Modern pioneers, Betty and Harold Hutton took a small oil business in Long Beach and stretched it across the Pacific. They pushed their piece of the American dream far beyond the continent's edge and assisted in the extension of the frontiers of the United States into international trade and investment.

Among the first to respond to the challenges of a global economy, the Huttons were catapulted into the vortex of the Cold War and the upsurge of east Asia, from the Berlin airlift to the Middle East's oil price shocks, from Japan's rise from the ashes of war to the bloodbaths of 1950's Indonesia. They struggled, took risks, sailed the south seas in their own small armada, and eventually succeeded.

The Hutton Story is their biography - the story of their long marriage, thriving business partnership, and still on-going philanthropy - but the tale that unfolds in these pages is actually many stories.