Join us as we share the remarkable journey of George Valoras, whose life story is a testament to the resilience and ambition that define the American dream. As the son of Greek immigrants, George lays bare the roots of his family's success in Indianapolis, from his father's humble beginnings as a flower cart peddler to becoming an adored business owner. We traverse the landscape of his youth, touching on his high school triumphs, and the formidable family support system that underscored his sister Cecilia's academic aspirations. It's an intimate look at the perseverance and shared values that powered the Valoras family onward.
Venture into the heart of George's gripping military saga, from the technical frontiers of the Polaris Program to his unexpected deployment to Laos. His stories encapsulate the essence of leadership and the strong bonds formed in the crucible of service. Post-military life didn't slow George down; instead, it catapulted him into a whirlwind of career transitions, from managing a factory floor to navigating the complexities of international business. Alongside professional tales, George opens up about his quick marriage and the ethical conundrums he faced in the corporate realm, offering a candid glimpse into the evolving American industrial and ethical landscape.
In the final part of our conversation with George, we explore the enduring impact of education in his family, the interesting career paths of his siblings, and his own ascent to prominent leadership roles. As George reflects on his nearly six-decade marriage and the cherished wisdom of mentors, we uncover the virtues of patience and adaptability. His story culminates in a reflection of a life rich with accomplishment and connection, and it's an episode brimming with the wisdom and warmth that only a life well-lived can impart.
Join us as we share the remarkable journey of George Valoras, whose life story is a testament to the resilience and ambition that define the American dream. As the son of Greek immigrants, George lays bare the roots of his family's success in Indianapolis, from his father's humble beginnings as a flower cart peddler to becoming an adored business owner. We traverse the landscape of his youth, touching on his high school triumphs, and the formidable family support system that underscored his sister Cecilia's academic aspirations. It's an intimate look at the perseverance and shared values that powered the Valoras family onward.
Venture into the heart of George's gripping military saga, from the technical frontiers of the Polaris Program to his unexpected deployment to Laos. His stories encapsulate the essence of leadership and the strong bonds formed in the crucible of service. Post-military life didn't slow George down; instead, it catapulted him into a whirlwind of career transitions, from managing a factory floor to navigating the complexities of international business. Alongside professional tales, George opens up about his quick marriage and the ethical conundrums he faced in the corporate realm, offering a candid glimpse into the evolving American industrial and ethical landscape.
In the final part of our conversation with George, we explore the enduring impact of education in his family, the interesting career paths of his siblings, and his own ascent to prominent leadership roles. As George reflects on his nearly six-decade marriage and the cherished wisdom of mentors, we uncover the virtues of patience and adaptability. His story culminates in a reflection of a life rich with accomplishment and connection, and it's an episode brimming with the wisdom and warmth that only a life well-lived can impart.
All right, today is Thursday, July 12th 2023. And I am talking with George Velores, who served in the United States Army. So, George, we're going to start out real simple. If you could just tell us where and when you were born.
Speaker 2:I was born in Indianapolis, indiana, on July the 5th, 1936, at St Vincent's Hospital. My mother and father were immigrants from Greece. My father had a flower shop in Indianapolis, and I have a younger sister who's four years younger than me. Her name is Cecilia Danagelis. Now she's married. We lived downtown Indianapolis until I was about four years old and then we moved to a rented home on Delaware Street in Indianapolis, the near north side.
Speaker 2:I attended Roberts Kindergarten and then went to started grade school at Public School number 45, in Indianapolis. We stayed, we lived in that house until I was in the sixth grade, at which time my father bought a home on Fall Creek Parkway in Indianapolis. That was the first home that we owned, actually, and I then transferred from Public School number 45, to Public School number 66, and finished my grade school at that location. I attended Shortridge High School and while at Shortridge, was in the National Honor Society, was on the math team, was on the track team and the cross country team. We were city champions and track, state champions and cross country in my senior year and was active socially. I loved it. It was a great high school. Anyway, upon graduation, I had.
Speaker 1:So before we go too much further, though, I do want to kind of go back a little bit. You say your parents were from Greece. Let's talk about your parents just for a few minutes. So what was your brother's?
Speaker 2:name. My mother's name was Aliki Alice. Her maiden name was Kotsarellis. My father came to America in 1912 when he was 12 years old and lived in New York City with a bunch of other immigrant men. He sold flowers from a push cart and newspapers and went to school, learned English and came to Indianapolis in the late 1920s and opened a small flower shop. At that time, in 1935, he went back to Greece on a holiday a visit, I think, principally to get married and he was met my mother in the town of Agriñon and he was fixed up with my mother by my new uncle, nick Valores, who had a jewelry store in Agriñon.
Speaker 1:My mother and dad were married in Agriñon, greece, in 1935 and traveled back to the States and soon after I was born, Well, so let me ask you this when you think about your parents we'll start with your mom and then we'll talk about your dad but do you have maybe like a favorite memory of your mom? But when you think about your mom, this is what you think about.
Speaker 2:My mom was a very good cook and very creative and just really took great care of all of us at home. She was also very religious and made sure that we did our thing with Sunday school and I was an altar boy at the Greek church in Indianapolis and then later, as a young adult, sang in the choir. But mom was very hands-on and just was a great lady. She was a very pretty woman and she was great, that's nice.
Speaker 1:So what about your dad? What do you remember about him?
Speaker 2:My dad was a pistol. He was only about five foot six, five seven. He was very active. He belonged to the YMCA. He was a New League handball champion at the YMCA. He was very social. Everybody knew him. He knew everybody in the downtown area and Indianapolis. He was a great salesman in the sense of in his flower shop and had a lot of really loyal customers. We called him his nickname was the Colonel because he was in charge, so we called him the Colonel was in charge and he was really funny. He read a lot. He was very interested in politics and he would read and he would get newspapers and magazines and underline important things that he thought were important and would make sure that I got that. I saw those and read them and he was great. He was just a really wonderful guy and a great pal.
Speaker 1:He was really good, right, and I don't want this to get lost for anybody that's listening to this. So your dad comes from Greece, ends up in New York with a flower cart, but now he owns a flower shop in Indianapolis A small flower shop. Yeah, right, but still, I mean, if you think about the American dream, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:That's where it starts, that's where it is Exactly, that is precisely it. And it was always amazing to me in later life and I thought, reflected on it, and it's how they never made very much money in their business my father and a lot of his colleagues who had other businesses, you know dry cleaners, shoe shine stands, restaurants, bars they never made a lot of money but they had everything and they were very honest citizens, paid their taxes, supported their church, but it was just amazing how they were able to manage their lives so effectively. It was really interesting and impressive, I have to say.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, so what now? What about your sister? So was this you and your sister. Cecilia was her name Cecilia.
Speaker 2:Okay, cecilia went to the same high school I did she was four years behind me and upon graduation went to DePaul University in Green Castle in Niana and finished there with a degree and was a teacher and came back to Indianapolis and taught at one of the high schools in Indianapolis and then, a few years later, married Dr Jim Danagallis, who was a radiologist from Burlington, vermont, also a boy of Greek origin, and they moved out east as he was practicing in Syracuse, new York. So that was our family.
Speaker 1:Okay, all right. I have to ask, though was the sister's marriage an arranged marriage, like with your father?
Speaker 2:No, no, not really. Not really arranged, no Okay.
Speaker 1:Because I noticed, you know, being in a Greek family, not being Greek myself, I know it's a lot of Greek people married Greek people, so I was just curious.
Speaker 2:Well, it's encouraged. Yes, yes, I know that.
Speaker 1:I'm glad that Dan seemed to like me. Yeah, it's encouraged yes, Otherwise it would have been a problem. It would have been a big problem. Yeah, so when we left off, you were in high school. You were getting ready to graduate. So I noticed very academically, you were there. Did you play any sports in high school?
Speaker 2:I did. I ran track, ran the mile and ran the mile relay and we were city champions in track and we were state champions in cross country and lettered in both sports and was involved in social. He was in Key Club, was a national honor society and did pretty well academically. I wasn't first in my class but I was at the top 10%. So 5%, I guess.
Speaker 1:Maybe I don't know so what happens after high school?
Speaker 2:I had received a scholarship to go to Purdue. I'd always wanted to be an engineer and I had received a scholarship to Purdue University and I also had a scholarship to Cornell in Ithaca, new York. My parents were not too keen about me going that far away. Purdue was far enough as far as they were concerned and it was cheaper. The Cornell scholarship was an honor and it had some money with it, but not a lot of money, so it was not terribly advantageous to take that up. So I attended Purdue as an engineering student, as a freshman engineer Was on the track team at Purdue, ran a mile. I was not even close to being the number one miler but did okay and ran in different events over the four year period Pledged Sigma Chi fraternity and loved it, made a lot of lifelong friends from my Pledged class and from the fraternity. In my junior year I had a scholarship to go to Switzerland for a semester and at the Technische Hochschule in Zurich, switzerland, which conveniently, all their classwork is done in English even though it's in Switzerland. That's convenient.
Speaker 1:That's really convenient.
Speaker 2:It is one of the top three engineering schools in Europe and maybe in the top ten in the world, and I was sponsored by Al Jus Swiss, which is a Swiss aluminum company, and I did some. I was also what they called a very extirpated working student. So I went to the smelter in the Chippi in the Kanton Valley in Switzerland for some weeks and worked in their electrical engineering department. They generated a hydroelectric electricity using hydropower from. They were up in the Alps, so they had a lot of glacier melt, whatever, so that was really exciting and an awful lot of fun. But that thing did to me, though, is it caused me to not go to ROTC summer camp, because at Purdue being a land grant college in that era, ROTC for two years the first two years was mandatory? Really, yes, I did not know that.
Speaker 1:Yes, All land grant colleges.
Speaker 2:Michigan State was the same way actually oh all right. All land grant colleges were that way. So ROTC was mandatory for two years and two years were optional, upon which, at graduation, you would receive a commission. But I missed my summer camp because I was in Switzerland. So I had to go after, graduate after. So I didn't graduate in 1958, like I was supposed to. I graduated in January of 59, because I had to go to. I had to take a couple of extra classes to make up for what I had missed being in Switzerland.
Speaker 1:So these were, so I didn't. I'm trying to wrap my head around this. So ROTC was built right into your class schedule. So if you didn't meet your ROTC commitments. You didn't graduate.
Speaker 2:No, if you didn't meet your ROTC commitments, you'd get drafted.
Speaker 1:Oh well, there's that, right. There's that, Because?
Speaker 2:the draft was alive and well in that era. Oh okay, I got you now In fact I had several fraternity brothers who decided they were not interested in studying anymore because the school sent your grades to your draft board and if you didn't make your grades, stay at you know. You got a phone call to show up for physical.
Speaker 1:It's a whole different world back then.
Speaker 2:Oh yes, and I had a couple of fraternity brothers who decided to major in bridge and other card games and then they got the call and they ended up getting drafted. So oh, my goodness. Anyway… I opted for advanced ROTC and was commissioned in the signal core because I graduated as an electrical engineer. Electrical engineers typically were assigned to signal core. Mechanical engineers were typically assigned to ordinance. Chemical engineers were assigned to the chemical core. So they tried to slot you to your academic background Right.
Speaker 2:So I graduated in the January of 59 and I did receive my orders to report for active duty in May of 59. In the meantime I was working as a staff engineer at the Naval Avionics Facility in Indianapolis working on a weapon system for the A3D bomber as one of the engineers and did that. So I went to. On May 9, 1959 I reported duty at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, to attend the signal officers basic course. I neglected to mention that. I did go to summer camp at Fort Gordon, georgia, the summer before, which was ROTC summer camp for signal core. Okay, people from that course, there were kids from colleges all over the country in that group.
Speaker 1:Summer time in Fort Gordon. That doesn't sound like a great time. It was not much fun, not much fun at all.
Speaker 2:It was a pitch. Actually, the drill sergeants were all southern boys and they didn't like northern boys, so they made even better. Oh yeah, it was interesting. Anyway, I reported to Fort Monmouth and went to signal officer school, which was, I think, six or eight weeks, something like that. And while at school, near the end of the program, one of my good friends, bill Stringer from the University of Iowa, and I were at a happy hour at the club and he said you know we should go to jump school. And I said are you kidding me? My mother would kill me if she thought of me and besides that I'm scared to death of doing something like that. So after a few more drinks we decided that if neither one of us did that, we were chickens. So we signed up to go to jump school.
Speaker 1:Some of the best decisions the military made just that way.
Speaker 2:Exactly I. Then I was in, I did receive my orders and I went to Fort Benning and the 503rd PIR parachute infantry regiment was. They were the guys who taught us and managed us and harassed us through jump school. So I got my jump wings and I stayed on for another three weeks because they had a special course at Benning for non-infantry officers, young officers, field grade, company grade officers teaching us about defensive tactics because we had, like, in the signal corps, you had remote radio relay sites and things that had to be defended. So they taught us how to manage those kinds of things. So it was kind of interesting and as a result of that I got an expert infantry badge because we learned how to use all these different infantry weapons, none of which, by the way, we had an RTO and E. We had 50 caliber guns and pistols and carbines and that was it. So I had recoilless, rifles and mortars and all that stuff, all the good stuff, all good stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all the desirable things.
Speaker 2:We didn't use any of that stuff. Upon completion I was assigned and received orders to go to Fort Wachuka, arizona, which was the home of the Army Electronic Proving Ground, and I was assigned to the first, to the 56th Signal Company, which was a signal maintenance company, and very shortly thereafter I was transferred to the 232nd Signal Company support there. And then Department of Defense apparently decided to disperse some units and they moved B Company of the 50th Airborne Signal Battalion out of 18th Corps, 18th Airborne Corps, out of Fort Bragg, and they moved B Company to Fort Wachuka and they moved A head and A stayed at Fort Bragg and Charlie went to Fort Riley, kansas. Anyway, because I was jump qualified and they did not have enough jump qualified officers to bring out there, they transferred me once again from the 232nd like I walked across the street and I was now in B Company of the 50th as a platoon leader and then later on as an executive officer and at the end of my tour I was acting company commander because they didn't have enough captains at that moment and I just happened to be the ranking first lieutenant of data rank, so had a very, a lot of fun at Fort Wachuka.
Speaker 2:We were there for two reasons. We did two things while we were there. Principally, we were supported projects at the electronic proving ground for new and sophisticated signal equipment and we also were assigned to support for sixth army, the maneuver for maneuvers and exercises. We would support the managers, the umpires, referees and managers of these maneuvers. We were not part of the maneuver, we were there supporting and so we were all over the place. We were at Fort Irwin not the desert training center Fort Irwin, california three times. We were at Yakima firing center in Washington. Twice. We were in Graf and Vir, germany. We were returning forces to Germany. We flew to Germany and came back. So we were busy and it was a lot of fun. It was like I've always said, the army was great, as long as they're not shooting at you.
Speaker 1:Right, right. So a whole lot of that was happening, that's right.
Speaker 2:So it was a hell of a lot of fun. So I near the. In March of 61, I believe it was, we received orders to move to go to San Diego. We were placed on alert to go to San Diego and so we moved all our equipment, we convoied over across not too far across Southern Arizona, through Tucson to Yuma and then into San Diego and went. We were loaded on a troopship, not knowing why or where we were going, but just be there.
Speaker 1:So let me ask you a question. Convoy like that's a lot of moving parts. Is there anything that happened on that convoy that?
Speaker 2:sticks out in your mind. Yeah, something very interesting. We had 170 men in the company and we had about 55 to 60 vehicles, something in that range. We had anywhere from jeeps to Deuce de Hasse with huts and radio equipment and radio relay equipment and cryptographic equipment and what have you? Two things happened on that particular trip. I had a government credit card to buy gas and of course we needed gas because these trucks were not particularly fuel efficient. So we're near Yuma, arizona, and we pulled into this great huge truck stop because it was time for the guys to have breakfast and we needed to buy like 5,000 gallons of gas. So I'm in the lead jeep and my driver, private Hayes, was black. So we pull in and I said the guy, the manager, comes running out and he sees all the trucks and he's salivating because he can see.
Speaker 2:It was a pretty good sale. Yes, come up Right, and just be sure you don't order by high-test gas, because the government won't. You'll pay the difference if you screw that up Right? I said my guys are all want to have breakfast and we need to buy 5,000 or 6,000 gallons of gas. I'm not sure what. He said well, he can't eat here. Talk about your driver, my driver. We're in uniform, and I got side arms. I said I beg your pardon. He says he can't eat here. Those guys can't eat here. He used the N-word and I said he's a United States service man in uniform and you're telling me he can't eat here. He says that's right. I said well then, we're not going to eat here, we're leaving. So I'm going to mount up. And we left. The guy was beside himself. Oh how bad. But I said no way are we going to do this.
Speaker 2:We get to the California border and they had at that time they may still have this they had agricultural check stations so they would stop all vehicles and check for fruits and fruit flies and all kinds of goofy stuff. So this inspector comes up and he says we need to look in these huts that were on the back of the doosnaps and I said you can't because most of them had cryptographic equipment in them. They were classified. So I said I don't think you're cleared for that and I said so you can't do that. He says, well, you can't go. I said well, listen. I said you better talk to your supervisor because we're not going to unlock these vans for you to prowl around in them, because I said number one, number two, we don't have any fruit and vegetables. We're on a military mission right now, exactly. So after a lot of hooping and hollering, they let us go. We get to San Diego, get on the ship.
Speaker 2:The rest of the battalion now is arriving from Bragg and Riley and what have you, and the battalion commander, colonel Kerncab, assembles all the officers and he says gentlemen, he says we are going to Laos and now this is in March, I'm supposed to get out in May, after my two year thing. I raised my hand and I said sir, I said I'm, I said I have two questions. I said number one, where is Laos? And number two, I'm supposed to get out on the ninth of May. He says, well, here's where Laos is. And he said you're not getting out of the night, You've been extended, you've been extended. Yeah, I, I, sir. So so I was extended. Anyway, we were supposed to go to to provide communications, a big network of communications, for what we didn't know was there were 5000 US Army trainers and special forces people ma roaming the mountains of Laos, cambodia and and Vietnam training the Montagnards. So this is before this is before Vietnam.
Speaker 1:This is 61.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the war had not, and nobody was talking about, nobody knew this. This was really secret stuff, so, but they scrubbed our mission. We never, never went. I still got extended for for for change that no, I still got extended for six months. But years later I met a couple of fellows who were in fifth special forces who were over there and they said we're glad you didn't come because we didn't want Washington interfering with our work.
Speaker 1:So I thought well, mission accomplished.
Speaker 2:Anyway, that ended my military, my active duty career. So came back to Indianapolis, was assigned to reserve unit, the 70th Infantry Regiment, and would go to the meetings and were like 300 second lieutenants there. It was really kind of a goofy thing. And had to go to two summer camps and I'll jump ahead a little bit. First summer camp was at Fort Jackson, south Carolina. I flew down, they flew me down there in a commercial and I taught communications to young men for two weeks and spent a lot of time at the club in the pool.
Speaker 2:The second summer camp I went to I was just attached to the 38th Infantry Division, the Indian National Guard, and I was responsible for because I had an EIB. They had put me in charge of the 4.2 inch mortar range. So I went to the was at the range at Camp Brailing, northern Michigan, and the deuce and a half with the guardsmen pulled up, led by a jeep with a major in it and saluted, you know, welcome to the range. And there was also was a range noncom there who was a full time employee, basic or assignment at that grade, like he was kind of took care of the range. I was responsible for the range.
Speaker 2:As we're talking to the men are unloading this big Coke cooler off the back of this deuce and a half. I didn't think too much of it until I walked over there and I looked at it. It was full of beer, and so I said major. I said this is a live fire range with hot projectiles. And I said we are not drinking beer at my range, that's all. Yeah, we can't do that. He said we've always done this. I said well, not today. So he, he chewed me out. He said I'm going to report you. I said that's fine, sir, do it. But I said the range is closed. So I shut the range down. They left, took their cooler with them. I don't know where they went, anyway. But then they tried to recruit me to join the guard because they wanted airborne qualified people, and I said no way, no way.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Anyway. So that pretty much ended my military time and I got deferred from attending any more reserve meetings because I was working again back at the Naval Aviationist Facility on some military stuff.
Speaker 1:Well, let me ask you this so that's kind of the end of your, your military career?
Speaker 2:My army career.
Speaker 1:Your army career right. So you know, looking back on that, is there like one or two lessons that you took away from that as you, as you left, that you carried on with you.
Speaker 2:Well, of course, you, you learn a lot about leadership, the hardware, sometimes the hardware when you have a bunch of young men who, who from different such, you know, so many different walks of life that require, you know, careful management and you know, and training and coaching, mentoring and responsibility. You know, I was responsible for millions of dollars worth of equipment, you know, and a bunch of men and their safety and health. It was a I don't want to say sobering, it was. It was a very maturing if I'm using the right term experience for me and it helped shape my future perspective on on management and and all of the pros and cons of management styles and and what have you, and you were I mean, if you think about it, you were pretty young.
Speaker 1:Yes, I have all that responsibility.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 21,. You're 21, 22 years old, you know yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, your peers are out doing probably other things Well all of the, all of my fraternity brothers, all my pledge brothers, ended up in the. We are all, we're all in the military. Almost everybody, almost everybody, was commissioned in either the army, the air force, the Marines or the Navy. So they, we all had that. You know, that's some form of experience like that. Okay, and and they and we've talked about it is because we still communicate, those of us that are still alive and we had a lot of guys. The guys had a lot of very, very interesting experiences and all over the world, and it was, it was interesting.
Speaker 2:I remember, just as an aside, one of my pledge brothers, John Sand, was a Navy ensign and then a JG and he was on. He was an engineering officer on an LST based out of San Diego or out of, I've said, Long Beach, excuse me. And when we were on maneuvers at Fort Irwin over a weekend we were off because the maneuver hadn't started yet. So he invited me over and to have lunch with him on his LST and I went over there and I was just, it was amazing because we were served. You know, Filipino steward served us away tablecloth and all the silverware and all that. I'd been eating Z-Rations for two weeks and I thought, wow, this is cool.
Speaker 1:So it was a lot of fun. Other experiences of officers, probably much different than his yeah, oh yes, oh yes.
Speaker 2:Another thing that happened, if I can backtrack a little bit, absolutely, this is your story. We were I think it was Exercise Mesquite Dunes. It was a big armor exercise out at Fort Irwin and they had the 40th Armored Division and a couple of reconnaissance squadrons from one from the first infantry division and one from some place else, I don't remember exactly and the air it was also a joint exercise. The Air Force was doing strafing, mock strafing and bombing, and so the Air Force sent a forward air controller over a young pilot, a first lieutenant maybe. They brought him over to the helicopter and they gave him to me, to us, because we had the air to ground radio, the ARC-27 radio, for which he could communicate with his aircraft. So he shows up to spend about a week with us in a flight suit and boots and that's it.
Speaker 2:And of course the desert at night gets very, very cold. The temperature changes dramatic. You got to have the right kind of clothing and he didn't have a sleeping bag. He had nothing except his flight suit and his dog tags. So we fixed him up with the right clothing and we gave him a sleeping bag and I let him sleep in my hooch because I had a little hooch on my trailer, on one of the trailers that I had a bunk in and a map board and all that. So he was beholding to us big time. So he said, well, when this is over, he said I want you to come over to George Air Force Base, which is in Victorville, california, not very far away, and he said I'm going to take you for a ride. So I said, well, I'd love to do that. So I did that after the maneuver exercised it over and he took me for a ride in an RF-101 Voodoo jet fighter, two seater across the desert at treetop level. Scared the bejesus out of me.
Speaker 1:It was pretty fast, didn't it?
Speaker 2:Oh my God. Well, I don't know, we were going pretty good. Anyway, it was amazing, it was really a heart-stopping experience, I have to say. Anyway, that pretty much ends the military side of my life.
Speaker 1:So when you got out from active duty you said you were still working at the Navy Electronics.
Speaker 2:I was working at the Naval Aviation facility in Indianapolis, which is a very large development facility for naval aviation, radar, bomb directing systems and what have you. And I was working again on this ASB-7 weapon system for the A3D bomber, because we had some really exotic test equipment like vacuum chambers and vibration equipment, and what have you? We got a very unique project. The facility was assigned a very unique project. They called it Project 435 and what it was was the building, testing and launching of the first navigation satellites. It was called the Transit Navigation Satellite and it was designed and conceived by the Applied Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University, and they had launched a couple of prototypes, but now they needed a kind of a production facility to continue.
Speaker 2:The satellite was designed to support the Fleet Ballistic Missile Program, the Polaris Program, and because submarines that had ballistic missiles on board, all of these missiles were pre-programmed. They had targets pre-programmed. These were fire and forget, yes, and the only thing that the missile needed was, in addition to somebody pushing the button or turning the key, they had to know where they were at the time of launch, because they knew where they were going to go. They just didn't have to know where they were starting from. So they needed a precise navigation fix, and the only way you could do that before the satellite was to surface and use a sextant in a classic way surface and pick up a Loran-C, which was a transmitter. They had transmitters around the world that had shot, had radio beams that you could pick up and do a triangulation, and the sub-mariners did not like the idea of surfacing because that was not a good thing for them. Right, it exposes them. Right, absolutely yeah. And so the satellite was a key, a really critical thing for them.
Speaker 2:So the management at the facility pulled together a group of young engineers I was lucky to be one of them To work on this project. We were about 10 or 11 of us. So we started working on it. We went to Johns Hopkins, we learned a lot about it, we started assembling the stuff. I ended up I started as the command system engineer. I had the system for the receivers that commanded the satellite in space, and then I got promoted. Later on I ended up being the head of the group, the chief of the satellite systems engineering branch. So I had the whole project and I was responsible for not only building it but getting it delivered to either Vandenberg Air Force Base or Cape Canaveral and launching it Huge responsibility it was.
Speaker 1:It was still pretty young, right, I was my 20s.
Speaker 2:I was 26, 27 years old. So we built satellites several we built like six or seven, launched, took them out and launched them. We launched them on scout launch vehicles Thor, abel, star, atlas, agena, depending on what else, because they usually had multiple payloads. But that was a very interesting experience. It was exciting. It just, I mean, it was really thrilling.
Speaker 1:Actually, we were really part of history that changed the world, because that really changed how we did things once they were able to launch.
Speaker 2:Well, that's right. And I mean the launches. Some of them were successful, some of them were not. We had one the range officer at Vandenberg blew up the whole thing because the launch vehicle was veering off course and of course for safety purposes they had to blow it up. We had one satellite going down range the third stage was tumbling rather than going down range and when it ignited it was actually pointed down at the ocean and it actually just drilled the satellite into the deep. So no, the whole satellite, the third and fourth stage, all that stuff with it.
Speaker 2:So we lost, you know, we lost a few, but the space programs were pretty new then. I mean they were, you know, they were in their infancy and anyway we finished the program. We did the program for a few years and at the end of the first phase the SP-23, the Bureau of Weapons that was a special project that was responsible for the Polaris system awarded the contract for the follow-on manufacture of satellites to RCA in and out New Jersey. So I decided I did not want to go to New Jersey. In the meantime, while I was working on this project I had to come to Lansing, michigan, because the packaging engineering school at Michigan State University was assigned a task of designing the containers and the packaging for us to ship the satellites from, upon completion, to the respective launch sites. So I had to come to Lansing in I think it was October of 64, 63, sorry.
Speaker 1:Now, this is something a lot of people don't think about either. Is you hear about people going to school for packaging engineering and I think sometimes people chuckle like that sounds like underwater basket weaving no, but the program in Michigan State is no, it is around the world.
Speaker 2:It was first class, it is first rate. They didn't make the packaging, they designed it and then we had it made someplace else. So I had to come up to Lansing near the end of a week, I remember, in that period time period to approve the design for the packaging, because we would have the packaging done and have the. What NASA would do was they would send a special chartered aircraft to the airport in Indianapolis under guard and we would take it to the airport and they would put it on the plane and ship it to the launch site, to like to Vanneberg or to Kennedy, cape Canaveral, right. Well, so let's Whoover Going back to my military days, while I was on maneuvers in California, one weekend I visited a family that my, through some mutual friends in Indianapolis, lived in Cucamaga, california, dr Kelly, anton Achilles, anton, greek boy, and his wife Betty.
Speaker 2:And while I was there, there was another Greek boy there, a boy of Greek family, george Papas, who was from Lansing, michigan. He was a patent attorney and he had flown at the end of World War II. He was a major or a lieutenant colonel at that time and he was on reserve duty out in California. So I met George and we spent the weekend together. This is back before I got out of the service. So he mentioned to me. He said if you ever come to Lansing, call me. And who would ever thought you'd be in Lansing, michigan, right? Well, so I'm up for this packaging thing and it struck me that I ought to give him a call. And I did, and it turned out to be the weekend of the Notre Dame Michigan State football game and he says I've got tickets. He said would you like to go? I said sure. So he said would you like a date? I said absolutely, that would be fine.
Speaker 1:So so who was your date, George?
Speaker 2:I was a Basiotus who was a lovely, beautiful girl from Lansing who was attending going to Michigan State University and had gone to Michigan State University rather, and so I met my future wife because of the packaging engineering group. So I started. Wow, I was still working on the satellite program, was still going on, so I was every two weeks on a weekend I would drive up from Indianapolis to see her from that period of October of 63. We got, I gave her my fraternity pin in December of 63. I gave her an engagement ring in January of 64. And we got married in July of 64 in Lansing.
Speaker 1:That was pretty quick.
Speaker 2:Well, I had to get married. I just got tired of the drive. The highway there was no. Interstate 69 did not exist. Then the highway was terrible. It was bad news. I can only imagine.
Speaker 1:It sounds like maybe the Basiotus family took to you as well.
Speaker 2:Well, it worked out very, very nicely, as you know. So that was it. So, a couple of years later so I was the satellite program was going on for another two years, I think roughly two years when the program ended. Near that time I was recruited to an Indianapolis company called the PR Mallory Corporation, and Mallory was a diversified manufacturer Gura, cell batteries, appliance controls, capacitors, metallurgical products. I think that was it.
Speaker 1:And they were right. They made Mallory batteries too, yeah Well.
Speaker 2:Mallory batteries. Yes, yeah, mallory batteries, and the Gura cell was the trademark of some of the batteries, the Alkylid batteries, gotcha. So I was recruited to Mallory and worked for one of the group vice president, vice president Leon Lin, who's a retired Air Force general, and he put me through some kind of a management training program there and I was then assigned to the Timers company that we made appliance controls. We were the largest manufacturer of appliance controls probably in the world and I did various engineering things with them for five or six months getting acquainted, and then they, in June of 67, I think yeah they said we want you to go to Warsaw, new York, to run the factory in Warsaw, new York. We had a big Timers plant there that made we made close to 10,000 timers a week there, washing machine timers principally for.
Speaker 2:Whirlpool, ge, maytag, hotpoint, you name it. Anyway, it was a factory of about 500 women and 100 men and we had a major parts fabrication department punch presses, screw machines, electric plating, molding machines, plastic molding, thermoplastic molding and then whatever. And then we had these assembly lines with the women who would assemble these timers and we'd ship them every day. So that was my first kind of manufacturing experience. I was the manager for two years. At the end of exactly two years my boss called me and Bob Quackenbush was his name. He was the president of the Timers company. He said I want you to come back to be a works manager.
Speaker 2:Works manager in Mallory Parlence was the guy responsible for all the factories, all the manufacturing. So Timers had four factories Warsaw, mount Morris, new York, paine, illinois, camden, tennessee, and then we were going to build a new one in Sparta, tennessee. So all those factories were part of my responsibility or were my responsibility, and their plant managers would report to me and I in turn reported to Quackenbush, the president. So I had that job for a couple of years I think a couple of years and then they asked me to be the head of sales and marketing. So I was a total switch. So I became head of sales and marketing.
Speaker 1:Well, that's interesting for an engineer to be the head of sales and marketing Is that? I mean you just don't? I guess you don't think about that from going from engineering to that.
Speaker 2:Well, I don't know, but it seemed I enjoyed it. I loved it it was. That was not the only time that that happened to me by then.
Speaker 1:Well, it's because you're an engineer with a personality. Well right, I didn't have a pocket protector.
Speaker 2:That's true. Or, as my daughter would say, you weren't a geek. So a few years down the pie, I don't remember exactly.
Speaker 2:You know, I'm confused at the dates, kind of state me now, but I was recruited by a headhunting firm, by, for a controls company of America which was located in Schiller Park, illinois, which is a suburb of Chicago. Cca controls company was also in the control timer business but they were also in a whole lot of other controls businesses which we were not. They were in air conditioning, refrigeration, heating. They made valves for air conditioners, for all of the air conditioning systems for automobiles. They made most of those valves. They had factories in Wisconsin, in North Manchester, indiana, winnipeg, indiana, fremont, ohio, and then a very large, a joint venture in Japan, controls company Japan in Nagoya, and then in Europe, controls Machupei Europa, which is CME, was the European business and they had the headquarters in Nijmegen in the Netherlands. We had a factory in Munich, germany. We had a factory in Schermack, france, madrid, spain, alcabinda, spain.
Speaker 1:So now it's part of your job to go visit all of these places too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but at the beginning I was hired as vice president of marketing. So I was kind of marketing coordinator for all of the everything in the company. Each division had their own sales and marketing group and I was kind of because I reported to the president of CCA. I was kind of supposed to kind of keep it together, if you will, and learn the business. So I did and I traveled extensively in that role. I was overseas a lot. I was all over the place Japan, and what have you?
Speaker 2:Then I was promoted to vice president, general manager of the appliance and automotive division, which made all the appliance controls and automotive electrics we made like windowless switches, tailgate switches.
Speaker 1:All of these things that, when you drive your car, you don't really think about. That's right. But, if you didn't have them, you'd think about them.
Speaker 2:We made a lot of, you know, ignition switches. I lost track of it.
Speaker 1:It was a catalog Anyway a lot of stuff, a lot of stuff.
Speaker 2:We had. You know, we were active with all of the big three automotives and some overseas. Then we were a vendor to Toyota through Nipon Denso, which is the kind of the Delcorimi of Toyota, and so I was vice president, general manager of that appliance and automotive division for a couple of years I think. And then the president, Don Strathen, retired and I was stunned because they made me president. I was just kind of flabbergasted because there were guys that had been here much longer than me and were older and more mature and more experienced, but I don't know why, but they appointed me president. Cca was a public company, but surely after I became president we were stuck with a hostile takeover by the Singer Company Singer Sewing Machine, who had all kinds of cash. So all of a sudden we weren't Controls Company of America anymore, we were the Controls Division of the Singer Company.
Speaker 1:Well, that's interesting.
Speaker 2:And so, rather than being a president and CEO of CCA, I was now a division president of the Controls Division. The Singer Company had a great reputation for many years in lots of ways, but they knew nothing about any of these other businesses and they were buying businesses all over the place. They bought air conditioning business, they bought power tools, they made all the power tools for seers, the drills and stuff you don't think about that when you think about Singer, you think about sewing machines.
Speaker 1:That's it.
Speaker 2:Well, they had a Freedon calculator, they had a Freedon computer business. They had a lot of businesses and all of them were a disaster after they took them over because they were just, they were sewing machine guys. They didn't squat about any of this stuff, so they thought they were throwing money at all these things was going to make it happen, and so I was not too pleased. I was president for a couple of years but I was not happy with it at all and I was then recruited because I was getting calls from headhunters all the time. Anyway, itw Illinois Tool Works in Chicago sought me out and John Nichols, the CEO, and wanted me to come over to be the president of the electronics group at ITW and it was right in town. So I had to move, which was great, and so I went to work for ITW as president, executive, vice president of the corporation and president of the electronics group and we made keyboards and switches, you know toggle switches, push button switch, all kinds of switch arrays and stuff, capacitors, thick film networks, all kinds of things like that.
Speaker 2:Itw is absolutely a sensational company. It was just unbelievably well run, totally diversified in all these things, and yet there was a culture there that was just impossible to replicate and it was just marvelous. I was so happy there and that went on for a good while. But we got trapped in the major technology shift because as the new computers and the, as the orientals, particularly the Japanese, began to really make strong head roads into the electronic components business, you know, making capacitors and resistors and all kinds of things, they just were. They were decimating US manufacturers. And I remember vividly Motorola was a big customer of our capacitor business because we made capacitors in Virginia, we made them in Taiwan and Motorola was a big customer and they said you're done, we're not going to buy from you anymore because we're going to buy from Toshiba in Japan.
Speaker 1:Now, and it was purely a business decision, right, yeah, she was to do that.
Speaker 2:And they said they're spending, they're investing a lot more money in advanced technologies and you guys are not. And they were right, yeah, and on and on and on. So you know, all of a sudden our business started to go to pot big time. And the same thing with our keyboard business. Because we made, we were the one of the, we were the leading manufacturer of keyboards in the United States, and they were elegant. I mean, all the keys were two shot molded so that they never wore out. So you know, you and so, but that's expensive.
Speaker 2:And all of a sudden, where we were selling keyboards to the airlines so that their clerks and people and these, these were, they had distributed processing, where you have a room full of ladies just entering data. Well, now everybody had a keyboard and that had to be cheap, really cheap, right, exactly, it was just cheap. In fact, we made the prototype keyboards for Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, who I met that one time. We made the prototype for their first Apple, the first Macintosh computer, my gosh. And. But when it came time to for production order, they said you guys are way too expensive, so they went someplace else, they went overseas. So our keyboard business really, really took a hit. Our capacitor business took a hit, the switch business took sort of a hit, but we were, it was so I just I thought my job is in trouble here. It might be time to look for something else so.
Speaker 2:I was asked to join singer or Robert Siemens, excuse me and my neighbor, my next door neighbor in Chicago, in Inverness, where we lived, was, was an executive with Gould, the Gould company and Siemens was buying up various businesses in the electrical field and they bought ITE's circuit breaker business, switch business from Gould and Harry Berger, who was the guy who the Gould executive running this, became the president of this new company called Siemens Energy and Automation, to be based in Atlanta, alpharetta, georgia. Harry was my neighbor and Harry said you know, you've run a lot of factories and all that. He said I need a guy to be my vice executive, vice president of operations of factories, a manufacturing, because Siemens bought ITE from Gould. They bought all the Siemens Alice I'm sorry, Alice Chalmers businesses, which were numerous and really screwed up, and so we had this whole kind of glomerative of businesses all over the country and he asked me to move to Atlanta and run and clean them up basically, which I did, and I did that.
Speaker 2:For three or four years I was on the board of Siemens Energy and Automation, what they call the Wurstein, the German Wurstein and then one day the chairman of Siemens asked me at a board meeting. He said we want you to put together all these businesses that had been purchased, had their own organizations administration, sales, marketing. He says we want we at Siemens believe in having a Siemens office where everything is cohesive, and we want you to do that in the state. I thought, ooh.
Speaker 1:So they were looking to be more central.
Speaker 2:Central control was the name of the game in Siemens big time. So I inherited a whole bunch of disparate sales offices, sales organizations, salesmen, company cars, incentive plans, pay plans, salary scale. They were all over the place.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they all had their own right, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:It was fun Actually, I really enjoyed this job. So it took a while to get it squared away, but it took a year or two but we got it done, and so I did that for a while.
Speaker 1:And so, before we leave Georgia though, I know that you had mentioned your daughter, so are there children coming along the way as we're going?
Speaker 2:through all of this? Oh, absolutely yes, I neglected to mention them. They're important in my life.
Speaker 2:Georgia and I had three children. Tom was born in 1966. Nick was born in 1967. He was born in 1970. They all ended up, they all went to high school. Well, they went to school in high school in Chicago, in the suburbs in Palatine. But then when we moved to Atlanta the boys were already in college at Wake Forest University. But Libby still had three years of high school, so she went to high school at the Marist School in Atlanta. It was an excellent Catholic school, a very good school, and upon graduation she too went to Wake Forest University. So all three of your children went to Wake. All three went to Wake. All three got their bachelor's degree at Wake.
Speaker 2:Tom went on to go to medical school at Georgia and then he came back and did his residency at the Wake Forest Bowman Gray School of Medicine. Nick finished his four years and then went to law school at Wake Forest. So he got his JD, his Juris Doctor, at Wake Forest. Libby did just four years, but at Wake Forest he got her degree in French and language and French literature. So Tom went on to establish. He became an obstetrician and gynecologist in Winston-Salem where he to this day practices, has a very thriving practice there in Winston-Salem and is married, has two children. Nick is a senior attorney, senior partner and equity partner at a big law firm in North Carolina, out of Charlotte and in the Raleigh, has two children very successful. They are two as well. Our grandchildren.
Speaker 2:Libby finished Wake and then went to work for Delta Airlines as a linguist and flew to France for nine years and has had the time of her life. Let's go see it, that doesn't sound too rough. No, it was great. I was distressed because I kept asking her what is she going to do when she graduates? And she said, well, I'm not going to work in an office and I'm not going to teach. I thought, well, that cuts it down pretty good. So she ended up with a great job Anyway. So that's where I mean unless you want me to elaborate further about the kids, I want to ask you.
Speaker 1:yeah, I think we could probably spend hours talking about the kids, but I would like to go with each one of the children and just ask you, for instance, I asked you this earlier about your parents. So when you think about Tom, what really is the first thing that comes to your mind about him? Talk about each one of the kids that way, just maybe like a favorite memory or just something that touches you when you think about them.
Speaker 2:Well, tom is a very thorough, very intense, very compassionate person and an excellent doctor and a dedicated dad. Nick is more laid back and is very religious as well and is extremely thoughtful and just unassuming but very effective in his legal work obviously because he's done extremely well in that Maybe who is probably the smartest of the three is very intense and organized and the boss, she's right there and the three get along very, very well. They communicate constantly, so we're thrilled with that. That's been a very heartwarming result of the relationship. The boys live in North Carolina, one in Winterson Salem, one in Charlotte and then Libby lives in East Lansing, michigan, very close to where we are now. They've raised their families, each have two children and all very successful and very happy and dedicated. Their families our model families in my view.
Speaker 1:I think you set the bar pretty high for successful families.
Speaker 2:Well, I don't know.
Speaker 1:But yeah, knowing them all myself, I couldn't agree more. I do want to ask you, so we're going to go back to Alfreda, georgia, but I got one more question for you. So I think about you and your dad, your parents running a flower shop living in Indiana, and then I see your kids all, the very least, got a bachelor's degree and beyond for some of them. How important was education to your parents and how important is education to you?
Speaker 2:Well, it was extremely important to my parents. I mean, the typical immigrant goal and vision and dream was to have children who could go to college, and the idea of not going to college was that just wasn't going to fly. And then, once you got to college, you better do well. So that was. You know, there was a high bar there.
Speaker 2:As far as Georgia and I were concerned with our kids, we obviously wanted them to do, we wanted them to be happy, we wanted them to be fulfilled in whatever they planned to do and to have definitive and achievable goals, which all of them did, really. And even, as I said, you know, the boys were more into the, they stood into the academics. Libby was more into the social and but then again, she was very successful in what she did and she's, like I say, the smartest one of the three and she just she knew what she was going to do and she did it, and the boys as well. Same thing. So, you know, we never forced those things on them, but they knew that that was part of the plan, was an expectation, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, I think, as a parent, like with my children, I always wanted them to want that next generation to do a little bit better than I did, and so I think, if you look back at your parents and they can see how things have progressed, I think that's what's happening right. Each generation is doing a little bit better than the previous.
Speaker 2:Well, I think that's true. It certainly do in our case.
Speaker 1:So let's go back to Alfreda, georgia. You cleaned up this mess at Siemens because they had all these different groups that all probably thought they were their own individual companies. Yeah, exactly, and you got that cleaned up. So what happens after that?
Speaker 2:Okay, well, the there was a. I was recruited from Siemens to be the president and CEO of a company called the GenLite Group. Genlite was a the largest manufacturer of lighting products in the United States at that time. They had a whole bunch of different brand names, lytle Lear being the premium light name, and GenLite was a combination of a bunch of individually owned lighting businesses, mostly started and developed by Jewish entrepreneurs who were not only great designers but very sharp businessmen.
Speaker 2:And this company was a big company. It was headquartered in Seacock, new Jersey, and it was the premier lighting business and it had I mean, we had the top of the line was Lytle Lear, and then we made a lighting cans and we had all kinds of. We had a couple of fluorescent plants, we had a big facility in Canada, did a lot of business in China, had contractors over there and in Mexico and in Mackey Lodores, and I was hired as the to be the president and CEO and I was very excited about it. It was. It looked like a lot of fun to do this. What I didn't expect was the fact that these, these entrepreneurs who were still major shareholders, because this is a listed company on the stock exchange they were all major shareholders and they all had their own peculiar ideas about things, one of which was to have a lot of family members on the payroll, even though they didn't work there, but they were drawing money.
Speaker 1:Oh, that could be a problem.
Speaker 2:Yes. So as after some months I wasn't there, more than maybe six or seven months, and I started to begin to, you know, took a while to kind of see what's going on. But we had, we had all this this going on, these people going on working, that we're not there and that's called constructive receipt and that's against the law and it's a public company. So every quarter I had to sign at a 1099 for the SEC vouching for the, for the numbers you know. And we also had a big problem because they had invested all of the pension funds, the defined benefit pension funds, in Israeli bonds. And they were also the head of the Canadian company Abidrezen, who's a really nice guy, a very sharp guy, and we had a big business in Canada. Every year he would submit an expense account for like $25,000 to $30,000. But no receipts or anything, just expense account. Oh, and what he was doing was he was donating it to various Israeli things in.
Speaker 2:Canada. Well, those things don't work in a public company. I mean, you just can't do that.
Speaker 2:Right, you have to be above board and we had a falling out at the board. I was on the board and not the chairman, but I was on the board and I decided I said I cannot sign the 10Qs 1099s and so we mutually agreed that I would execute by severance agreement. So I headed up with a big bunch of money and I never moved to New Jersey from Atlanta. So I went back to Atlanta. I was immediately called by a company called Dillon Reed.
Speaker 2:Dillon Reed was a very old, very prestigious white shoe investment banking firm out of New York City and they said we want to talk to you. So I went back up to New York and talked to them and they said we're looking for guys like you to work with our team of analysts and accountants financial people in our company, because we have a lot of money from investors and they want to invest in companies. But we got to go out and buy these companies and we got to find them. So we want you to be the lead dog in what the deal is. We buy the company, you become the president and CEO and you get 10% of the company off the bat. So I thought, whoop that's pretty good.
Speaker 2:That could be great, or it could be bad.
Speaker 2:So the problem is that there's way too much money chasing too few companies. So we looked at maybe six companies over a period of a year and a half, traveled all over the place looking at these and evaluating and meeting. It was a lot of fun. It was very interesting. It was like getting an MBA. It was really like an MBA with airline tickets.
Speaker 2:But we never were able to successfully buy or close on a new business. And in the meantime I was approached again by a headhunter to come to Temple Steel Company. They needed a president and CEO. So I was recruited to become the president and CEO of Temple Steel Company, which was the largest manufacturer of electrical steel laminations in the world. Electrical steel laminations are used in electric motors and transformers, and Temple was located was a family owned company. The descendants of Temple Smith owned the company. Facilities were in Chicago on Brynmore Avenue and in Libertyville, illinois, and also we had a tool company out in Elk Grove Village, illinois, that made the stamping dies for us. So I was 56 years old at the time because I worked for them for 10 years. I retired from them when I was 66. So I really enjoyed it.
Speaker 2:It was a great business. The interesting thing was I didn't know anything about steel and I didn't know anything about that kind of thing. But what I did know a lot about was the electrical business, the electronics business, and our customers were the electrical and electronics business and so I knew a lot about the markets and the applications and we had plenty of people in the company who were metallurgists and who knew a lot about steel and making steel, although over time I did learn a lot about steel and we had a very. It was a lot of fun. It was a very good experience. We moved to Chicago. We moved to downtown Chicago and bought a condominium on 1555 North Astor Street downtown, at the corner of North Avenue and Astor at Lincoln Park on the 32nd floor, and we loved it. It was really great and it was great for my wife because she was able to shop at all the best stores all over. That is very important. I spent a lot of money, yes, but it was good for her. It was very therapeutic for her. Anyway, I was able to help build the business pretty significantly to the point where, when it started, it was about a half a billion dollars in business and I took it over to over a billion in the 10-year period Very substantial profits. A family made a lot of money. I made a lot of money.
Speaker 2:Fortunately, as part of that we built a big factory in Monterey, mexico, to take advantage of the fact that most of our customers many of our customers, moved to Mexico and people were at the beginning were very critical. They said you're moving, you're going to start shipping stuff back. And I said no, no, no, parts that we stamp in Mexico will come back to the United States from us. We're only stamping for customers that are located in Mexico. We ship from our Mexican plant to other Mexican plants. Now if that customer is going to make something and ship it back to the States, I can't help that. That's not my problem. But we have to protect our market position and so we did that. We built a beautiful big factory in Monterey to supply all the appliance and automotive people and the electric motor people that were all down there, because Emerson and GE and all these other guys had all moved a lot of their facilities not all totally, but a lot of their facilities to Mexico. So we ended up having a very successful Mexican facility and of course, the market changed over time.
Speaker 2:When I first started, black and white TVs were still and color were just beginning to come and, of course, solid state TVs were just on the horizon. So there were still a lot of you remember TV sets where you could hardly pick them up. They were so heavy because they had these big transformers in them. Oh yeah, well, guess who made all the laminations for those transformers we did. All of a sudden, that business was boop, it evaporated. Microtips didn't help you. Oh yeah, oh yeah, and so that was.
Speaker 2:You know, technology was wonderful, but it was also. It could be brutal and you never knew when it was going to hit you. So I was, you know, was running the company, was on the board of the company, and they did. They treated me very, very well. You know, I had no real complaints. So I retired from the company when I was 66 years old and remained on the board of directors for another five years four or five years, I guess and I was on the board of a couple of other outside business companies as well, until I was about 70. And then I decided that was I threw traveling. I didn't want to do that anymore, so I stopped all of those things. I did have a couple of side things like when I was living in North Carolina. When I was retired, I did lecturing and mentoring at the business school at Wake Forest University, which was very rewarding, a lot of fun sharing experiences with the young students.
Speaker 1:Well, let's talk about mentoring for just a minute, right, Because I think anyone who's successful you know a certain amount of your success has to do with you, but I think some of the success that we've had to do with the people around us too. So, you know, can you think of maybe one or two people who were mentors to you as you were coming up?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, oh yeah, the greatest, the most important mentor that I had was at LRA Toolworks. His name was John D Nichols. John was the CEO, had just come aboard ITW as the CEO. He was a Harvard graduate, a Harvard Business School graduate. He was a captain of the Harvard football team. He'd been in the Army as well and was just so smart and so laid back and he was just a marvelous guy to work for and with.
Speaker 2:John was my very, very favorite mentor over time. Frank Oglesby at NAFI at the Naval Aviation Facility, was a senior guy there and he was also a mentor in my very early days of business and was extremely helpful in coaching me to be I guess I hate to use the term a successful manager or a compassionate, understanding manager. I probably should say. And let's see. Well, in the Army, Captain Harry Z Caclicchian, who was our company commander, was a very interesting mentor, and as was our first sergeant, Sergeant Joe Sol, who taught me how to handle young 18-year-old boys who were falling in love with all the young girls in the cantinas in Mexico.
Speaker 1:That could be a problem. It was a problem, by the way.
Speaker 2:So I've just you know, there have been a lot of people that have helped me a lot over the years, and a lot of people actually Almost too many to count.
Speaker 1:So you're completely retired now? Oh, yes, you know we're here in East Lansing, michigan. You have a. You've been married for a couple of years 59 years, right? So you're 60th wedding anniversary next July On the horizon. Let's talk a little bit about Georgia, your wife, and you know just what are some of the things that you think of when you think of her. I know shopping is one of them. I heard that, yeah. Yeah, I'm sure there's some other things too.
Speaker 2:She's. First of all, she has an impeccable taste. In my opinion, she's a very, very capable designer interior design and fashion and furnishings and that kind of thing. I mean she's just got a great eye for that and does a good job with it. She did a really, really good job of raising her three children and keeping them on the straight and narrow but giving them the freedom to do, to develop and grow as they could. Because I was going a lot. I was traveling all over the place, I had millions of miles on airlines, I'd put a lot of time in at airports and in all of the jobs that I had talked about earlier on this tape. So I was not around a lot and I was a I don't want to say an absent father, but I was not a full-time dad, either Because I just wasn't, my job didn't allow it, or I didn't allow it. I guess I shouldn't blame the job.
Speaker 1:But did having her, knowing that she was the one that was home taking care of the kids, did that make it easier for you to do your job?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I mean, I was very confident that things were under control at home and that there was no that I, you know, we communicated constantly about everything, but I was never, never concerned about the house, the household, never, and it just never, never was.
Speaker 1:What do you think the secret is to 60 years of marriage? Patience, both sides of that right. Patience, patience, yes, both sides of that, both sides of that, both sides of that it's patience.
Speaker 2:Oh exactly, yeah, yeah it's. It requires a lot. I mean, it's not without work and effort.
Speaker 1:Right, I think people think it's easy, like getting getting married's easy, but staying married, staying married, that's actual work.
Speaker 2:That is, you're absolutely right, it is, and you know they talk about that over time. But you know you don't, you don't develop at the same rate and so and your tastes don't develop at the same rate. So there's always this, this to and fro involved. So it's, it requires, you know, a lot of, a lot of patience. But I I'd mentioned my fraternity brothers, that I'm very, very close to my pledge brothers and we still, to this day, zoom once a month and those of us that are still alive and there are there are about 10 or 12 of us who show up on the Zoom. We're getting together, by the way, for our final face-to-face reunion at Purdue this coming September. But all of us, I think of all of the guys, the only, I think only one, was got a divorce and then he remarried a very nice young lady. Everybody else has been married a lot of years because I was in all of their way, almost all their weddings. So right.
Speaker 2:So I know, I know the they were in my wedding, I was in their wedding. So there was a lot of stability, I should say, in that group.
Speaker 1:So yeah, well, you have done a lot in your time on this planet. I mean, it's a it's it's a very interesting life and it sounds like very fulfilling. But as we sort of wrap up our conversation today, I've got one more question for you. You know, people are going to listen to this and they're going to hear about your life. But you know, 50 years from now, when probably neither one of us is here unless modern medicine figures something out, you know what? What would you like people to take away from our conversation? What, what piece of advice would you give to people in the future?
Speaker 2:Well, I think I think the things that that have two things. I think the thing that has helped me the most has been patience and developing positive relationships with people. The thing that has probably hurt me the most was a failure to recognize rapid changes in technology until it was too late. So I guess those are the two, two, two pretty critical things.
Speaker 1:Uh-huh, yeah, I don't know what else can I say? Well, that's it. That's it, I mean. That's the. I asked the question and that's a. That's a great answer. So thanks for taking the time out today to talk with me and looking forward to further conversation. Thank you.