~~WILLIAM JACK BUTLERWilliam Jack Butler, 89, died on November 14th in Santa Barbara, California, where he lived in retirement after a career in Mobil Oil. He was Chairman of the Board and Director of Mobil Saudi Arabia and Middle East Regional Director of Mobil Oil Corporation. He was also the President and Director of several Saudi shipping companies, and Director of a number of Mobil affiliates in Africa and the Middle East.He was a graduate of Harvard and of Harvard Business School. He studied engineering for 2 years at the University of Michigan, played varsity football there and belonged to Delta Kappa Epsilon.Jack Butler was a naval aviator (Lt. Cmdr.) during World War II, after which he joined Arabian American Oil Company and went to Saudi Arabia where he established the first television station in the Middle East. He published articles on the Middle East in Harvard Business Review, Barron's, Business Week and Foreign Affairs.When he returned to Saudi Arabia with Mobil in 1975, he negotiated and signed contracts for fourteen new companies, including 2 refineries and a petrochemical plant, and for the management of the construction and operation of the world's largest-capacity crude oil pipeline from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea.He was an avid tennis player, spear-fisherman and skier in his active years, and he loved books.He is survived by his wife Patricia, son Peter, granddaughter Sarah, and daughter-in-law Sandra, all of Santa Barbara, and a grandson Ross of McLean, Virginia; also, by his brother-and-sisters-in-law Dr. Jack Fleming, Babette, Carolyn and Phyllis Fleming, and cousins Bill and Poussinette Champlin, all of Pensacola, and by Rosemary Fleming Duncan of Pasadena, California and many nieces and nephews. His son, Christopher predeceased him in 1998.

Additional Information