Bette Nesmith Graham for USD $47.5 million in 1979. At the time, her company employed 200 people and made 25 million bottles of Liquid Paper per year. Bette Nesmith died on May 12, 1980, at the age of 56, in Richardson, Texas. From the start, Graham ran her company with a unique combination of spirituality, egalitarianism, and pragmatism. Raised a Methodist, Graham converted to Christian Science in 1942, and this faith inspired the development of her corporate "Statement of Policy". Part-code of ethics, part-business philosophy, it covered everything from her belief in a "Supreme Being" to a focus on decentralized decision making and
Michael Nesmith 1974 to manage and develop media projects. Pacific Arts Video became a pioneer in the home video market, producing and distributing a wide variety of videotaped programs, although the company eventually ceased operations after an acrimonious contract dispute with PBS over home video licensing rights and payments for several series, including Ken Burns' "The Civil War". The dispute escalated into a lawsuit that went to jury trial in Federal Court in Los Angeles. On February 3, 1999, a jury awarded Nesmith and his company Pacific Arts $48.875 million in compensatory and punitive damages, prompting his widely quoted comment, "It's like