His father, however, had other ideas. His concern for his own health — he had suffered the first of three heart attacks in 1938 — and his desire to maintain family control of the company that he had poured so much of his life into led him to approach his son about entering the business.
It was only with great reluctance that Walt Helmerich, III, agreed to go on to Harvard Business School to pursue an M.B.A. degree. Still, he had no intention of returning to become part of his father's firm.
As it turned out, it wasn't the business school professors who changed his mind. It was a movie star named Peggy Dow.
"I met her in New York, and chased her out to California," as he tells it. "On the first date, I made a tactical error. I asked her to marry me. She said, 'You've got to be crazy. You don't even have a job." "I told her I was going to be a teacher. She said, 'Forget it.' So the only place I knew to go to work was Helmerich & Payne. That's how I decided to go to work for the company. Two years later, I finally persuaded her to leave California and marry me. It was just after she had been given the lead opposite Bill Holden in 'The Bridges at Toko-Ri,' a role that was then given to Grace Kelly."
If not the first college graduate ever to work at Helmerich & Payne, the young Helmerich was certainly one of the first.
He brought with him progressive ideas and innovations that were unclouded by the way things used to be. His father, on the other hand, had based his decisions on his 30 years in the business.
As the tumultuous decade of the Forties ended, Helmerich & Payne seemed poised to ascend to new heights. With the Fifties would come new leadership, new challenges, and new diversifications