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Frank StantonFrank Stanton
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Session:         Page of 755

memorial service up at the temple.

I don't think we could have survived, if I had done what he wanted me to do, which was to become a part of his social life. He offered me a piece of land out there on his land, to build a house. I just couldn't have--I would have been smothered or I would have just blown it. That's all there was to it. We kept, from the very beginning--I think at one time I said: “You take care of the night life and I'll take care of the daytime.”

Q:

Sort of like taking care of the inside and the outside of the building. [Laughs]

Stanton:

Yes. Exactly. I felt very sorry for him, in the end. You know, he wanted to live, and he wanted to Babe to live; and he just couldn't understand why, with all of his money, he couldn't buy it. And he couldn't buy it. And his children turned against him. It was tough.

But I would guess that at the end, if you had said to him, “Of all the people, who is your best friend?” he would probably have said--he would have identified me. And yet we weren't that kind of closeness.

I guess Jock [John Hay] Whitney was closer than I. Walter Thayer, maybe. No, not Walter. Jock was probably the only one that was really close to him, and I never--I didn't want to be distant, but I didn't want to be close, because my work habits and my lifestyle and everything else were entirely different.

Q:

So in a way it sounds like you're saying that the split was inevitable at the end.





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