Norris Family

              The Director 
He used to be a cartoonist, he still looks like a small-town businessman, but Lester Norris is one of Texaco's largest stockholders and the senior member of its board. 
•	 
THE board of directors of Texaco, Inc. boasts some of the most prestigious names in American business–Brown Bros. Harriman's Robert Roosa, re- tired Admiral Arleigh Burke, Hanna Mining's Gilbert Humphrey. But, po- 
tentially, the •most influential director of them all is a mild-mannered, rather disarmingly awkward man of 71 named Lester J. Norris. His occupa- tion? He is one of Texaco's largest 'stockholders. 
In his own right. Lester Norris owns- about 471,004 Texaco shares (worth almost $16 million currently), almost as much as the rest of the Texaco board combined. His wife, Dellora Angell Norris niece and heiress of the 
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legendary Bet A Million Gites, owns an additional1.8 million shares, though in these shares Lester Norris claims "no beneficial interest." 
Thanks to Lester Norris, however, the preponderance of his wife's estate remains invested in Texaco, 71years afterthe original investment was made. "The first thing a hank wants to do; Norris says, "is diversify–that's the fe wa and even before the Gates trust was dissolved, I was under plenty ofpressure to sell. I got offers over thephone, 'I'd like to buy 200,000 shares.' But it was no sale. I stopped the bank from selling it off, and I bought in myself. It took me ten years to pay off the loan from the bankto buy my stock. I had faith in what Johnny Gates started, and I stayed toprotect it. I just believed inriding it. I had a good horse. 
"Johnny Gates always used to say, 'Don't pot all your eggs in one bas- ket–unless ou watch the basket.' I thought the last •advice was the best: Watch the basket. Texaco has done 
retty well." P  
It has indeed. In 1933, the year Lester Norris went (in the board, Tex- aco lost nearly $500,000 on more than $239 million in sales. Lastyear, it earned $904 million on more than $8 billion in sales. At the same time, its total market value went from $229 million to $9.1 billion. 
Ambitions and Alternatives 
Lester Norris wanted to become a cartoonist (he still keeps his hand In, having been known to caricature Tex- aco directors during board meet- in gs). He enrolled at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and, at 21, got himself a job as a staff cartoonist with the Chicago Tribune. But Lester Nor- ris' career as a professional cartoonist was a short one. In 1923 he married a girl be had grown up with In St. Charles, a modest girl who hap- pened to be heir to a big fortune. 
John J. Mitchell, president of what is now Chicago's Continental Illinois bank, Bet A Million Gates' principal banking adviser and trustee of the Gates estate, had otherplans for him, however. "He called me in one day" 
, Norris says "and he said, 'Lester 
,, someday there's going to be this Texaco holding, and you've got to get 
In there. As a cartoonist. you can't get enough to keep your wife in the way she should be kept." 
•	And then John Mitchell was killed In an automobile accident, and I could see more and more that somebody had to watch, and so I did." Norris quit his newspaper job and 
ce 
conntrated on his and his wife's investments. 
As his wife's business manager, Lester Norris was no plunger in the 
•	Bet A Million mold (see box. p. 39). With Texaco as the core of his investments, he bought the local newspaper; the St. Charles Chronicle, began ac- cumulating land around St. Charles-- blocking in land around the Fox River to protect it–built some commercial buildings, including a new printing plant for the paper and a new theater –the Arcada–which he himself had designed. He extended their control of the local bank, now the State Bank of St. Charles, and in 1931 became president.	. 
Even then Leter Norris was slow to relinquish his cartooning 
bons. In the early Thirties he was California where he had acquired a preferred stock interest in Nal Roach Productions. In partnership with Hal Roach, who produced Laurel & 
Hardy and Our Gang comedies 
Thirties, Norris was planning in set up an animated cartoon business parable to Disney's. Mickey Mouse had just moved onto 
history in Steamboat Willie, and Les- ter Norris set about creating a group of cartoon figures that were to form the basis of a competing series. 
But that project never got off the ground. One Saturday in the fall of 1933 Norris got a telegram from 
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