E. Hugh Taylor

E. Hugh Taylor

(August 25, 1920-November 27, 2014)

In our lives, if we are lucky, we occasionally meet an exceptional person. Sometimes, if we are even luckier, that person becomes our friend. If we are luckier still, that person is a member of our family. Hugh was an exceptional person, a loyal friend, and the ballast for his family. A member of the Greatest Generation, he grew up during the Depression on the family farm in Rushville, Illinois. He won a national scholarship to Harvard, where he majored in Philosophy. He was one of 268 young Harvard men, including Ben Bradlee and John F. Kennedy, chosen as "well adjusted" to participate in the now celebrated Grant longitudinal study, which tracked their lives for over 75 years to determine measures of success and happiness.

Attributing his success to his education, Hugh maintained an interest in education throughout his life. He created four scholarships at Harvard for students like himself who would not otherwise be able to attend the college. He served on the Boards of the Menlo Park City School District and the Sequoia Union High School District. His elder daughter was fortunate to receive both her elementary and high school diplomas from her father. After retiring, Hugh worked on a book on the philosophy of education.

December 7, 1941 brought Hugh to California. After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, the United States had an urgent need for Japanese translators. With enough credits to graduate early from Harvard, Hugh enlisted in order to attend the Navy's rigorous new Japanese Language School at UC Berkeley. In California, he admired the state's mild weather and the adobes in Monterey; California became his American Dream. The Navy kept the existence of the language program a military secret. Very few people knew about it until after President Roosevelt issued EO 9066, evacuating all people of Japanese ancestry from California. In June 1942 the school was forced to relocate to Boulder because the faculty included professors of Japanese origin who were essential to the program's success.

Graduates of the school played a critical role in gathering valuable intelligence about Japanese military operations and intentions. After graduating in the first class and serving as a Japanese translator in the Pacific and Occupied Japan, Hugh returned home. He and his wife Eugénie, whom he had married in 1944, lived in a Quonset hut in New Haven as he sped through Yale Law School on the GI Bill. After graduation, he and Eugénie moved to California for good. Eventually he was able to design and build his dream home, an adobe ranch-style in Atherton. As they moved in, he told his wife that he never wanted to move again. Fifty-four years later, on Thanksgiving evening, he died at age 94 in that home.

Hugh spent his entire 37-year legal career at Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro representing Standard Oil of California ("Socal"), which later became Chevron. Specializing in antitrust law, he represented Socal during a colorful and sometimes turbulent time when oil drove the economy and played a critical role in world events. Socal's chief legal officer called him the "steady guiding advisor on all Aramco [Arabian-American Oil Company] affairs." Hugh traveled the world from New York to London, to Beirut and the King's Summer Palace in Saudi Arabia. He negotiated with Sheikh Yamani, the Saudi Oil Minister and the leading force behind OPEC. He advised Socal during the OPEC oil embargo.

In his later career Hugh played a leading role in the Socal-Gulf merger in 1984. He was part of the Socal team that flew to Gulf's headquarters in Pittsburgh to present its bid of $13.2 billion, the largest cash offer in history. Hugh was in charge of the antitrust portion, considered the most difficult and contentious part of the offer. At that point "The Wall Street Journal" reported that the "auction" for Gulf had "reached a feverish pitch," with Pittsburgh becoming "a hub of activity, with corporate jets buzzing in and out of town, competing investment bankers and lawyers bumping into each other . . . and Gulf workers . . . calling news agencies to find out who was buying their company." Hugh commented that the shocked expressions of the employees in the Gulf Building were reminiscent of those he had seen on the faces of the Japanese shortly after Japan surrendered in 1945. Socal had the winning bid. The acquisition was then the largest merger in corporate history.

Above all, Hugh was modest and unassuming; his family usually learned of his accomplishments and generosity by accident. In honor of his mother, he funded a hospital clinic in his hometown. Along with ice cream and golf, his real joy was classical music, which was always playing in his home. Hugh so loved the sound of the violin that he acquired a Stradivarius that he then loaned to a professional musician. He later donated it to the San Francisco Symphony. Because he was fond of the English horn and regretted not hearing it more often in concerts, he commissioned "Colored Field" for the English horn and orchestra. The San Francisco Symphony premiered the award-winning concerto in 1994.

Hugh had a wry sense of humor, which he never lost, even in illness. He was a man of his word, fair, and thoughtful. As a man, he was one of the kindest. The Grant Study was prescient when it selected Hugh Taylor as one of the "well-adjusted."

In addition to Eugénie, with whom he recently celebrated 70 years of marriage, Hugh is survived by his four children: Cynthia, Melinda, Jeff (Barbara), and Bruce Taylor; three grandchildren; two great-grandsons; Michele Taylor-Smith and Jay Smith; and caregivers extraordinaire Nano and Lincoln Hancock. The family is grateful to Dr. Steven Lane for his compassionate care.