John Paul Getty was the richest man in the world in the 1970s. His fortune came from oil. He gave $660 million to endow an art museum in California. Yet he didn’t have the time to attend the funeral of his favorite son.
When his grandson was kidnapped by the Italian Mafia, Getty refused to pay the $17 million ransom. Then the kidnappers cut off the grandson’s ear and mailed it to the Getty family. Eventually he negotiated them down to $3 million, but put up no more than $2.2 million himself because that was the maximum that would be tax-deductible. He lent his son the remaining $800,000 at 4% interest.
One commentator has said, “Concerning intimacy, he was an utter failure.”
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Adapted from the article “John Paul Getty III” in Wikipedia.org; < https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Paul_Getty_III >, with further elements from Rev. Rick Warren’s sermon “God’s Model For Manhood” [Kerux sermon #64056].