John damgard the president of the futures industry

twins, David and William. John Damgard, the president of the Futures Industry Association, was David’s schoolmate
and friend. He recalled that Fred Koch was “a real John Wayne type.” Koch emphasized rugged pursuits, taking his
sons big-game hunting in Africa, and requiring them to do farm labor at the family ranch. The Kochs lived in a stone
mansion on a large compound across from Wichita’s country club; in the summer, the boys could hear their friends
splashing in the pool, but they were not allowed to join them. “By instilling a work ethic in me at an early age, my father
did me a big favor, although it didn’t seem like a favor back then,” Charles has written. “By the time I was eight, he
made sure work occupied most of my spare time.” David Koch recalled that his father also indoctrinated the boys
politically. “He was constantly speaking to us children about what was wrong with government,” he told Brian
Doherty, an editor of the libertarian magazine Reason , and the author of “Radicals for Capitalism,” a 2007 history of the
libertarian movement. “It’s something I grew up with—a fundamental point of view that big government was bad, and
imposition of government controls on our lives and economic fortunes was not good.”
David attended Deerfield Academy, in Massachusetts, and Charles was sent to military school. Charles, David, and
William all earned engineering degrees at their father’s alma mater, M.I.T., and later joined the family company. Charles
eventually assumed control, with David as his deputy; William’s career at the company was less successful. Freddie
went to Harvard and studied playwriting at the Yale School of Drama. His father reportedly disapproved of him, and
punished him financially. (Freddie, through a spokesperson, denied this.)
In 1967, after Fred Koch died, of a heart attack, Charles renamed the business Koch Industries, in honor of his
father. Fred Koch’s will made his sons extraordinarily wealthy. David Koch joked about his good fortune in a 2003
speech to alumni at Deerfield, where, after pledging twenty-five million dollars, he was made the school’s sole “lifetime
trustee.” He said, “You might ask: How does David Koch happen to have the wealth to be so generous? Well, let me tell
you a story. It all started when I was a little boy. One day, my father gave me an apple. I soon sold it for five dollars
and bought two apples and sold them for ten. Then I bought four apples and sold them for twenty. Well, this went on
day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, until my father died and left me three hundred
million dollars!”
David and Charles had absorbed their father’s conservative politics, but they did not share all his views, according
to diZerega, who befriended Charles in the mid-sixties, after meeting him while browsing in a John Birch Society
bookstore in Wichita. Charles eventually invited him to the Kochs’ mansion, to participate in an informal political-
discussion group. “It was pretty clear that Charles thought some of the Birch Society was bullshit,” diZerega recalled.