Sons of Wichita: How the Koch Brothers Became America's Most Powerful and Private Dynasty Read Online Free PDF Page A

“Freddie sort of segregated himself from the family very early on,” said family friend and Wichita real estate developer George Ablah. “And I think everyone was more comfortable with that.” According to Bill, “Freddie wanted no part of the family and did his own thing.”
    “Unlike my brothers,” Frederick said, “I was interested in music, art, and literature. This did not mean I wanted ‘no part of the family.’ I always took an interest in the activities of my parents and my brothers.”
    During their childhood, mention of Frederick caused noticeable discomfort among his brothers. “They just didn’t want Freddie’s name brought up,” said one family friend. “They knew there was something different about him. You didn’t hear much about Freddie at all.… It was almost like he wasn’t part of the family.”
    In the 1960s, mention of Frederick even vanished from one of his father’s bios: “He and Mrs. Koch have three sons,” it read, “Charles, William, and David.”
    Fred’s disappointment in his eldest son caused him to double-down on Charles, piling him with chores and responsibilities by the age of nine. “I think Fred Koch went through this kind of thing that I must have been too affectionate; I must have been tooloving, too kind to Freddie and that’s why he turned out to be so effeminate,” said John Damgard, who went to high school with David and remains close with David and Charles. “When Charles came along, the old man wasn’t going to make that mistake. So he was really, really tough on Charles. He taught him the work ethic; he was tougher than nails.” David and Bill had it slightly easier, Damgard added. “I think Mary did a lot to protect the twins from the hard-driving father.”
    Fred viewed Charles early on as the heir to his business empire, and rode him especially hard. Charles grew up with the impression that he was being picked on—and he was. As an eleven-year-old boy, tearfully pleading for his parents to reconsider, Charles was shipped off to the first of several boarding schools, this one in Arizona. “Charles was thrown out into the world at an early age,” said his friend Leslie Rudd, owner of Dean & DeLuca, the chain of gourmet markets, who believes this experience shaped Charles’s life.
    As Charles admits, there was little about his teenaged self that suggested he was destined for greatness. He was smart, but with the type of unharnessed intellect that tends to get young men into trouble. Charles acted out, got into fights, stayed out late drinking and sowing wild oats. David has called his older brother a “bad boy who turned good,” and said, “Charles did some awful things as a teenager.” When it came time for high school, his exasperated parents sent him to Culver Military Academy in northern Indiana, whose notable alumni include the late New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, actor Hal Holbrook, and Crown Prince Alexander II of Yugoslavia. Charles considered it a prison sentence. The elite military school had a reputation for taking in wild boys and spitting out upright, disciplined men. Charles soon ran afoul of the administration.
    On the train ride back to Culver after spring break of his junior year, Charles got busted for drinking beer and was promptly tossed out of school. Asked later how old Fred took the news of hisexpulsion, the best Charles could say of his father’s fury was, “I’m still alive.”
    David remembered: “Father put the fear of God in him. He said, ‘If you don’t make it, you’ll be worthless. You’ve disappointed me.’ Father was a severe taskmaster. He could do that sort of thing so effectively.” Fred banished Charles to live with family in Texas, where he spent the remainder of the school year working in a grain elevator. It took some begging, but Culver ultimately reinstated Charles, with the proviso that he attend summer school.
    “It was a miracle that such a successful businessperson developed