I have pics of my grandfather standing and talking with the Shah, and then sitting next to him at a large banquet as if the two of them were the important people in the room. It's still a mystery to me what he was doing there or what their relationship was. My grandfather was a professor of economics at Columbia University who was a leader of relief efforts such as in Armenia after the genocide there. He definitely did good in his life, but whatever his involvement was with the Shah makes me wonder.
UPDATE: more information makes its way onto the internet over time, and while I've done searches on him in the past, this tidbit is now available via Google that wasn't before; he was "Director of Relief for the American Persian Relief Commission in Teheran, Iran in 1919" and I guess he was still involved there when the Shah took over and they developed some sort of relationship.