Word: dillons
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Clarence Dillon's only son was born Aug. 21, 1909 in Geneva, while the Baron and his bride were on a two-year post-honeymoon "health tour" of Europe. "My father was injured in a bizarre accident just before his marriage," Doug Dillon explains. "He was at a railroad station in a small resort outside Milwaukee when an express went by the station at full speed. A Saint Bernard had wandered onto the tracks; the train hit him and threw him into the crowd. The dog's body knocked my father against a pillar, breaking his skull...
...Doug Dillon spent a secluded, affluent childhood in a series of suburban homes around New York City. The grandest o'i them all was Dunwalke. an estate in Far Hills. N.J.. that his father has owned since 1920. A wiry child who could read swiftly and understandingly at the age of four, Dillon was sent to be educated in private schools. The most challenging was the Pine Lodge School in Lakehurst. N.J., whose headmaster insisted that his every pupil learn the art of reading fast-and Dillon today riffles through even technical papers at 400 words a minute...
...Dillon went back to investment banking as Dillon, Read's board chairman, soon took on the added job of handling the huge U.S. & Foreign Securities Corp. Dillon managed both jobs with apparent ease-and actually doubled Dillon, Read's investment portfolios in six years. "Anybody else who treated Dillon, Read as a part-time job would have been a drag on us," recalls a partner in the firm. "But Douglas would sit down with all the documents of a transaction, and in 20 minutes he'd have a real grasp of the problem. It was incredible...
Victory's Spoil. Another growing interest of Dillon's was politics. "I imagine he was bored as hell with banking," says a friend. A lifelong Republican, Dillon worked with John Foster Dulles on the 1948 presidential campaign of New York's Tom Dewey; a year later he won an election as a G.O.P. state committeeman. In 1952 he helped secure New Jersey's Republican delegation for Presidential Candidate Dwight Eisenhower, contributed heavily to Ike's campaign chest. After the election, on Dulles' recommendation, Dillon got an impressive spoil of victory: the ambassadorship to Paris...
...many, he did not seem an auspicious choice. Despite his love of France and his connection with Chateau Haut-Brion, Dillon spoke schoolbook French. He also seemed too young (43) and inexperienced to handle a post made all the more touchy by the growing troubles of France's Fourth Republic...