Not to nitpick, but he's not the head of Caterpillar - he's the head of the largest caterpillar dealerships. The Holt family's fingerprints are all over the mothership - but it is currently headed by Doug Oberhelman, who just took over for Jim Owens this past month.
That's not saying much since Bu ler, and his father, are Skull & Bones Secret Society traitors.
Good read. Never knew about Holt's Vietnam history. Holt > George Bush Jr.
If you want to honor the dead from UNjust, UNcons utional wars, support those Christian patriots who are trying to take back the country from the traitors and cowards sitting in Congress and the White House.
Here is an old NYTimes article about Holt. Covers much of the same ground, though. Also by Mike Wise:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/10/sp...20spurs&st=cse
June 10, 2003
PRO BASKETBALL
PRO BASKETBALL; A Different Kind of Victory
By MIKE WISE
Jail or the Army. Peter Holt had to choose.
It was the summer of 1966 and he was taking all of South Texas on an inebriated car chase, outrunning himself as much as the law. They caught him by the fall, when Holt, a 17-year-old ion, stood before a judge in Corpus Christi.
''I never even called a lawyer or the family,'' Holt said. ''I just figured anything was better than jail.''
That's how the heir to the Caterpillar tractor fortune ended up in Vietnam -- how a rich man's son fought alongside poor young men whose families did not have the connections or the money to keep them home.
He returned, decorated but scarred, with the help of men nicknamed Big Red and Pineapple. Holt drank his way through the 1970's, and checked in and out of rehab clinics in the 1980's, beginning an unending battle with alcoholism. He married a young woman from Corpus Christi who loved him too much to leave him, sobered up, took over the family business and, one day, almost on a lark, bought an N.B.A. franchise, the San Antonio Spurs.
With Holt watching from courtside at Continental Arena this week, the Spurs are two victories away from their second championship in five seasons.
They are owned by a man with a slight drawl and piercing eyes, dressed in a jet-black blazer and polished boots and sitting incon uously with his wife of 21 years, Julianna Hawn Holt. In an era of often meddling men like Daniel Snyder and Jerry Jones, Holt is the an hesis of the visible and vocal modern professional sports owner. But he has a compelling yarn to tell, more enrapturing perhaps than any of them.
''It's not like I've been hiding it,'' Holt said. ''I just felt it was my personal life and no reason to go into all that with everyone.
''What do you want to know? I barely made it out of high school, tried to get into college, didn't even register for college, lived at the frat house, got drunk, had a damn good time and ended up in Vietnam. What else?''
In 1904, Benjamin Holt, Peter's great-grandfather, invented the crawler tractor and founded Caterpillar Inc. Before mass-producing grain farms sprouted across the country, Benjamin Holt sold his contraptions to governments as far away as Russia and Argentina.
By the mid-to late 20th century, Caterpillar's black-and-yellow CAT insignia, adorning baseball caps worn by farmers and truckers, became an icon of rural America. The Smithsonian Ins ute still salutes Benjamin Holt's contributions to industry.
By the time his grandson Benjamin Dean, the last direct descendant to own a Caterpillar dealership, settled in Corpus Christi in the early 1960's, the Holts were high society in a small South Texas town. But Peter, the eldest of their three children, was already in trouble.
''From the time I took my first drink, at 14, I realize now that I was -- and would be until I stopped -- an alcoholic,'' Peter Holt said in interviews in Dallas and San Antonio over the last two weeks. ''Back then, no one understood a teenager could be an alcoholic. But I understood, even then: I drank to get drunk.''
Holt recalled driving from Corpus Christi to Mexico to buy dirt-cheap tequila and beer after he got his driver's license at 14. By the time he had barely graduated from King High School in Corpus Christi, he was infamous. Holt had amassed a litany of citations, from public drunkenness to driving under the influence. He boasted of breaking the record for most tickets during one car chase with the police: 25.
In the fall of 1966, his parents sent him to Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, hoping that college would mature him. Unbeknownst to them, however, he never enrolled. Instead, he was passing out each night on a fraternity's couch. Another public drunkenness violation doomed him. He was sent back to Corpus Christi.
A judge there told Holt to straighten himself out. He asked Holt if he was in school. ''No,'' he answered. ''Look, you need to go in the Army,'' Holt recalled the judge telling him. ''If not, I'm going to throw you in jail.''
Holt volunteered for the draft, then went home to break the news to his parents, who still thought he was attending classes at T.C.U. ''I think my mother literally fainted,'' Holt said. ''And my father falls in his chair and goes, 'What?! Son,' he says, 'you're going to Vietnam.'''
''I said, 'What's Vietnam?'''
(Read more by following the link)
Wow that was a great read, thanks
I do want to point out that he gets sent to Vietnam for his alcohol related problems. But doesn't really beat it till 1981. Think the first week in 'Nam I would have learned my lesson. Would have been screw you alcohol look what you got me into now
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