While attending Yale University from 1928 through 1932, Albert Taylor was a star member of the school’s baseball, basketball, and football squads and was selected to help represent the team from the “East” in the American football demonstration event at the 1932 Summer Olympics. He played as the right halfback in a game that the East lost 7-6, and graduated soon after. Two years later, while working in the brokerage firm Mitchell Hutchins, he made headlines by eloping with Geraldine Swift, heiress to the Swift & Company packing fortune, in a ceremony watched by only a window washer who had been paid to act as the couple’s witness. Taylor joined the family business in 1939 and, within three years, he was a vice-president and director of the corporation. He became president and CEO in 1961 and soon joined the boards of other major companies, such as Ford and Del Monte. He retired from his executive positions with Swift in the late 1970s, but continued to serve on many other boards for many years thereafter.
United States