Sons of Wichita: How the Koch Brothers Became America's Most Powerful and Private Dynasty (41 page)

When David donated $100 million to Lincoln Center in 2008 to underwrite the renovation of the New York State Theater (now the David H. Koch Theater) concerns about the political baggage of the Koch surname were of a different sort. One long-serving Lincoln Center board member said he worried that people would associate the theater with the former mayor of New York City, Ed Koch. “I said, ‘Oh, Christ. People are going to call this the Koch’ ”—pronounced like scotch—“ ‘Theater.’ ”

“We were all aware of who he is and what he’d done and there were many who didn’t agree with his politics,” the board member noted, “but the fact of the matter is, he was very generous in his offer and, therefore, as a fiduciary, really, that was our sole consideration.” He added, “I hate his politics, but there’s no question of his genuine generosity in this area. It can’t be doubted.”

David’s pledge for the New York State Theater coincided with a moment in Manhattan’s philanthropic evolution when several major cultural institutions marketed branding opportunities as if they were sports franchises. David’s friend and 740 Park Avenue neighbor Stephen Schwarzman set the financial bar, in early 2008, for the naming rights of a major cultural landmark with his $100 million donation to the New York Public Library. In recognition of his gift, the library etched his name onto the exterior of its iconic, flagship location at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue. Schwarzman’s contribution made Lincoln Center fund-raisers realize the true value of the status symbol they had to offer. Noticing David and his wife, Julia, making a conscious effort to raise their profile
in New York, they zeroed in on the industrialist as their lead prospect.

“There are some people who carry around with them a certain sense of guilt over how much money they have, or a certain unease about it—he was not one of those people,” said a former Lincoln Center official involved in the naming talks, who recalled the billionaire proudly showing off a model replica of his 25,000-square-foot Palm Beach villa during a meeting at his office. But he said that unlike other rich contributors, who give away money largely for reasons of self-aggrandizement, David wanted to ensure Lincoln Center remains a cultural mainstay for generations. The billionaire could have pressed for his name to remain on the theater in perpetuity—the deal granted to audio pioneer Avery Fisher, for whom another Lincoln Center venue is named—but he instead agreed to a term of fifty years (at which point his heirs will have the option to make another contribution to keep his name on the building). “In 50 years, you are going to need money again to fix this place up, and I don’t want to stand in the way of that,” David told Lincoln Center fund-raisers.

“That struck me as being incredibly enlightened and putting his own personal grandeur aside for the benefit of the public in New York City,” the former official said.

Yet no one slaps his name on a Lincoln Center theater—or the Met, the Smithsonian, and any number of museums and medical research centers—without consideration for how future generations will remember him. It is an act of legacy burnishing as old as the industrial world itself, the cleansing of an unfathomable fortune amassed through the most brutish of industries. Despite David’s motives, his philanthropy resembles the latest variation on Andrew Carnegie’s “Gospel of Wealth,” in which the tycoon who gives away his millions before he dies will find “no bar… at the gates of Paradise.”

“Carnegie, Mellon—take any of these great philanthropists or
these great industrialists of the late nineteenth or early twentieth century,” the former Lincoln Center official said. “They are not remembered for the rape and pillage of our environment or the way they mistreated people. They are remembered for the contributions they’ve made financially as philanthropists. There is a long history of people who profit through other people’s detriments and who also do a lot of good in different ways, and I think that’s what will happen with the Kochs.”

On October 30, 2013, New York’s glitterati queued up in front of a headset-wearing event planner outside the David H. Koch Theater, located adjacent to two other Lincoln Center venues in a plaza featuring an elaborate fountain. She held a clipboard with a list of names, which she shouted over the rush-hour din as socialites took their turns mugging for the cameras in front of a Clinique “step and repeat” banner. When a bystander inquired about the glamorous, jewel-bedecked blonde who was presently posing for the paparazzi, a bearded photographer swiveled his head. “Don’t know, don’t care,” he replied. “She’s probably just married to some rich guy.”

That evening the American Ballet Theatre was opening its fall season with the world premiere of
The Tempest
, the ballet company’s adaptation of William Shakespeare’s play, choreographed by Alexei Ratmansky, the former artistic director of Russia’s famed Bolshoi Ballet. The performance, largely underwritten by David Koch, marked the American Ballet Theatre’s return to this venue after nearly forty years. David played a behind-the-scenes role in making that happen. When he negotiated the naming rights of the theater, he expressed his desire—a wish, not a precondition—that the American Ballet Theatre might someday find a home in the newly rechristened David H. Koch Theater. “That was always his hope that we would perform there,” said Rachel Moore. David later helped Moore’s company negotiate a three-year contract to perform an annual two-week run at the Koch Theater.

As the 6:30 p.m. curtain approached, the celebrities began to trickle in. Down the red carpet sauntered Sigourney Weaver in a dark green sequined gown. Actress Bebe Neuwirth glided past wearing a red strapless dress, followed shortly by heiress Nicky Hilton in purple lace. Actor Alan Cumming wore a white cravat and Louboutin sneakers, stopping to flash a peace sign at the photographers before continuing on to the theater.

Finally, a six-foot blonde stepped in front of the cameras, wearing a turquoise floor-length gown. “Julia, look this way!” one of the paparazzi shouted. The photographers knew her by sight. The hostesses who had once thrown up speed bumps to Julia Koch’s social ascent were now mere footnotes. Julia had started out fitting society ladies for events like these when she worked for Adolfo; now she was one of Manhattan’s doyennes.

Julia arrived alone. Avoiding the red-carpet fanfare, her tuxedo-wearing husband, looking slim and tanned, joined her later in their balcony seats. Two short performances preceded
The Tempest
’s premiere, and as the orchestra played Tchaikovsky’s Suite No. 3, David watched the ballerinas of the American Ballet Theatre dance en pointe in the George Balanchine–choreographed “Theme and Variations.” He admired as usual the graceful athleticism of the dancers, one of the reasons that David, an old jock himself, enjoyed this form of theater over others.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the Koch empire, far less graceful performances were playing out. At that moment in central Texas, cleanup crews worked to contain 17,000 gallons of oil that had spewed from a pipeline owned by a Koch Industries subsidiary. In the political wing of Koch world, Americans for Prosperity was unleashing attack ads against two Democratic senators whose 2014 races could decide control of the upper chamber of Congress.

Julia was cochairing the
Tempest-
themed gala that would follow the premiere. During intermission, the wait staff stood shoulder-to-shoulder on the theater’s second-floor promenade,
encircling the tables that had been set for the after party, which ballet benefactors had paid as much as $5,000 a person to attend. Event designer Bronson Van Wyck had transformed the space into a brooding seascape, which included a series of forty-foot pillars crafted to evoke tornadoes, a nod to the violent storm that opens the first act of Shakespeare’s tale. A soundtrack rumbled with the low growl of approaching thunder, and smoke machines billowed a light fog that clung around David’s feet as he clasped the hands of well-wishers and huddled in conversation with Peter Martins, the Danish dancer and choreographer who heads the New York City Ballet (the company that calls the Koch Theater home for the majority of the year). David may have been considered a conservative pariah in other parts of the country, but here he and Julia were royalty.

The curtain came up a short time later on Prospero, the sorcerer protagonist of Shakespeare’s tale, preparing to exact revenge against the brother who usurped his throne by summoning a tempest. The story is one of power, betrayal, retribution, and redemption—themes that David understands better than most.

The maelstrom that consumed his family had lasted twenty years. At the eye of their storm was the love and legacy of a father who taught his sons to be tough and competitive, to stand their ground and land their punches, never realizing that his boys would one day turn these attributes to the destruction of one another.

After putting some distance on their feud, Bill reflected that one of the final sticking points that had prevented him from achieving peace with his brothers was an item that held nothing more than sentimental value. It was the portrait of their father, painted by a little-known Southwestern artist named Herman de Jori, which hung in the family home under the glow of a display light. Bill ultimately let it go. The contested painting remains in Wichita, where it hangs in Charles Koch’s office to the right of his desk, the patriarch looking down on his son with his lips frozen in a tight smile.

Bill, Charles, and David Koch in Lincoln, Massachusetts, in 1968, the year after their father’s death. Charles was then running the family company. Bill was earning a Ph.D. and overseeing a family venture capital fund, and David was working in New York City for the chemical company Halcon International.
Photo Credit: ©Mikki Ansin

Patriarch Fred C. Koch’s biographical entry in a John Birch Society pamphlet from the 1960s. Curiously, the bio only mentions Fred having three sons, leaving out his namesake Frederick.

A 1935 Russian-language advertisement for the Winkler-Koch Engineering Co. His work in the Soviet Union made Fred Koch a millionaire, but his experiences there convinced him of communism’s evils.

The cover of his 1960 anti-communist polemic.