The Koch Brothers: Inside Koch World (A Family History)

The Koch family is probably one of the most interesting families. Stories of money, power, and lawsuits have affected the whole family. I have covered the historical net worth of the Kochs brothers here.

 I first learned about Charles Koch after watching a celebration dinner for Dr. Walter E. Williams and was curious about who he was and when I found out he was it lead me to explore not only who Charles Koch is I realized there were four Koch brothers (Charles, David, William, and Fredrick). The easiest way to remember them is Charles likes to collect money, David (use to) collect women, William collects everything, and Frederick collects castles.

To understand who the Koch brothers are today we first have to understand where they came from. The brothers were the son of Fred Koch who created a better way of turning crude oil into gasoline. Koch then went to the Soviet Union and installed cracking units through the country. In 1940, Fred Koch created Wood River Oil and Refining Company and then acquired Rock Island Oil and Refining Company in 1946 which then turned into Koch Industries.

Growing up the Koch boys were all taught about hard work. Fred Koch didn’t want his sons to become country club bums. When Charles was only five and Frederick was seven the boys showed up to work to a former marine who was a groundskeeper. When asking for money David Koch remembers “If I wanted to go to the movies, I’d have to ask him for the 25 cents”. Growing up Fred Koch took his sons on trips to Africa and the Arctic Circle where they would hunt and fish. All the boys went to different schools growing up. Charles and William both went to Culver Military Academy in Indiana, Frederick went to Hackley School in New York, David went to Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts. Charles got busted for drinking on a train and was expelled from school. Brother David in this article describes his own brother as “a bad boy who turned good”.

In 1958 Charles, David, and William were enrolled at MIT earning engineering degrees.  Charles and David both earned master’s degrees in engineering while William earned a PhD in chemical engineering. Although William earned a PhD it took him eight years and he finished it in 1971. His dissertation was entitled  "Flow of light gases through the voids, on the surface, and in the solid of a microporous media" which ended up being 372 pages and the citation can be found here. While at MIT David and William were both on the basketball team. Charles, David, and William are all above 6’0 tall (David is 6’6, William is 6’5, and Charles is 6’3). David held the record for the most points scored in one game until 2009. What is impressive however is that David averaged 21 points per game (how many modern day billionaires can say that?) William was second string on the team and sitting on the bench. At MIT both Charles and David were in fraternities.  Frederick went to study English and drama at Harvard and Yale.

After college Charles went to work for Arthur D. Little after he graduated and then went to work with his father in 1961. Fred Koch told his son that if he did not join the company he would sell it. When Charles Koch took over the company had $250 million in revenue and today the company has around $100 billion in revenue. Charles at first was not interested in the family business but thought managing a company was more interesting then working for someone else. The first job Charles had was to create an engineering division in Italy. According to a Wichita Eagle article from 1998 Charles worked seven days a week in the beginning. In the early 1980’s according to this article he was putting in 10 hour days. Charles not only worked long hours at home but according to this 1997 Fortune article he worked 12 hours per day and expected executives to work on Saturday mornings and would call meetings that ran into Saturday night. Charles even proposed to his wife Elizabeth over the phone and flipping through his calendar to plan a wedding date. Charles is what I would call a busy man trying to create value. 

 David was no slacker either as in this article talks about how he left for work around 9 A.M. has a driver pick him up around 9 P.M. for dinner. In 1966, Fred Koch died at the age of 67 of a heart attack while hunting ducks. Interestingly enough every day for breakfast Fred has a tall glass of buttermilk which made have lead to heart problems in his later years.