tempted to lag he bade me stay with it. And I similarly urged him on.
On graduation, as we parted company to pursue our unpredictable independent careers, we stood on the lawn of the rooming house we had occupied our last semester, each clasping firmly the hand of the other, scarcely able to speak for fear of breaking down.
As it happened we stayed in close touch. We were both platoon commanders in the Missouri National Guard. During my second year at Harvard Business School, he attended the school as a first-year student in company with his wife Janie. We three had some great times, especially around their supper table.
Later we were both employed by Phillips Petroleum Co. in the company's headquarters in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, and throughout the years have maintained close family ties.
I of course followed with more than casual interest Spahr's remarkable career, culminating in his many years as Chairman and CEO of the original Rockefeller company, The Standard Oil Company. As chairman of the board of the American Petroleum Institute (API) he attained the petroleum industry's highest distinction. The negotiations with British Petroleum leading to the acquisition by SOHIO of a superior interest in Alaska's North Slope oil reserves and the subsequent construction of the Alaska pipeline are stories of high risks and big stakes well told in many books and articles, among them Roscow's 800 Miles to Valdez, Prentice-Hall, 1977, and Aimee Morner's "For Sohio, It Was Alaskan Oil – or Bust," Fortune, August 1977.
The honors showered upon Spahr over the years defy enumeration, each bestowed in recognition of his tireless efforts in support of great and good causes, involving the donation on his part of monies and time spent in raising significant funds from others. The ones most familiar to me have been in support of University of Kansas drives, making possible the enhancement of that campus well beyond what would be possible solely by funds appropriated by the Kansas State legislature.
The Spahrs now maintain a home at John's Island, Florida, as well as at Shaker Heights, Ohio. Now, at one or another of these locations, or once again on the K.U. campus, we four meet, enjoying hours made possible uniquely by having travelled together for over 55 years, during which neither party has ever put a strain on this abiding friendship.
The vignettes below touch on a few of the individuals with whom I have had contact. The range is from incidental encounter to close friendship of many years standing, drawn from school days, the work place, or merely social, illustrative of, if anything, intersecting lives in a period which has seen depressions, wars, undreamed of technical advances, a greater interdependence among nations. In short, of change.
Richard L. Conolly, Admiral U.S. Navy
The highest ranking officer for whom I worked directly was also the youngest four-star admiral in our Navy's history. At the time of our first meeting I was working in Washington for Captain Robert L. Dennison, assistant chief of Naval Operations (ACNO) for Politico-Military Affairs. (Dennison later became Naval Aide to President Truman, skipper of the USS Missouri, and, with four stars of his own, CINC Atlantic Fleet.) Conolly then was deputy CNO for administration.
One day in July 1946, the captain asked me how I would like to go to Paris. Secretary of State Byrnes, then in London with the Council of Foreign Ministers, would be staying on in Paris for the Peace Conference. Unhappy with his present naval advisor, Commander 12th Fleet, the Navy would be sending Admiral Conolly, then a vice admiral, to replace him.
So I was interviewed by Conolly, and apparently satisfied him I could be of help. I was to get some "eagle guts" for formal wear and the auguilettes of three strands of gold for everyday because I would serve in a dual capacity: as assistant to the naval advisor and as his aide.
This I did from July until November when, after the conference I moved with him to London when he got his fourth star and took over the US 12th Fleet (soon to be renamed Northern Atlantic and Mediterranean Fleet of which he was CINC).
Conolly was an able and interesting man. During WWII he had developed an enviable reputation as the Navy's best commander of amphibious operations, having participated in both the Mediterranean and Pacific theaters.
He was not prepossessing in appearance. Rotund, about 5' 9", his face seemed at times to bear the marks of having had a slight stroke, though I do not know this to have been the case.
He was totally devoted to the interests of the Navy, served his superiors admirably and, in his personal life, was very close to his wife and children, from whom he was separated during our time together.
In my interview with him, I had made clear my shortcomings to serve him as aide, having had limited experience in this field of endeavor. This I proved on more than one occasion.
As the special plane that was to take us from Washington to Paris was being loaded, I stood calmly by, only to be reminded by the Admiral that my primary duty at this juncture was to make sure that his gear had been properly brought on board.
On another occasion, we had cruised aboard the USS Houston, flagship of the 12th Fleet. As we came ashore, the admiral's car, four-star flag flying, was waiting at the bottom of the gangway. Being polite, I let the Admiral go down first, then followed, only to be told later by the Houston's exec that protocol called for the reverse. That way I would be in the car waiting for the admiral and not he for me. Conolly had said not a word.
He was a man sure of himself, but modest, on occasion surprising me. Since for several months we spent 12 to 14 hours a day together, we had many talks on many subjects, including his future and mine. When writing Secretary of the Navy Forestall to thank him for reposing the confidence in the Admiral evidenced by the promotion to four stars, Conolly passed the draft letter to me and accepted gratefully several suggested changes. He spoke of "not being as dumb as I look" and asked what I thought of his possibly going to law school after his retirement – which, when you've gone as far as he had, would not be far away.
He was a kindly man, always thoughtful of others. We had a trip planned to visit the cathedral at Chartres. When he found out my parents would be in Paris that day, he cancelled and gave me his car.
There were amusing incidents too. One night he wanted to see a movie. We started out and found one showing a John Wayne film (with French subtitles). But military personnel needed script to gain entrance. We had none. I got busy, negotiating with a GI in line with what means I had for what we needed. The place was packed. The aisle next to the wall narrow. At one point we encountered a radiator and had to turn sideways to stand a chance of clearing it. The movie sound was at that point low, but compensating for it came the tinkle played by the admiral as the buttons on his uniform struck the radiator turned glockenspiel.
On another occasion we were guests of the French government for an operatic performance of Pucini's "Madame Butterfly." The tenor playing the part of Lieutenant Pinkerton, USN, so impressed upon us his shameful treatment of Butterfly that the admiral and I would both have given a pretty penny to hide on exiting the gold and blue splendor of our naval uniforms.
Following his tour in London, Admiral Conolly had many important things still to do. He took a reduction to three stars to become president of the Naval War College. He became president of Long Island University. With the help of Zeckendorf, the real estate tycoon, he transformed that university, expanding it greatly. And he served on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB).
We kept in touch, and occasionally got together. It was a keen loss when, one day, his wife and he boarded a plane in New York to go to visit President Eisenhower in Palm Springs, California, only to have the plane inexplicably crash over the Brooklyn flats, killing all on board.
Edward Bennett Williams, Esquire
Williams is a Washingtonian who by any standard has had a remarkable career. He has been for years and is still constantly in the news, as defense counsel labeled "the prodigy of the criminal courts," having defended the likes of Joseph McCarthy, Frank Costello, and Jimmy Hoffa. He has been and is still a prominent figure in the world of professional sports, formerly as president of the Washington Redskins, and currently as president of the Baltimore Orioles.
I met him only once, or rather several times in connection with the same piece of business, in the early 1960's. He was then already a household word.
The occasion was a negotiation between CIA and Georgetown University, I representing CIA and Williams sitting next to Father Bunn, president of Georgetown, as the University’s counsel. Having as part of my responsibility the conduct of research in Mechanical Translation (MT), I had contracted with Georgetown to do a project in Russian to English translation of texts in physics. The amount involved was, I believe, some $150,000.
Now the researchers in MT were often volatile people, not given to cooperating among themselves, each fiercely convinced of the correctness of his or her own approach to a solution. The principal researcher in this case, a Polish woman, led the pack in this regard. (She worked under the general direction of Leon Dostert, head of the School of Languages and Linguistics, who introduced simultaneous translation in the UN. The project director was Father Hedin, a famous astronomer.)
The problem was this: Ms. Researcher Highstrungski had plain quit, walked out. The University wanted reimbursement for her efforts. I was not about to pay out good CIA dollars unless I got a report of work accomplished in a form useful to us.
So here we sat, I alone on one side of the highly polished table in the ivied halls of Georgetown. Across from me sat Bunn, Williams, Hedin, and Dostert.
I found my adversaries pleasant, not unreasonable, but persistent – qualities I strove to match stride for stride. I was awed neither by their number nor their eminence, though I got the impression they expected me to be.
In the end we arrived at an amicable settlement, for they had my sympathy and they acknowledged that I should have something tangible for monies to be received. It was agreed I would authorize payment of $50,000 upon receipt of a report documenting research done to date. We had a deal.
But I had underestimated the persistence of these good people. Shortly after our "deal," I went on a trip, leaving Washington for several weeks. On my return I found that Georgetown had gone over my head to the Director's office and talked CIA out of an additional $50,000 as part of the settlement.
I was never to know what part, if any, Edward Bennett Williams had in this finale. In any event, I, a graduate of George Washington Law School, felt I had been bested by Williams, a graduate of Georgetown Law School. Further deponent saith not.
Rao, Citizen of India
I do not know that Rao was his name, but will so call him. Our encounter was very brief, I being but one passerby at one moment in his life.
Still, his face is as clear to me today as it was the day I saw him, in November 1957, in the courtyard of my hotel in Old Delhi.
Tall, slender, with carefully combed ebony hair, his smooth shaven face the deep purplish-brown common among people of the Indian subcontinent, he stood quietly, even meekly, behind a table on which lay the finely crocheted needlework he sold to make his living. He had the blackest and saddest eyes of anyone I have ever seen.
I approached to view his goods, which he seemed diffident to show. I engaged him in casual conversation, partly to put him at his ease, partly to satisfy a growing curiosity about him and his way of life. In Calcutta, I had toured a village with the headman. The night before, in my Delhi hotel, I had felt uneasy as I dined alone in regal splendor attended by a platoon of waiters, servers, and assistants, some seemingly only standing by to be at my call. I had read of such things, but experiencing it was something utterly different from reading about it.
Rao, it developed, had been orphaned at an early age, and reared in the orphanage of Christian missionaries from America. He may have been lying about this to gain my sympathy, but that is of no importance to the point of my story. There he was, like the village headman, like the servants at the hotel, trying to make a living.
The sheer numbers striving to make ends meet, in India and elsewhere, under seemingly hopeless conditions, weighed upon me heavily. So many people! And here were animals destroying crops at will, undeterred because they were considered sacred. Here were people dying on the street for lack of attention. Here were religious and national differences so deep that periodic flare-ups brought on the slaughter of the innocents.
I bought more than I wanted of Rao's needlework. I overtipped the servants. I hardly begrudged the loss of my pen and pencil set, taken from my person in the jostle of the crowd.
But, over the years, as I have read of rapidly increasing populations, of the gap between the haves and the have-nots, I have thought of Rao, and wondered what we might do, individually and collectively, to give him a hand.
Georges Frederic Doriot, Professor
Having attended five universities and earned degrees from four of them, I have met all manner of teachers. None was more colorful or exciting as teacher than Professor Doriot, whose classes in industrial management I attended for two years at the Harvard Business School.
Doriot, a Frenchman by birth, graduate of the University of Paris, was a slender man of medium height who carried a small mustache that seemed to add merriment to the sparkle of his eyes. He had a noticeable accent, and gave it full play in pronouncing certain words. "Subtract" in his mouth became "soobs-traack," for example.
He knew everybody, and often invited key corporate officers to address his class. Chrysler was a favorite company, and he obtained from the company for the school the magnificent model of the new Plymouth plant, then a marvel of automated engineering design. He had been a Budd official. He was the founder of American Research and Development, a company that provided venture capital to promising enterprises, and which later became a division of Textron.
Doriot was always on the go, pacing up and down aisles during his lecture. But, to me, his major contribution to his students was to insist that they think and rethink. My engineering training had to some extent led me to accept what my teachers said in their classes and wrote in their books, believing that knowledge to be a sufficient basis for my actions. This was not Doriot. There were no final answers, always new questions. Better ways to do things. Other ways to try.
During World War II, Doriot was commissioned a brigadier general and put in charge of the Army R&D. He had a profound influence on our entire materiel program. One day he invited me to lunch, asking me to join him in his office in the Pentagon. I was not only glad to see my old professor, but looked forward to a meal in the general officers' mess, which, I had heard, had fine food.
I was never to find out. "You don't mind if we have our lunch brought in, do you? That way we can have a good talk, without the dining room bustle." I was to find out how the General kept his trim figure, for we were served the slimmest of fares.
In September 1979, to celebrate Professor Doriot's 80th birthday, I joined a couple hundred of his former students in Boston. Our old teacher had prepared a special lecture for us. Things in the world had changed, but his principles, proven sound over the years, were still his clarion cry: insist endlessly that old ways be challenged, that assumptions be tested, that mediocrity be rejected.
He was going strong, and sought, as ever, the higher ground.
Sherman Kent, Intelligence Officer Extraordinaire
Sherman Kent died on March 11, 1986, while I was in Florida. News of his death did not reach me until after a small gathering of his friends had shared with the family an evening at his home to pay their respects to his memory. I was not surprised when his wife, Elizabeth Gregory Kent, told me it was in many ways a joyful occasion, for thus had been life with Sherm.
To me, at one time or another since the fall of 1950 he had been an inspirational leader, a colleague, a confidant, and always a friend.
A Californian who became a historian who taught at Yale, he then turned to intelligence. He was one of the real stars of OSS, and later, of CIA. His seminal book, Strategic Intelligence for American World Policy, was but one aspect of his influence on the U.S. Government which he served for years as chairman of the Board of National Estimates.
Sherm's talents were wide-ranging. He wrote also on how to write history, on French politics, and a book for younger readers called A Boy and a Pig, But Mostly Horses. He was an accomplished woodworker, whether making furniture or "Buffalo Blocks" (handmade multi-wood blocks produced for commercial sale). He was a chef supreme.
Sherm was a colorful character who sported red galluses, chewed tobacco, and fashioned phrases as unexpected as they would have been crude if uttered by anyone else. He once told me to get rid of a secretary because "she's not worth even one little pinch of shit."
As Sherm's deputy at the time, I shared with him a suite of offices. I can still see us, one Saturday morning, both on all fours sniffing like a pair of bloodhounds following the scent. An objectionable odor, a stink, emanated from my office. On the previous afternoon this had raised unjustifiable suspicions on my part, as well as on the part of any visitor I had had, as to its source. Eventually we discovered the source of the offending smell. On slamming shut a drawer of my safe I had caught a luckless mouse, whose flattened, deteriorating remains now had to be removed. I had no stomach for this, but Sherm was there to take over.
I think now of two telephone calls from Sherm. One, in 1957, shortly after I had left National Estimates. Miriam and I had had supper and were taking it easy in our home. The telephone rang. It was Sherm. "Paul, something terrible has happened," he shouted. What was it? War with Russia? No. "We're having a dinner in your honor at the Peking Palace, and we neglected to invite you!" That night I ate my second dinner and joined in gay camaraderie.
Another telephone call came many years later, perhaps in 1983. Again it was Sherm: "Paul, I'm dying and need to talk to you. Can you come right over?" Needless to say, I was shaken, and wondered how I might cope with this development in a way to be most helpful. I started immediately, but en route, detoured so I could first spend a few quiet moments, alone, in the sanctuary of the National Presbyterian Church not far distant from Sherm's home on Chain Bridge.
As it happened, the end came later than had been supposed. In the months that followed, I was a frequent visitor. Sometimes he was in bed, sometimes seated in his living room, sometimes, he in a wheelchair, we sat in his kitchen over a snack – always we shared some California white wine. There we reminisced. It was a welcome reference to better times, and discussion came easily, for we were both working on autobiographical notes for our respective families. Happily, while his body failed him, Sherm's mind remained keen, and his memory of events remarkably clear.
On October 3,1983, Sherm, who had a number of watches he cherished greatly, wrote to my brother John, stating, in part: "I am sending this to you via Paul, not only because I am innocent of your address, but also by way of telling him that I am probably trying to thank you for your kind and expert service for yet another ailment of my Patek Philippe with which you must be very familiar and bored by now. . . I want to thank you in the most personal and profound fashion for once again restoring the heartbeat to this, my most treasured possession."
On May 19, 1986, Beth Kent wrote me, in part: "How many times you have come in to raise his spirits and lift our hearts, how many good laughs we have had together!"
Thus terminated my association with Sherman Kent.
Allen Welsh Dulles, DCI
"It was as a splendid watchman that many of us saw him, a famous and trusted figure in clear outline on the American ramparts, seeing that the nation could not be surprised in its sleep or be overcome in the night."
Thus intoned the minister at a memorial service for Allen Dulles, who had died on January 29, 1969. Even in the reading of the eulogy, the element of deception, so important to the conduct of intelligence operations, was preserved, for the eulogy had been written by one of Dulles' former staff officers. And Dulles would have appreciated this deception more than anyone. I can hear his laugh now – Ho-ho-ho – contagious as ever.
When I think of our best known chief, I think of several simple episodes, for I was neither a professional confidant nor a member of his tennis playing coterie.
As secretary of the Intelligence Advisory Committee, of which Dulles was chairman, I met with him in his office when we gathered those who would brief him concerning the items to come up in the meeting to be held the following morning. Space was at a premium, and I was wont to lay some of my papers on one corner of his desk. He soon let me know that this was risky business, for the danger of walking off with one of his papers when I later picked up my own was greater than he wanted to chance. On the very few occasions when I forgot this I was given a reminder. I was fined 25¢.
Shortly after my Class of '34 reunion in 1959, the Kansas City Star got permission from Mr. Dulles to do a feature article on me. Not much was in the press about CIA in those days, but he thought this good publicity for CIA, and was very pleased with John R. Cauley's article which appeared in the Sunday Star on July 19, 1959, headlined "He Piles Up Top Secrets In Our Intelligence Agency." [On July 5, the Star had run an article on Charlie Spahr: "Former Table Waiter at K.U. Heads Standard Oil of Ohio;" and on August 2, ran an article on another classmate: "Glenn Cunningham Brings City Youths to Flint Hills."]
Dulles was interested to learn that he in fact had signed, on behalf of the American Legation in Bern, the passport permitting our family to emigrate from Switzerland to the United States. We spoke of this again when he presented me with my highest promotion, it being his custom to have a private meeting with him for the occasion. I mention this to illustrate an interest on his part in the people who worked for him – an interest I did not see any other director of CIA match.
My family will well remember a Saturday afternoon. Miriam and I had been invited to the Dulles house on Wisconsin (now the Sidewell Friends School). The affair was in conflict with a piano recital for which three of our children had diligently prepared, so we did not wish to miss either event. The recital dragged out interminably, and we had no time to take our children home, for one of ours had begun the recital and another had closed it. A family conference was held and a course of action set. From the recital we rushed to a store, picked up games and coloring books to keep the children happy while Miriam and I paid our respects at the Dulles house and left.
But Dulles had among his guests a lady from Switzerland who spoke no English. Clover, Mrs. Dulles, quickly made it my business to entertain her.
Meanwhile, another guest, on arrival, had spotted our station wagon full of kids and reported this to Clover. Gracious hostess that she was, she insisted that Allen fetch them. I set off with him, trying but failing to match his long stride to the parking lot. They were brought in and had a fine party of their own. Indeed, as far as Mrs. Dulles was concerned, the main party ended with the arrival of the Borel youngsters.
On another occasion, my phone rang. Allen Dulles was on the line: What are you trying to do to me on the Hill? he asked. I had no idea what he was talking about but soon found out. I had recently decided to reduce the Agency's contractual obligations to the Library of Congress. After discussions with the Librarian of Congress, Quincy Mumford, we agreed to stop publication of the East European Accessions Index, a monthly bibliographic reference covering Eastern European publications of the states within the Soviet orbit. The scholars working on this publication were mostly emigres under contract, not protected by Civil Service. One employee, about to lose his job, beat a quick path to see Senator Claiborne Pell of Rhode Island. Years before when in the diplomatic service, Pell had been stationed in Czechoslovakia and the now jobless scholar had been Pell's landlord. Could Pell help? Pell could and would. He called his friend Allen Dulles.
But it all came out all right. Pell was a friend of mine also. I went to see him. All he wanted was for us to take care of one man – his, not all. I promised to do so, called Mumford, asking him to assign the scholar to one of our other projects. The scholar was pleased. Senator Pell was pleased. Allen Dulles was pleased.
Glenn Cunningham, World Class Miler
It was the evening of May 11, 1984, at the Adams Alumni Center of the University of Kansas. The occasion was a dinner attended by those who had returned to celebrate the 50th year reunion of the Class of '34.
It was quite a turnout, some 200 in all including spouses. There was Bill Avery, a former Congressman and Governor; Nick Gerren, composer; Charlie Spahr, industrialist; Kermit Phelps, psychologist; Ping Senate, journalist; Bev Berns Herschman of Walt Disney Studios; Howard Hoover, attorney, our class president; Howard Turtle, journalist, who had played his trumpet for our school proms and would play again on this occasion.
Some couldn't make it: Dick Porter, scientist; Bob Ganoung, engineer; Pete Mehringer, wrestling gold medalist of the 1932 Olympics. Others who had attended other reunions had passed on.
But Glenn Cunningham, Class Honor Man, was there, and, at the moment, speaking, telling us something of what he and his wife Ruth had done over the years at the Cunningham Youth Ranch. There over a 30-year period some 9,000 troubled boys and girls had been touched and helped.
As he spoke, I thought back to experiences we had shared in the days just prior to his becoming the world's premier miler, setting a world's record of 4:06.8 in 1934, a record which would stand until 1937. (He had run an even faster mile indoors, 4:04.4.)
There were the constant practices, all year around. In the fall we ran cross-country (two miles around the track during the half at football games); in winter we ran indoor track; in spring it was outdoor track. Under Cunningham’s captaincy our team won both the indoor and outdoor championships of the (then) Big Six Conference in the 1933-34 school year.
I thought too of less exhilarating moments. One time, at the Drake Relays, our medley relay team was fielded. As the race proceeded, the quarter miler passed the baton to the half miler, who passed it to me, the three-quarter miler. At the end of my distance, spent, I thrust forward the stick, and, unpardonably, let go before Cunningham had it firmly in his grasp. The neutral baton followed laws of its own and fell to the cinder-path, only to be kicked off the track by a subsequent runner. Cunningham stopped, retrieved the stick, and now, last in the field, resumed the chase. Yes, he caught up, and came in first. But having had to step off the cinders disqualified the team and we were denied the prize. A dark moment for me. All Cunningham said, as he put his arm around my shoulder, was "Forget it, we'll take 'em next time."
In 1979, Cunningham was named "outstanding track performer of the century" by Madison Square Garden. How he became world champion, against great odds, and the story of a life dedicated to the service of youth, is told by him in his book Never Quit, Chosen Books, Lincoln, Virginia, 1981, (from which a six-page adaptation appeared in the December 1981 issue of Guideposts). In his book Cunningham makes this eloquent statement:
For this is the ultimate challenge for all of us. Despite the obstacles thrown up by the world, we can speak out of our years of experience that this inner victory – the biggest and the toughest to achieve – can be won.
Not long after the class reunion, Miriam and I spent a few days at the Cunningham home in Conway, Arkansas, en route to the Olympics at Los Angeles.
It was a modest home, rich in love, surrounded by members of the Cunningham family, for Glenn and Ruth have ten children.
At a church service we attended we found Ruth playing the piano, a son welcoming the worshippers, another son reporting on his evangelical mission in Mexico, and another son preaching the sermon.
After the service, three generations of Cunninghams gathered at the homestead for ice cream and a good visit.
The next morning, at breakfast, Glenn astounded me by eating four eggs. "Oh," he said, "when I worked on the farm, I regularly ate six each morning."
After breakfast, we went to feed the animals. We crowded into a truck of uncertain vintage. A grandson and one of his friends hopped in the back. We picked up hay and grain at a local feed store, and bounced over rough ground for some ten miles. There, we found a veritable zoo: water buffalo, llama, boar, goats, sheep, cattle, horses, jackasses, deer. Some 160 animals roamed the rolling wooded area. These, particularly the donkeys, form the basis for a business with zoos and other buyers of livestock. In earlier years the animals had played an essential role in the therapy designed to rehabilitate troubled youngsters, supplementing love, discipline and work.
Our Class indeed had stars among its members, but none shown more brightly than did Glenn Cunningham.
Charles Eugene Spahr, Industrialist
Throughout my years I have been blessed by many friends. But no friendship has been closer or more enduring than has my friendship for Charlie Spahr, known to my children as Uncle Charlie.
I first met Charlie in the fall of 1930 when we both entered the University of Kansas as freshmen civil engineering students in the School of Engineering and Architecture. Over the next four years we shared just about every experience college life had to offer two serious students who were on a tight budget balanced by part-time work.
Six times were we initiated together into fraternal organizations of social, professional or honorary character. We both took ROTC, both served as officers of the Engineering School, both as editors of the Kansas Engineer. For most of the four years, we were roommates. Often we double dated. At the AKL house, when he waited on tables, I washed dishes; when he was Steward, I was Treasurer. We maintained a friendly competition for academic honors, he ultimately edging me out. We both went out for track, I edging him out by winning six letters.
Perhaps most memorable are the hours we studied together, at times economizing by sharing a single book. For a time we experimented by going to bed after our chores were done to get some rest. Then we would rise in dead of night, at two or three o'clock, and study calculus, chemistry, or physics. I attribute much of the vigor and persistence with which I pursued academic and extracurricular tasks to the fact that when I was tempted to lag he bade me stay with it. And I similarly urged him on.
On graduation, as we parted company to pursue our unpredictable independent careers, we stood on the lawn of the rooming house we had occupied our last semester, each clasping firmly the hand of the other, scarcely able to speak for fear of breaking down.
As it happened we stayed in close touch. We were both platoon commanders in the Missouri National Guard. During my second year at Harvard Business School, he attended the school as a first-year student in company with his wife Janie. We three had some great times, especially around their supper table.
Later we were both employed by Phillips Petroleum Co. in the company's headquarters in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, and throughout the years have maintained close family ties.
I of course followed with more than casual interest Spahr's remarkable career, culminating in his many years as Chairman and CEO of the original Rockefeller company, The Standard Oil Company. As chairman of the board of the American Petroleum Institute (API) he attained the petroleum industry's highest distinction. The negotiations with British Petroleum leading to the acquisition by SOHIO of a superior interest in Alaska's North Slope oil reserves and the subsequent construction of the Alaska pipeline are stories of high risks and big stakes well told in many books and articles, among them Roscow's 800 Miles to Valdez, Prentice-Hall, 1977, and Aimee Morner's "For Sohio, It Was Alaskan Oil – or Bust," Fortune, August 1977.
The honors showered upon Spahr over the years defy enumeration, each bestowed in recognition of his tireless efforts in support of great and good causes, involving the donation on his part of monies and time spent in raising significant funds from others. The ones most familiar to me have been in support of University of Kansas drives, making possible the enhancement of that campus well beyond what would be possible solely by funds appropriated by the Kansas State legislature.
The Spahrs now maintain a home at John's Island, Florida, as well as at Shaker Heights, Ohio. Now, at one or another of these locations, or once again on the K.U. campus, we four meet, enjoying hours made possible uniquely by having travelled together for over 55 years, during which neither party has ever put a strain on this abiding friendship.
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