TEXAS

Tillerson's sister says he would do 'an incredible job'

Brian Bethel, Abilene Reporter- News

For Abilene physician Rae Ann Hamilton, the news that her brother,  ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, is President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of state is a source of immense pride.

Hamilton said she was proud of her brother, named 25th in 2015 on Forbes’ list of the World’s Most Powerful People.

Hamilton said she knew her brother was “very humbled” by the nomination.

“We were all very excited that he was going to retire and (we) might get to see him a little more,” said Hamilton, wife of Judge Lee Hamilton. “But he’s a very patriotic person, so when this call came, he was willing to step in and do it. And, of course, we think he’s going to be incredible at his job.”

Tillerson’s life has been “enormously interesting,” his sister said.

 “He started with Exxon as a little baby engineer and rose up through the ranks,” she said. “He’s just always taken whatever he was given and learned something from it, and he’s learned a lot through the years.”

Tillerson, 64, has been the oil company’s chief executive since 2006, joining the company in 1975 as a production engineer.

Born in Wichita Falls, he earned a bachelor's degree in civil engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.

Even with his worldwide reach, her brother never forgets her birthday, Hamilton said, coming to the area to help her celebrate her 60th.

But though Hamilton and her husband have enjoyed living on their land in the community of Moro, west of Bradshaw, she said she wasn’t certain her brother would ever bring Trump along for a visit.

“We were just wondering if we were going to meet Mr. Trump,” she said with a laugh.

A longtime board member of the Boy Scouts of America, Tillerson was president of the Scouts for two years, beginning in 2012. Tillerson himself is an Eagle Scout.

“He’s very family-oriented,” Hamilton said. “He has a total of four boys and about five grandkids at this point, so he’s spread out a little bit trying to see people. But we get to go visit them.”

Tillerson, who lives in Irving, spoke at an Abilene Chamber of Commerce banquet in October 2006, telling 850 guests that fossil fuels — gas, oil and coal — were likely to remain a primary energy source well into the middle part of the century.

According to Reporter-News archives, he said it was unrealistic for the United States to rely on petroleum alternatives such as wind, solar and biochemical sources, knowing that many people would like to “wish our way off of oil.”

But the amount of energy required in this country simply would not allow that in the foreseeable future, he said.

''Fossil fuels are indeed finite,'' he said. ''But they are far from finished.''