Loren C. Steffy's Blog, page 5

‘Everybody told me I was too big of a target’

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The following is the first in a series of excerpts from my latest book, Deconstructed: An Insider’s View of Illegal Immigration and the Building Trades, which will be published in September 2020.

©2020 Loren C. Steffy

On a Monday morning in 2009, the phone chirped on Stan Marek’s desk, and he snapped up the receiver. It was still early, and he wasn’t expecting any calls, let alone visitors. On the other end, the front-desk receptionist sounded nervous. Half a dozen men in dark windbreakers had filed into the lobby moments ear­lier and demanded to see the owner of the company. They looked like FBI agents, she said. The company Stan runs with his two cousins was founded by their fathers, and this family business has prided itself on following the rules for more than eighty years. He knew the men in the lobby weren’t from the FBI, but he also knew they were from the federal government, and he wouldn’t like what they were going to say.

Stan told the receptionist he would be right there. He sighed as he set the receiver down and glanced out the plate-glass win­dow behind his desk. He had a corner office, but it didn’t offer much to look at. Other CEOs in Houston stared down from lofty skyscrapers, but his view was only one story off the ground and overlooked an area where his employees were loading drywall onto trucks to be sent to job sites. Beyond that were [image error]train tracks, then the Interstate 610 loop that encircles downtown Houston. The Marek offices were on land that his father and uncles bought in 1960. Stan oversaw a construction enterprise, known simply by his family name, Marek, that stretched across the Southwest and employed more than two thousand people. He was proud of the family company, which he and his cousins continued to build. He wondered if the men in the windbreakers waiting in his lobby could appreciate the sacrifices three generations of Mareks had made to get to this point.

Stan walked down the chrome-railed staircase, across the breeze­way his construction crews used as a loading dock in the mornings when they arrived for their shifts and badged himself into the main building. He was five feet, eight inches tall, and although he was in his late sixties, he didn’t look like it. His hair was graying, but he walked quickly, like someone who still had a lot to get done. Across the expansive, two-story lobby, he could see the agents. On the back of their jackets, in big yellow letters, was one word: ICE— the acronym for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. As Stan ap­proached the agents, he knew this was the moment he and a great many other employers in Houston had been dreading.

ICE was formed as a division of the Department of Homeland Security in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The assaults on U.S. soil reshaped a host of government programs and created several new federal agencies. ICE combined the old U.S. Customs Service and the U.S. Immigration and Naturaliza­tion Service; Congress infused it with a unique combination of civil and criminal authority.

As Stan walked toward them, the ICE agents turned to face him. The administration of President Barack Obama, who took office in 2009, had promised a new “get tough” policy on ille­gal immigration. It focused less on rounding up undocumented workers and instead directed government enforcement efforts at the companies that employed them. Except for agriculture, no in­dustry in Texas employed more undocumented workers than the construction business, and Marek was one of the biggest specialty subcontractors in town. It got its start hanging drywall and later expanded into carpentry, flooring and painting—basically any in­terior construction work that a developer required. Marek’s size may have put it on ICE’s radar for one of the agency’s first work­place audits in Houston, or it may have been Stan’s frequent calls to senators, representatives, and Obama administration officials stressing the need for immigration reform. “Everybody told me I was too big of a target,” Stan recalled.

Other employers who pub­licly called for immigration reform felt that ICE targeted them unfairly for audits, too, said Jacob Monty, a lawyer in Houston who works with companies on immigration issues. “Employers that speak out, they sometimes get retaliated against by ICE,” Monty said. “And the public often misunderstands and thinks ‘Oh, they just want cheap labor.’ I know Stan, and that’s not what he wants.”

Nevertheless, Stan, a lifelong Republican, now found himself targeted by a Democratic administration, and he couldn’t help but wonder as he approached the agents in his lobby if his vocal support for immigration reform was to blame for what he knew was about to happen. As he shook the lead agent’s hand, the man said: “Mr. Marek, we’re going to do an I-9 audit.” I-9s are official­ly known as Employment Eligibility Verification forms. Employ­ers are supposed to complete one for each worker, verifying the person’s identity and eligibility to work in the United States. ICE wanted to audit Marek’s records to see if the company had any employees who were in the country illegally.

Stan felt a lump rise in his throat. Marek tried to confirm the citizenship of workers, but it wasn’t as easy as it sounded. By law, employees could provide as many as thirty-two different kinds of identification, and it was difficult to assess the accuracy of each. Besides, the most common form of ID, the Social Security card, is among the easiest to forge.

“How long do we have to get the information?” Stan asked.

“Seventy-two hours,” the agent replied.

“Well, do you mind if I get with my attorney?”

“Sure, but you’ve got seventy-two hours and then we want to see your I-9s,” the agent said.

“Well,” Stan stammered as the magnitude of the task sank in, “we’ve got a lot of people.”

“Well, you’ve got seventy-two hours,” the agent said again. He turned and headed for the door, and the other agents followed.

Stan returned to his office and called his attorney, Charles Fos­ter. Foster had been practicing immigration law in Houston for some forty years. He grew up in McAllen, Texas, on the Mexican border, working side by side with immigrants, both legal and ille­gal. As a lawyer, he’d served as an adviser on immigration to pres­idents Obama and George W. Bush, as well as aiding Republican and Democratic candidates including Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush, and Hillary Clinton.1 His firm, Foster LLP, is one of the largest immi­gration law firms in the country.

Foster convinced ICE to extend Marek’s deadline by a couple of weeks and the company complied. It was a big task: The agency wanted I-9s going back three years, which meant producing some three thousand documents. The agents also wanted to see the IDs each worker had presented at the time they were hired. The Social Security card or other identification had to appear authentic—Marek couldn’t be expected to detect a good forgery, but the card had to have the correct numbers in the proper configurations, and it had to look like a real Social Security card. If Marek had accept­ed any obvious forgeries, company executives could face fines or even jail time. Marek used an electronic government system known as E-Verify to confirm its employees’ immigration status. E-Verify, though, wasn’t fool-proof. If workers had what appeared to be a valid ID, it would pass the E-Verify check. Employers like Marek could follow all the rules and still wind up hiring undocu­mented workers.

The ICE agents returned with the results of their audit a few months later. All of the I-9s had been filled out correctly, which meant Marek wouldn’t face penalties. But ICE had found that about two hundred workers had improper documentation. Their identification didn’t match Social Security Administration re­cords. The agency gave the employees ninety days clear up the discrepancies. If they didn’t, the agents told Stan, he would have to fire them.

Marek is a privately held company—the only shareholders are Stan and his cousins, Bruce and Paul Marek—and it’s the sort of business that values employee longevity. It routinely holds com­pany rallies in the two-story lobby where it honors long-time em­ployees for their service: Tenures of thirty to forty years are com­mon. Stan knew each of the two hundred workers, and he met with them individually to tell them about the ICE audit. Some had been with him for decades. They owned homes and had raised families in Houston. Marek provided them with health benefits and 401(k) retirement plans, and it paid their payroll taxes. But most of the two hundred, it turned out, were in the U.S. illegally. Some simply admitted their immigration status when Stan con­fronted them, others made up reasons why they couldn’t go to the Social Security office. Still others said they would but didn’t. Ultimately, Stan had to let most of the two hundred go.

Stan Marek sees himself as a champion of the working man. In an era in which more and more Americans earn a living by sitting in front of a computer screen, he still believes that people who work with their hands and use tools to make things should be able to earn a middle-class income. He isn’t oblivious to the changing workplace, and he recognizes that the demographics of his industry have shift­ed—in fact, he watched it happen. He knows that progress means businesses and industries must change. Marek, in fact, prides itself on embracing cutting edge technology— it’s testing virtual reality googles on the job site and has its own drone. The company seeks to cultivate a dedicated and diverse workforce. From the time of its founding, Marek has relied on first- and second-generation immi­grants from a wide range of countries.

But in some ways, Stan’s views on the workplace remain decid­edly old-fashioned. He believes a good employer takes care of his employees, and the employees, in turn, take care of the compa­ny by doing good work. Stan’s father taught him that lesson when he handed Stan the reins of the business in the early 1980s. Back then, the traditional employment model in construction started with the general contractor, who would oversee a building project. The general contractor hired subcontractors, like Marek, who had a workforce of employees who received hourly pay, overtime, ben­efits, workers’ compensation insurance, and job training. The sub­contractor paid payroll taxes and provided I-9s on all its workers.

In the past three decades, however, the model has changed. Fewer subcontractors have their own workers. Instead, they hire laborers they treat as independent contractors and pay them for piecework. In the drywall business, for example, these indepen­dent workers are paid by foot of wallboard hung, not by the hour. They receive no overtime, benefits, workers’ compensation in­surance, or employer-funded training. That leaves many workers earning poverty-level wages and no overtime pay for longer hours. The workers pay no taxes, have no insurance if they’re injured on the job, and essentially have no career path. They will never be promoted to a supervisor position because those jobs are held by the subcontractor who hired them. For many illegal immigrant workers, this is the only employment option. The arrangement has created a system that hurts the workers, leads to more acci­dents, mistakes and shoddy workmanship, and ultimately under­mines the industry’s future.

Stan has seen more of Marek’s competitors choose this path. Many subcontractors’ offices are staffed by a few white-collar em­ployees who manage a virtual workforce of low-paid, often un­skilled and ever-shifting laborers. Many of these workers are in the country illegally.

Stan thought about the irony of the situation. Marek believed in paying its employees well, providing workers’ compensation insurance in case they were injured, and offering the training they needed to do a quality job while making their job sites safer. Marek’s workers all had income taxes withheld from their checks, and they all paid into Social Security. Even if they had stayed on his payroll, the two hundred workers he had to let go would never receive the benefits of their Social Security contribution because the Social Security numbers they submitted to Marek were inval­id. In a strange way, they were actually strengthening the perpet­ually under-funded Social Security entitlement program for mil­lions of other retirees by paying in but not taking out.

Stan felt badly for the workers he dismissed. What would hap­pen to them? Would they be deported, forced to return to a coun­try many of them hadn’t seen in decades? How would they pro­vide for their families? After all, some had children who were U.S. citizens. By firing them, had he set in motion events that would tear families apart?

Even though Stan had to let them go, many of the workers re­mained loyal to him and stayed in touch. None of them was deport­ed. Instead, over the next few weeks, or in some cases, the next few days, they found other jobs. After all, these were skilled laborers who had been trained by Marek, which had a reputation for quality. They knew how to do the job right. The companies that hired them, though, did things differently. In most cases, the new employers paid five dollars an hour less than Marek paid. Their workers re­ceived no health or retirement benefits. No taxes were drawn from their paychecks because in most cases the workers were paid in cash or as independents who were responsible for their own tax­es—they received a 1099 Form from the Internal Revenue Service for their wages, rather than a W-2, if there were any record of their pay at all. There was no accident insurance or paid overtime, and the local emergency room was their health care provider.

The turn of events enraged Stan. On a purely business level, the employees he’d nurtured and trained were now competing against him at a lower cost. At the same time, these workers were more likely to become a greater burden on society than when they had worked for him. And the companies who hired them were re­warded for perpetuating a shadow economy created by decades of misguided immigration policy. Stan had witnessed the slow ero­sion of his part of the construction industry from one that offered careers to one that offered essentially day labor. He knew the in­dustry couldn’t continue on this path without paying a price in lost quality and compromised safety. He wanted something better for workers and for his industry, and he was determined to change immigration policy.

To pre-order a copy of Deconstructed: An Insider’s View of Illegal Immigration and the Building Trades, click here.

Sign up now for an exclusive discussion of my latest book, ‘Deconstructed’

I’ll be participating in a discussion of immigration issues and my new book, Deconstructed, with my co-author, Stan Marek, on Sept. 9. Sign up now! Sponsored by the Center for Houston’s Future.

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Pre-order now!

What’s a virtual book signing?

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The coronavirus pandemic is forcing us all to experiment with new things, and since we can’t have an in-person book signing, we decided to try a virtual one. Sign up for the Zoom meeting, and we’ll do a short reading, followed by an author Q&A. And yes, we’ll have signed copies of the The Last Trial of T. Boone Pickens available.

If you can’t make the signing, and you’d still like an autographed copy, we’ve set up a special Amazon store. We’ll be offering a discount on autographed copies during the signing, so be sure to check back next week even if you can’t make the event.

‘Last Trial of T. Boone Pickens’ out in hardcover and Kindle version

[image error]The Last Trial of T. Boone Pickens, my account of the 2016 West Texas courtroom drama with attorney Chrysta Castañeda, is out. Despite some coronavirus-related delays, our distributor began filling orders on March 31. Amazon took a little longer, but the book went live on Amazon’s site on April 21. It’s now available for order and, ahem, reviews. We’ve also released a Kindle version.

Because the pandemic is keeping us from holding traditional book signings, we’re making signed copies available through the book’s website. Just click the button at the top and it will take you to the ordering page. Chrysta and I live in separate cities, so we had to ship the books back and forth to get them signed, and as a result, we’re charging a little more to cover the extra costs.

We hope to plan more events as businesses begin reopening, so stay tuned for more information.

 

 

25 years later, I’m still trying to make sense of what I saw in Oklahoma City

Just after 9 a.m., the phone rang in my home office in Frisco, Texas, north of Dallas.

“Bloomberg, Loren Steffy.”

“Do you have the TV on?” It was Mary Schlangenstein, my counterpart in Houston.

“No,” I said, a little befuddled.

“Turn it on.  Any channel.”

The tiny black and white set flickered to life and as the image came into focus I saw a building that appeared to be sheared in a half.

“That’s the federal courthouse in Oklahoma City,” Mary said. “They’re saying it’s a gas explosion.”

“That doesn’t look like a gas explosion, does it?”

Mary had years of experience for wire services, and she’d covered lots of explosions and other disasters — far more than I had. But it seemed to me a gas explosion would come from inside the building and blow outward. This looked like someone has sliced a big chunk out of a layer cake.

“No, it doesn’t,” she said.

I don’t think I said it, but I remember one word flashing in my mind: bomb.

I took a deep breath. Twenty-five years ago, Bloomberg was still a young news organization, but we played on an international stage. I’d been a reporter for less than a decade — a business reporter. I’d spent most of my time writing about profits and mergers and new products. I’d helped cover a major plane crash early in my career, and once I’d spotted smoke off the freeway in Arlington, and landed the exclusive of how the gas station had caught fire. But I’d never handled anything like what I was about to head into.

I told Mary to wait about 10 minutes, then call our editors and tell them I was on my way to Oklahoma City. Because Bloomberg covered mostly business, and because most of the reporters in the main newsrooms rarely left their desks, I knew there would be a lengthy debate over whether I should go to the site or try to cover it by phone. I wanted to head that off and not lose precious time.

I’d recently read Foreign Correspondent by Robert St. John, a freelance writer who decided to ship off to Europe when World War II broke out. He figured he’d find somebody to write for once he got there. I figured if I got fired for going to the blast site, someone would hire me once I was there.

Fortunately, that didn’t happen. Mary called me on my Motorola flip phone, which was about as thick as a stack of five iPhones, and coached me through what I’d need to do. Locate the command center, she said, that’s where you’ll find out how they’re going to handle the briefings. She said it would be somewhere on the perimeter that investigators would have set up. I had a paper map of Oklahoma City on the seat beside me. I’d never been there. I figured I’d work my way around the courthouse until I found the command center.[image error]

I was barreling down Interstate 35 at 85 miles an hour, and every few minutes, bland-colored sedans with flashing lights would rocket past me. I assumed it was the FBI and other federal agents coming up from Dallas.

I asked Mary to find me a place to stay. I figured hotels would be filling up quickly. She said she’d call Bloomberg’s travel agency and get them working on it.

I pulled into downtown and parked on the street, which was eerily deserted. As I walked toward the blast site my phone rang. Mary said the only room the travel agent could find was a two-room suite at the Waterford, which I later learned was the fanciest hotel in town.

As I hung up the phone, a man in a blue windbreaker approached me and reached out his hand.

“Is that a cell phone?”

I told him it was.

“I need to borrow it.” Then I saw the yellow “FBI” on his jacket. I handed him the phone. He turned away from me as he talked and I turned around. That’s when I saw the building. It look as if someone had decided to tear it down and stopped half way through. It was shorn from the roof to the ground. Slabs of concrete dangled from floors, and metallic stubbles of rebar jutted out in all directions. White columns that had once been interior supports stood in stark, linear contrast to the chaos that surrounded them.

The FBI agent ended his call and handed my phone back, thanking me. I asked him if he could direct me to the command center, and he told me they hadn’t set one up yet. They hadn’t even established the perimeter. I later learned that they were trying to figure out how to search for survivors without causing the rest of the building to collapse.

As I walked, glass crunched under my feet. Windows were blown out for blocks in every direction. For the next few days, every step I took downtown was punctuated with the sound of grinding glass.

It was unseasonably cold that day, and it started to rain in the afternoon. I hadn’t brought a jacket, and I later realized I’d forgotten to pack underwear and socks. I stood in the rain during the first press conference, then went to the Waterford. I walked into the opulent lobby soaking wet, bedraggled, with a notebook full of details about the search for bodies.

I filed a story then found a Dillard’s in nearby shopping mall. The store was deserted, and the clerks told me the mall would probably close early. I interviewed them and wrote a story about the economic impact of the blast (business reporter, remember?)

I retired to my two-room suite and ordered room service. The next day, there was a more formal press conference, and by then authorities were sure the blast had been caused by a bomb. The body count was still rising. I filed stories for Bloomberg’s fledgling radio operation. I would spend most of my days at the bomb site, then return to the hotel, file any updates to my stories and go to bed. In the other room, I kept the TV on all the time. The Tokyo bureau would call me at the start of their day, and I’d stagger into the next room and check TV coverage for any developments. Tokyo, having given me a few minutes to wake up, would call again and I’d give a radio report. I’d go back to sleep and start the process again when the London bureau called. Then I’d wake up early and head back out to the bomb site.

In all, I believe I was there for five days, but it was a blur. I interviewed the store clerk who alerted authorities to Timothy McVeigh, who would later be convicted and executed for the bombing. I interviewed Chris Fields, the firefighter who cradled a bloody 1-year-old Baylee Almon in his arms  — a now famous photo that came to symbolize the horror of that day.

One hundred sixty-eight people died that day — including Baylee Almon and 18 other children — and some 500 people were injured.

The bombing came one day after my oldest son’s birthday, and he would later write in a school essay that “my dad had to go and cover the bomb where the kids got killed.” My son turned 29 yesterday. Baylee Almon will be 1 forever.

One day, returning from the blast site I unlocked my car in the vacant lot where I’d left it. As I turned the key, a voice over my shoulder said, “you’re lucky, I was about to call the wrecker.”

I turned to the man and said, “Seriously?”

“I’m tired of all you people just thinking you can park here.”

I remembered my Texas plates. But the pettiness of the moment lingers. Amid all that death and destruction, with every footfall marked by the staccato of crunching glass, with day after day of body counts and explanations of how rescuers were risking their lives to extract bodies from the unstable rubble, one man could still muster enough — what? anger? bitterness? spite? — to begrudge a fellow human a parking space. Weren’t we all allied against the reminders of inhumanity that surrounded us?[image error]

McVeigh wanted to send a message with senseless violence — but as is always the case, the message was unheard. The violence, the horror, the inhumanity he unleashed drown it out. No one ever dug through the rubble looking for the bodies of children and then asked the bomber what he was concerned about.

McVeigh ushered in the modern era of terrorism. 9/11 would overshadow Oklahoma City, but McVeigh’s tactics, his philosophy of ignorance and hatred, his belief in violence as a solution, and his abject immorality were no different than Al-Qaeda or the Taliban or ISIS. We see its tentacles in Charlottesville and Charleston, to name just two.

I didn’t return to downtown Oklahoma City for many years. In 2015, I was in town for some interviews for a book I was writing and went by the memorial where the Murrah Building once stood. At the entrance is an archway, with 9:01 — representing the time before the blast — etched in it. One hundred sixty-eight chairs are arrayed on a grassy hill, each engraved with the names of a victim. Each is placed at about the spot in the building where they were found. Nineteen of the chairs are smaller than the rest. At the other end is another archway with 9:03 on it, which is supposed to represent the first moments of recovery.

Recovery, of course, isn’t that clear-cut. The doorway revolves. We move on, and we come back. We search for solace in remembrance. We look for reason amid chaos, for sense amongst senselessness, but we find none.

 

 

Pandemic Publishing?

Maybe that’s what I should have called the publishing imprint for The Last Trial of T. Boone Pickens. Self-isolation can be a great time for books. People have time on their hands and they’re looking for distractions. Heck, I used to dream of being told I had to sit and read for days on end. Be careful what you wish for, I guess.

The logistics of launching a title when traditional channels of distribution are slowing or severed isn’t easy. Many people, after all, are avoiding bookstores, just as they are other retail establishments.

Situations are changing rapidly, but for now, our printer’s facilities — all of which are in the U.S. — are still operating and Last Trial is being printed as planned. Our distributor, Texas A&M University Press, is still accepting orders, and its warehouse remains open. That means you can still pre-order Last Trial and the books will be shipped on to you once they arrive in the warehouse. However, you should expect some delays. Printing schedules seem to be stretching out a bit.

In fact, I received a notice from our distributor this morning that Amazon is temporarily pausing orders until April 5 for products that aren’t household staples, medical supplies or other high-demand items. That includes books. So, if you ordered Last Trial via Amazon it may take a little longer to reach you.

As you can imagine, any book signings or speaking engagements have also been canceled or postponed.

We at appreciate your patience. I, my co-author, the rest of the Stoney Creek Publishing team and our partners at TAMU Press are working to get books to you ASAP. We think you’ll find Last Trial is worth the wait.

If you haven’t ordered a copy yet, click here. Our website is standing by.

The Last Trial of T. Boone Pickens

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About a year ago, Dallas attorney Chrysta Castañeda told me she wanted to write a book about a case in which she’d represented T. Boone Pickens, the legendary oil tycoon and former corporate raider.

I’d written about Pickens for decades, and I’d met Castañeda while touring Pickens’ 100-square-mile ranch in the Texas Panhandle for a Texas Monthly story. I was familiar with Castañeda’s case, which involved a disputed oil deal in the Permian Basin, the hottest oil and gas prospect in the country, if not the world.

I agreed to work with her on the book, then waited to see what she delivered. After all, saying you want to write a book and actually writing it are two very different things. I soon learned why Castañeda earned the nickname “The Chainsaw.” She doesn’t just embrace challenges, she chews through them.

She turned in a riveting first-person account of the high-stakes courtroom drama, and I realized we had a unique book on our hands: the story of a Texas-sized legal battle told through the eyes of one of the few women trial lawyers who work in the oil and gas arena.

What’s more, the drilling prospect at the center of the dispute, the Red Bull, was, Pickens would later say, one of the biggest deals he’d ever been involved in. That’s saying something given that the man once tried to takeover Gulf Oil.

Pickens and Castañeda forged a bond in spite of their many differences. I found myself re-reading Charles Portis’ classic True Grit because their relationship reminded me a bit of the one between Mattie Ross and Rooster Cogburn.

Pickens, however, was in declining health, and he died in September. That left us scrambling to finish the book. While he wasn’t involved in the writing or planning of it, we felt an increased urgency to get the book finished. We realized our book might just be the last word on Pickens’ legacy.

But few traditional publishers could put out a book as quickly as we wanted, which led to the next twist in this journey: I became a publisher. I put together a team of top-notch editors, designers and other publishing professionals and teamed up with Texas A&M University Press, which is distributing the book.

You’ll be able to see the results within the next month. Copies of The Last Trial of T. Boone Pickens should be available online and in bookstores everywhere. I’m incredibly proud of this project, both as a co-author and as a publisher. You can find out more about the book — and pre-order a copy — on our website.

And of course, you can keep up with all my endeavors — including events related to my recent George P. Mitchell biography — on my personal site as well as the site of my new imprint, Stoney Creek Publishing Group.

 

 

 

Ten Things You May Not Have Known About George Mitchell

My latest book, George P. Mitchell: Fracking, Sustainability, and an Unorthodox Quest to Save the Planet, is finally out in stores. Over the past few weeks, I’ve tweeted facts about Mitchell that aren’t widely known. I’ve collected them all here in one slideshow.

This has been an exciting project, and I’m glad to see it reach fruition. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it, and if you like it, please take a moment to go to your favorite online platform and rate it or even give a review.

Mirror Images: George and Cynthia

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A staff member at the Giant Magellan Telescope’s Mirror Lab places the last piece of glass into the mold for one of the massive mirrors, similar to those nicknamed “George” and “Cynthia.” (Photo: Giant Magellan Telescope Mirror Lab)

George Mitchell is known for perfecting the drilling process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and for his pioneering work in sustainable development. Less well-known is his support for Big Science late in his life.

As a boy growing up in Galveston, Mitchell would look at the skies and study the stars. He briefly thought about pursing a career in astronomy or cosmology, but having endured a childhood of financial hardship, he decided to go into energy because he thought he could make more money. After he sold his energy company in 2002, he returned to his love of the stars.

As part of his support for the physics program at his alma mater, Texas A&M, Mitchell also donated millions of dollars to the Giant Magellan Telescope, which is being built in the Chilean desert. One of my favorite parts of writing my book, George P. Mitchell: Fracking, Sustainability, and an Unorthodox Quest to Save the Planet was exploring this time in Mitchell’s life, when he could be a catalyst for neglected research programs he believed were important.

Here’s what I wrote about the GMT:

Ultimately, George gave $25 million to the GMT project in addition to the money he gave A&M for the astronomy program. The first mirror was cast at the University of Arizona in 2005, and George flew out for the unveiling. Because of its size and precision, polishing and finishing the giant mirrors took another six and a half years. Freedman nicknamed the first two George and Cynthia.

George wound up giving far more than he’d planned to the physics and astronomy programs at A&M. Again, as with The Woodlands, his passion dictated his generosity. He was frustrated by the lack of public interest in the pure sciences. Businessmen gave money to business schools, and oilmen gave to petroleum engineering programs, but to George, these were just examples of the myopic thinking of too many corporate leaders. Pure science research focused on the biggest questions of all—where we came from, how we got here, how the universe was born. George was constantly pushing his publicist Dancie Ware to generate more acclaim for the GMT. “We need more science writers writing about science,” he would say.

George’s combined gifts made the GMT possible and vaulted A&M to a leading position in astronomy in less than a decade. In 2016, nine years after its founding, the program featured eight professors and one lecturer and was developing a doctorate degree. “I could not have the astronomy program that I have today—nothing even close to it—if George Mitchell hadn’t helped us when he did,” said Nick Suntzeff, the astronomer who leads the university’s efforts and holds a chair endowed, in part, by George.

But it’s the telescope that Suntzeff says could become the greatest testament to George’s philanthropy. The GMT is on track to beat the other giant telescopes to first light and begin scanning deep space for signs of life. “It would be a testament to George Mitchell

and the other people who provided funding if we could make a discovery of that magnitude with the telescope that they provided funds for,” Suntzeff said. “It would be an appropriate payback to their generosity.”

George P. Mitchell: Fracking, Sustainability, and an Unorthodox Quest to Save the Planet is available for pre-order online and will be in bookstores Oct. 11.

`We can do a better job’

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E.F. Schumacher

George Mitchell didn’t set out to build a better city or redefine the American suburb. Having made some money in the energy business, he began buying real estate to diversify his interests. But he also became increasingly aware of social challenges, especially the decay of America’s largest cities in the 1960s, and he decided to do something about it.

 

“I made the decision [that] we can do a better job in developing our cities,” he said.

He’d met the inventor and futurist Buckminster Fuller at the Aspen Institute in 1959 and later, the economist E.F. Schumacher. As I write in George P. Mitchell: Fracking, Sustainability, and an Unorthodox Quest to Save the Planet. Schumacher’s views in particular influenced Mitchell’s evolving thinking about sustainability.

Schumacher … advocated earth- and user-friendly technology that corresponded to the scale of communal life. Schumacher’s rational approach to economics and his view that people should matter most in economic theory appealed to George’s own pragmatism.(Schumacher also predicted the rise of OPEC, which may have caught George’s attention as well.) Listening to Schumacher and others in Aspen rounded out his views. He became more convinced than ever that government and business should work together to

develop sustainable societies. At the same time, he worried that politicians and business leaders were too shortsighted.

[…]

Instead of worrying about the next quarter’s financial results, business leaders had the power to shape the world in areas beyond their expertise, such as education, poverty, crime, transportation, and globalization. It was a realization that would redirect the course of his life. He began to see the focus of business as narrow and self-serving. Too many executives worried too much about short-term financial gain rather than long-term solutions. “Corporate America has the resources, but 90 out of 100 of my counterparts could care less,” he said. “Most never even expose themselves to major problems.” The realization would underpin a philosophy that would define his pursuit of both fracking and sustainable development.

Ironically, the Business Roundtable recently redefined its mission statement to reflect some of these same ideas. Mitchell, however, had a 50-year head start.

George P. Mitchell: Fracking, Sustainability, and an Unorthodox Quest to Save the Planet is available for order online and will arrive in bookstores Oct. 11.