Who It Is

When Albert L. Nickerson graduated from Harvard in the pits of the Depression in 1933, his studies in French literature didn't do him much good. Like so many others bitten by an economic blight the Ivy League wasn't immune to, Nickerson needed a job. He contacted the newly-established National Recovery Administration and was given work as a second-shift man in a Mobil gas station in Brookline, pumping gas and greasing chassis for $18.75 a week.

A year later he became station manager, after another year, station supervisor, then general salesman, district manager, division manager and on upward in the corporate hierarchy of what was to become America's second largest oil company. By 1961, he was president and chairman of the board.

Still a director of Mobil, Nickerson's resume reads like a textbook example of an industrial titan. He has been on the board of directors of six corporations and banks, the executive committee of the conservative National Alliance of Businessmen and the American Petroleum Institute. He has been chairman of the advisory committees of the U.S. Department of Commerce and of the Federal Reserve Board of New York. He is a trustee of Rockefeller University and the American Museum of Natural History, and a member of the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations. And since 1965, he has been a Fellow of Harvard College, or, as it is known colloquially, a member of the Harvard Corporation.

Nickerson was not born into wealth. His grandfather had been a successful businessman, but was destroyed in the Panic of 1893, and died as a result of it. In his richer days, he had built a castle in Dedham modeled on one he had seen on the Rhine in Germany.

In 1920, after a steady financial downslide, the family was forced to sell the castle. It became the Noble and Greenough School, the middle-level prep school where Nickerson finished off his high school education.

At Harvard, Nickerson joined the Hasty Pudding, the Owl Club, one of the less prestigious final clubs, and the Stylus Club ("a very select drinking club," he recalls.)

Tall and thin, with bristly white hair, Nickerson is still quite vigorous at 63. He is a Republican who tends toward the liberal wing and speaks with an aristocratic New England accent. A needle-point wall-hanging of a bald eagle holding the stars and stripes decorates one wall of the small study in his modest, modern ranch house in suburban Lincoln.

He drives a Mercedes, and considers himself "perfectly comfortable," but not wealthy. "I never really tried to be a wealthy man," he says. "I have objects in life other than to accumulate money."

His membership on the Harvard Corporation is marked by a strong gentlemanly concept of "service" and a great dedication to the University. "Harvard is now clearly central to the whole way in which I spend my life," he explains.

Although Nickerson remembers some disagreements in his nine years on the Corporation ("We are all distinct individuals," he explains, "with strong characters, strong wills and strong opinions"), he believes the group operates on a basic principle of gentlemanly discussion and consensus.

"When we haven't been able to resolve things it hasn't been because we couldn't agree among ourselves," he says, "but because we were all fairly uncertain over what was the right course."

But he does note a political shift that has occurred during his term of office, an overall movement along a political spectrum from right to left. When he first became a Fellow, he was considered one of the Corporation's most liberal members. Now, with a nearly complete turnover accomplished, he is probably its most conservative.

His political sympathies are best represented by a man like Nelson Rockefeller, he thinks. Although he is looking for a younger man, he says, "I know Nelson and I believe he's a man of integrity, he's a man of intelligence, and of great experience. If I had to vote for someone for president today, it would be Nelson."

Nickerson is naturally sensitive on one issue in particular--the oil shortage. He says that it is "enormously complex," the result of "a whole body of circumstance," and has been subject to "a lot of misunderstanding." Most of this misunderstanding, he finds, has concerned the role of the oil companies.

"People are looking for someone to blame, and the oil companies are a convenient target," he says.

But Nickerson's great concern these days seems to be Harvard, not oil. He says he likes being away from the pressures of business, spends his time reading, caring for his house, sculling at the Cambridge Boat Club, and cultivating a garden. "I don't like to loaf much," he says.

And as the years go on, he is very conscious of his own mortality. His grandfather and father both died before reaching his age.

"I'm awfully happy to be able to do things in which I still feel useful," he says. "I feel fortunate."