Death of a King

Every time the stock of Gulf Oil Corp. rose a point, Richard K. Mellon's personal wealth increased almost $3.000,000. It hardly mattered. Mellon ruled the billion-dollar fortunes of a family so rich that it rarely if ever bothered to count exactly how much it was worth. His middle name was King, and he came as close to being a monarch as the U.S. allows. When he died last week at 70, of heart disease, U.S. industry in general, and Pittsburgh business specifically, lost a presence that was seldom seen but often felt.

Like most monarchs, the florid, silver-haired financier was born to rule. His was a celebrated family of bankers who built their capital by lending money to promising ventures and taking ownership interests in return. By the time Richard came of age, his family had dominant holdings in the Mellon National Bank, Gulf, Alcoa, Koppers and Carborundum. Richard, who became head of the family in 1934, later added First Boston Corp. and General Reinsurance Corp. Minority interests gave the Mellons a resonant voice in just about every Pittsburgh-based company except U.S. Steel. The family's policy was to reign rather than command, and its members --who include Mellon's cousins and nephews--stepped in only when management changes seemed necessary, which was seldom. Mellon himself picked many of the top managers, and they knew that he had veto power over their major decisions.

Seed Money. A political and economic conservative, Mellon displayed a strong social conscience that showed itself in deeds rather than words. He was the prime force behind the rebuilding projects that converted downtown Pittsburgh from a tangle of blackened buildings to an area of gleaming skyscrapers in largely smoke-free air. The Mellon family's money has seeded slum-rebuilding programs and efforts to open jobs and business opportunities for blacks. For years Pittsburghers said, only half-jokingly, that Pennsylvania's late Governor David Lawrence, who was a power in the national Democratic Party, owed his prominence to the luck of having been Mayor of Pittsburgh when Mellon decided that the city should be rebuilt.

Mellon's adopted sons, Richard and Seward, work in T. Mellon & Sons, a family business, but have shown little of his devotion to rule--a situation that did not seem to bother their father. "You do not shove these rising generations around," he once said. "A man cannot go to his son and say, as my father said to me, 'You're going into this organization.' The best you can do with the new young, while they are making up their minds, is to keep them out of trouble." Those who knew him were not surprised that he showed no particular concern when, a few weeks before his death, Carnegie-Mellon University, of which he was by far the largest benefactor, opened its facilities to a convention of radicals who occupied most of their time denouncing his domination of the city.

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