Word: gravitt
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...emotional overstatement, certainly-but Gravitt's suicide touched off a scandal that three years later is badly damaging Ma Bell's image as the staid gray lady of American corporations. In a San Antonio courtroom last week, past and present Southwestern Bell executives accused each other of everything from bribing Texas newspapers and politicians to playing host to parties for local politicians and visiting executives from other Bell system companies. They were testifying in a $29 million libel and slander suit brought against Southwestern Bell by Gravitt's widow, Oleta Gravitt Dixon,* and James Ashley...
Ashley claims that when Bell learned that he and Gravitt were planning to expose such practices, the company started investigating their private lives. Houston Psychiatrist Gary J. Byrd told the court two weeks ago that Bell had "harassed" Gravitt until he committed suicide. Ashley claims that a Bell vice president at Gravitt's funeral warned him not to join the dead man's family in a suit against the company, saying "You file that suit and the Bell employees will hound you to death. That son of a bitch [Gravitt] lies in the grave-you're next...
Southwestern Bell last week presented an entirely different scenario. Harvard psychiatrist Shervert Frazier, testifying for the company, told the court that the "bad part" of Gravitt's life was about to be exposed and "he didn't want to face the music." Bell lawyers charged that Gravitt had spent $200,000 in company money remodeling his private office, $4,831 of company funds on repairs to his home and thousands more on padded expense reports. The company maintained ftat Gravitt was being investigated at the time of his suicide for philandering with employees on company time...
...Ashley, Bell claims that he was fired for joining with Gravitt to create fictional expense accounts and for forcing female employees to trade sex for promotions. On the witness stand, Ashley-who already has won 1 million suit against Southwestern Bell for tapping his phone-admitted falsifying expense forms but claimed he did so to cover up political payoffs. Said I didn't take one penny of Bell money for my use ever. I spent a lot of money on whiskey and a lot of money on politicians...
...whole affair seems an extreme case of office politics. "There were always rival factions within [Southwestern] Bell " says one insider. "When Angus Alston the chairman of the board, was dying of cancer in 1974, a new group came into power and wanted to get rid of their enemies, Gravitt and Ashley." Pat Maloney the flamboyant lawyer for Gravitt's widow, pointed to a Bell organization chart in the San Antonio courtroom; he accused Gravitt's successor, Chester L. Todd, of instigating the investigation that led to the executive's death only to get his job Asked Maloney...