In addition to serving in key leadership posts for Republican presidents from Dwight Eisenhower to Ronald Reagan, George Shultz, who died over the weekend at age 100, was also a top Bechtel executive in the 1970s and 1980s.
Shultz first joined Bechtel in 1974 as executive vice president and “already had more experience and accomplishments at age 53 than most people achieve in a lifetime,” Bechtel said in a Monday press release. The company noted Shultz had already served as senior economist to President Eisenhower and as secretary of labor and secretary of the treasury under President Nixon.
Shultz became Bechtel president of Bechtel in 1975. During his tenure, the company embarked on many of its signature projects, including construction of the Palo Verde nuclear power plant in Arizona and the cleanup of Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, Bechtel said in the release.
The Shultz tenure as Bechtel president would end in 1982 when he went back to government work as President Reagan’s secretary of state. After leaving government service, Shultz would later serve on the Bechtel board of directors from 1989 until 2006.
