Family | Father | Money | Priorities | Self

AND THEN BACK TO BUSINESS
Martin Marty calls this one of the saddest sentences in modern times. It occurs in a journal kept by America’s once-richest man, land- investor, oil magnate J. Paul Getty: “He changed his will 21 times,” writes James K. Glassman, “using it as a weapon to punish what he saw as disloyalty. He drove one son to suicide and missed the funeral of another who died at the age of 12.” Now Getty’s biographer quotes Getty’s diary entry from the week of that death, and here’s the sentence: “Funeral for Darling Timmy. A sad day. Send cable to Zone that Aminoil can have 50 percent of Eocenle by giving us 50 percent of Burgan and paying 10 cents per bbl handling . . . ” From New Republic, as quoted by Marty in Context, May 15, 1986.