In Memory of John E. Swearingen
September 7, 1918 - September 14, 2007
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| Mr. Swearingen established the Swearingen Fund in Chemical Engineering, which allows the department to attract top domestic graduate students.
"Chemical Engineering at USC began in 1928, 10 years before he graduated. Mr. Swearingen was undoubtedly the most influential USC chemical engineering graduate ever in industry." Click here to download the tribute to Mr Swearingen (.mov format) |
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Swearingen, a native of Columbia, died of pneumonia on Friday, September 14, 2007 at Brookwood Medical Center, according to his wife, Bonnie Bolding Swearingen. She said he also suffered from Alzheimer's disease. He was in Birmingham to visit relatives.
Swearingen was born in Columbia, South Carolina, on September 7, 1918. He entered the University of South Carolina when he was only 16. When he graduated in 1938 with his B.S. degree in chemical engineering, magna cum laude, from the University of South Carolina, like his father before him, he was named to Phi Beta Kappa.
His father taught him a love of education and a dislike for politics. "I'm probably the only chemical engineer in the country with six years of Latin," he once said.
In 1939, at the age of 20, he received his M.S. degree in chemical engineering from Carnegie-Mellon University, and began his career at Standard Oil Company (Indiana) in that year.
During his long business career, Swearingen met with leaders of countries around the world and socialized with U.S. presidents from Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford to Jimmy Carter.
He was at the helm of the American Petroleum Institute in the 1970s in the role of industry spokesman during the energy crisis then.
Swearingen was awarded honorary degrees by 15 colleges and universities and served on the board of major banks and corporations, including Sara Lee.
"He was a giant of a businessman," said retired Sara Lee CEO John Bryan. "I don't think there was anyone in Chicago in the 20th century who was a more important business figure."
His business skills and ability to plan for the long term led to rapid advancement at Standard Oil (later Amoco, now BP) – General Manager of Production in 1951 at the age of thirty-two; Vice President, 1954; Executive Vice President, 1956; President in 1958, at age forty; and in 1960, at the remarkably young age of forty-two, Chief Executive Officer. In 1965, at forty-seven, he became Chairman of the Board.
On his 65th birthday in 1983, Mr. Swearingen stepped down as head of the oil company. An expert fly fisherman, he vowed to mind his own business and spend a lot of time fishing. He and his wife, Bonnie, settled into the social scenes in Chicago and Palm Springs, Calif., where they had homes.
But 10 months later, Mr. Swearingen's business acumen was again in demand. After Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Co. of Chicago's near-collapse, federal officials persuaded him to come out of retirement to help turn it around. An outspoken opponent of government intervention in business, Mr. Swearingen was part of the rescue team for the first major U.S. money center bank to be nationalized.
"No one should expect instant results," he said when the Continental bailout was announced. "We have a long and difficult road ahead of us with many possible twists and turns."
Among his many professional and civic honors, Swearingen had been decorated by the governments of Egypt, Italy and Iran for his global oil activities.
Mr. Swearingen's private life was as prominent as his public profile. The vivacious and flamboyant Bonnie made the couple a colorful name in international social circles. She once likened Mr. Swearingen to Napoleon.
"Napoleon isn't really dead," she said during one interview. "He's alive and well and disguised as my husband."
After retiring for a second time, he wrote an autobiography, "Think Ahead," read, golfed and often worked several crossword puzzles a day-in marker.
In addition to his wife, Mr. Swearingen is survived by two daughters, Marcia Pfleeger and Linda Arnold; seven grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.
The following are remarks and observations made by Mr. Swearingen:
“I notice that one of the questions I’ve been asked to answer is: ‘Who is the most memorable person I’ve known?’ In my case, that’s the question I should answer first, because so much of my life and career flows directly from that answer.
“The most memorable man I have ever known was my father. At age thirteen he was blinded in a hunting accident, but treated his blindness as an inconvenience rather than a handicap. ‘I am not afflicted,’ he would say. ‘I just can’t see.’ He graduated from the University of South Carolina in 1899 with the highest marks ever recorded up to that time, and for thirteen years served as State Superintendent of Education for South Carolina.
“He was always particularly interested in his my progress in school, and would review my homework to insure that it was done properly and on a timely basis. From this, I realize now, I learned the value of completing work on time – and indeed, the value of time itself. I learned the need for accuracy and clear thinking, and the satisfaction to be derived from a job well done. My father was the finest teacher I ever had, and his example and tutelage stood me in good stead as I advanced in my studies.
“After a brief flirtation with civil engineering at the University of South Carolina, I settled on a major in chemical engineering. It proved to be a difficult and demanding course of study, but I never regretted the decision, personally or professionally.
“As it happened, it would turn out that within a decade, because of the war and its aftermath, chemical engineers would be in the forefront of a whole new revolutionary movement in American industry – especially the oil industry – and therefore in great demand.
“Moreover, the course of study taught me how to assess a problem, decide how to attack it, and arrive at a solution. I found this kind of training and discipline provided by the study of chemical engineering to be useful throughout my business career.
“At the time of my graduation from the University of South Carolina, Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie Mellon) and MIT had the finest schools for chemical engineering in the country. With the assistance of Professor James Copenhaver, who taught organic chemistry, I obtained a fellowship at Carnegie Tech, where I worked part-time as a laboratory assistant for Professor Ernst Berl. The work was rigorous, but I learned a great deal from it, and thoroughly enjoyed my work with each of my Carnegie professors, who would become good and lasting friends over the years.
“Two of those professors, giants in the field, were Warren McCabe, who had come from the University of Michigan, and Carl Monrad, also from Michigan and a chemical engineer who had worked for a time at Standard Oil’s research lab in Whiting, Indiana. In part because of this connection, in part because of the reputation of its research lab, and in part because they were offering $25 a month more than the competition, upon graduation I accepted an offer to go to work for Standard Oil Company (Indiana) at their research lab, where I would meet people I had only heard about, among them Ernest Thiele, who had done pioneering work on distillation with my former professor, Warren McCabe.
“At Whiting my career began with routine tasks. When World War II broke out, I assumed increasing responsibilities as a group leader in developing projects in support of the war effort. Immediately after the war, my work came to the attention of Standard’s upper management. I was invited to Chicago to make a presentation to the company’s Executive Committee, and one result was a transfer to Tulsa to learn about oil and gas production, followed by a series of significant promotions that carried me from General Manager of Production in 1951 to President in 1958, Chief Executive Officer in 1960, and Chairman of the Board in 1965.
“These promotions were, of course, the source of great personal satisfaction to me and to my family. I recall that my only regret upon being elected as President in 1958 at age forty was that my father had not lived long enough to see this appointment occur.
“As Chairman and CEO, my strategy for building the company was essentially four-pronged: consolidation, expansion of strength in domestic oil, establishment of a significant international presence, and creation of a strong chemical business.
“This was not, course, a strategy to be executed by one man. Early on in my career I learned the absolute value of finding the very best men and women available and then giving them their heads to plan and execute, not just for today but also for tomorrow. As I learned from my father, a person’s life – and any human enterprise – is lived not only for the present but the future, and to succeed in life or in business it is important to look beyond today to the future, to think ahead. (I might note here that Think Ahead is the title of my memoir, published by The University of South Carolina in 2004.)
“Our approach at Standard was to emphasize careful planning for the long term. Working together, we streamlined operations; coordinated marketing, accounting, and sales practices; expanded Standard’s domestic and foreign exploration, refining, and marketing of oil and natural gas; and built Standard’s chemical operations into a nearly $3-billion business.
“When I joined Standard in 1939, the company’s net income was $84 million. In 1983, when I retired, the company’s revenues were $29.8 billion, its net income $1.8 billion, and its net assets at year’s end $25.8 billion.
“In short, I believe we succeeded in building a great company. True, the company we built has disappeared as a distinct entity, as have so many great human enterprises over the centuries. But at the time it flourishes, a company is an organic, living entity, made up of people working for themselves, their families, their communities; people working for people and serving people. And just as we all live on in our children and their children, so a company lives on in terms of the real differences it has made in the real lives of real people. For those of us who built our company into a great industrial concern, thereby enriching our nation and all its people.
“For my part, as CEO, I believed it essential to have a vision of what was to be accomplished, to inspire good people to work in harmony, to measure my performance, and to bring rewards for a job well done to stockholders, customers, employees, and communities.
“This was a demanding role, and I’ll leave it to others to determine just how well I succeeded. But as I draw closer to the finish line, let me say that I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. The race has been well worth the running, and were I to do it over again, I’d change very little. It has been a great source of satisfaction to have built a career – and a company – in a strong, diverse, vibrant, and competitive industry – in my opinion, the single most important industry in the world today.
“And believe me, for as long as there is an energy industry – for as long as there are people dedicated to developing resources and creating products that have dramatically improved and will continue to enhance the standard of living and way of life for million of people – for as long as there is progress – there will be a need for chemical engineers.
“As for my advice to students at all levels, I can do no better than pass along what I learned from my father, who, through precept and example, instilled in his family the value of self-discipline, an attention to detail, a love of learning, the value of hard work, and the absolute necessity for honesty and integrity
“‘Work hard, wash clean, and always tell the truth,’ was how he put it. Those are words I’ve tried to live by, and I commend them to anyone setting out on a course of study or a career in chemical engineering, or in any other field for that matter.
“Finally, I’ve been asked if there’s anything about me that few people know. Aside from my membership in The Fifth Line in Chicago, a group devoted to the writing of limericks, some might find it interesting that at the urging of my father, who studied both Latin and Greek, I enrolled in Latin classes at the University of South Carolina after four years of Latin in high school. During the Christmas holidays in 1935, he and I read Sallust’s Jugurtha in Latin to allow me to get extra credit. So when I graduated from the University of South Carolina in 1938, I was probably the only engineer who had ever graduated with six years of Latin studies. And that may well still be the case today."__________
