* Laura Adeline Peart Bechtel; Helped Build Bechtel Group

Laura Adeline Peart Bechtel, 89, who helped build the family-owned Bechtel Group Inc. into one of the world’s biggest construction and engineering companies. Over the years she was credited with helping her husband of 66 years, the late Bechtel Chairman Stephen D. Bechtel, strengthen and enlarge the company he inherited from his father, Warren. She and Bechtel lived on job sites early in their marriage, for a time living in a rebuilt railroad observation car, which was moved to various locations. Mrs. Bechtel was born in Yolo County, Calif., and attended UC Berkeley before marrying Bechtel in 1923 and settling in Oakland. In Oakland on Sunday of the complications of age.