Norm the Dinosaur

The oil company's history is rooted in controversial deals, having been founded in 1916 by oil baron Harry Sinclair, the principal figure in the Teapot Dome scandal. In the early 1920s, during Warren G. Harding's presidential administration, Interior Secretary Albert B. Fall leased valuable naval oil reserves near Casper, Wyo., to Sinclair in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash gifts and no-interest loans. Fall was ultimately convicted of bribery in a related case. Although Sinclair initially avoided punishment, he was later found to be in contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate with a second government investigation into the same affair. He served six-and-half months in jail for that charge. Sinclair died a billionaire in 1956.

Robert Earl Holding, the 74-year-old current president and CEO of Sinclair Oil, will probably go to his grave just about as rich as the founder of the company. Last year, Forbes magazine estimated Holding's wealth at approximately $925 million. The executive owns about 450,000 acres in Montana and Wyoming, making him one of the largest private landowners in the country. His company controls 2,600 service stations and convenience stores in 22 Midwestern and Western states. It also operates two pipelines, three refineries and a trucking fleet. In addition, Sinclair owns a chain of hotels, including the Grand America Hotel, the headquarters for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Another Holding development, the Snowbasin resort, near Ogden, Utah, will receive $13.8 million from the International Olympic Committee for hosting the downhill-skiing competition during next year's games. In 1999, Holding was forced to resign from the Salt Lake Organizing Committee by Utah's governor after it was revealed that International Olympic Committee members had taken bribes from SLOC officials and that Holding had earlier benefited from a land swap with the U.S. Forest Service.

Holding is a contemporary of Volkmann's. He started out running a truck stop in his younger years in Green River, Wyo. But that's where the similarity ends. Since buying Sinclair's assets in 1976, he has grown to be one of the richest men in America. And at the corporate headquarters in Salt Lake City, the devotion that Volkmann has shown the company for nearly a half-century seems of little consequence compared with more pressing corporate concerns.

"It's little guys like Norm who made Mr. Holding who he is today," Brad Volkmann says. "It's funny how they can just seem to forget all that."