David Halliburton Jr. twirled the steering wheel of his 1969 Ford Bronco as it bounded along a road with potholes the size of wild pigs. Mexican music blared from a tinny speaker as the Bronco, its engine spitting, came to rest on an overlook above a glistening coral and sand beach.
"The miraculous lower Sonora desert, the majestic Sea of Cortes -- I wish people would think of this when they heard my family's name," Halliburton said, "not Dick Cheney and his evil cronies."
It is true that for most people, the name Halliburton conjures images a world away from here, the south edge of the Baja California peninsula, where the desert abruptly meets the dazzling sea. This is the location of the Twin Dolphin, Halliburton's exclusive 50-room resort, a frequent setting for fashion shoots like a recent Charlize Theron cover of Elle.
Instead, the Halliburton that most people know is the oil-field services giant that has been accused of overcharging the government for essentials such as the gasoline and food it provides for US troops in Iraq, and of winning its billion-dollar contracts to service the military and rebuild Iraq's infrastructure because of its relationship with the Bush administration. Cheney was chief executive from 1995 until stepping down to run for vice president in 2000. Recently, Halliburton has also been in the news because 34 staff members and contractors working in Iraq and Kuwait have been killed.
David Halliburton, 47, is jovial, self-effacing and a Democrat.
"My father and grandfather are rolling over -- no, spinning in their graves," said Halliburton, whose gravelly voice and old-world manners are reminiscent of a character in a John O'Hara novel. "I hope I'm a kinder, gentler Halliburton."
It may cause Halliburton to groan, but the Twin Dolphin -- with its dining room open to the sea, earth-red Mexican tile floors and some of the best snorkeling on the coast -- is a legacy of Halliburton oil and gas. The company was founded by his grandfather Erle Palmer Halliburton in 1919, starting with one mule-drawn wagon. Erle Halliburton pioneered a method of cementing oil-well shafts as they were drilled so they would be less likely to collapse or explode. By 1945 he had cemented 80,000 wells around the world and had swallowed up rivals. The company has a market capitalization of US$13 billion.
The Halliburton name is also widely identified with a consumer icon, a nearly indestructible aluminum suitcase prized by professional photographers and security-minded businesspeople. Fed up with luggage that was battered during his frequent travels, Erle Halliburton had his engineers design an aluminum case with aerodynamic lines inspired by the DC-3 aircraft. It worked so well that he founded the Halliburton Case Co. to manufacture and sell it.
Today Zero Halliburton cases (the company was bought by Zero Manufacturing in 1960) are used on space flights (one carried home moon rocks), and one is never far from President Bush: The "nuclear football," containing the codes for the US, is a Zero Halliburton.
Once, Erle Halliburton was among the world's wealthiest men, but he lost much of his fortune speculating in real estate. A life-long smoker, He died of emphysema in 1957. A year later, the company's board took Halliburton public. David Halliburton Jr. said that he and the other third-generation heirs inherited a "much diminished" fortune, including Halliburton stock, which crashed in 2001 when a subsidiary of the company settled an asbestos-related lawsuit. He acknowledged that the heirs are comfortable, but not wildly rich.
When Erle's son David, his youngest child, told his father he wanted to run the Halliburton Co, the elder man responded, "Like hell you are," David Jr. said. Instead Erle sent his son to work on oil rigs in Louisiana and in Bakersfield, Calif. He found the work "dirty, hot and not fun," David Jr. said, adding that "Dad left the oil business for good" and became a real estate developer.
As an adult, David Halliburton Sr. frequently returned to Baja to fish with friends including Baron Hilton, Dean Martin and John Wayne. Partly so their wives would make the trip, instead of complaining about the men's frequent Mexican fishing trips, David Sr. built the peninsula's first upscale resort, the Twin Dolphin, in 1977.
He insisted that the rooms should have no televisions or telephones. His son remembers him growling, "If you can't put your business in order and spend four or five days without a phone, you're no businessman, and I don't want you in my hotel." (These days cell phones are used discreetly.)
Halliburton continues to resist offers from developers and hotel chains that covet the Twin Dolphin's prime coastline. It doesn't take much to get him started about the development along the Baja coast.
"It's one of the reasons I broke ranks with my family and became a Democrat," he said. "Oil money bought the Twin Dolphin, so maybe I shouldn't complain, but the destruction of the environment has to stop. My dad was a conservationist who worked to protect the oceans, but like a lot of Republicans he would overlook little problems when they interfered with his self-interest. Offshore drilling? A little spilled oil here and there? Oh, it's fine. No problem."
He let loose a deep laugh. "I guess that's a family blind spot."
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