I was a professor for a lot of years. I can talk so, but I'll try to try
to keep the answers relatively short. Well let me just start off by
identifying on the tape that today is friday january 12th of 2000 and
seven. And we're here at the community services building at A S. U. To do
an interview for the Living History video project of the Arizona State
University retirees association. I'm pam Stephenson doing to interview our
videographer is manny Garcia and I like to let you give your full name. My
name is Harold Iran and I retired at A S. U. In Oh I think it was 19 89.
So some time ago. Some time ago. Well we'd like to start these interviews
at the beginning. Alright, so you start telling me when you were born and
born in 1931 Pittsburgh pennsylvania, went to school in pennsylvania but
went to high school in a little town in southern indiana, just about oh 50
miles north of Louisville Kentucky called Seymour indiana and graduated
from high school there went from there to indiana University. I spent five
years approximately. I got a bachelor's degree in management and a NBA.
Well I didn't quite get the N. B. A. When I left, I left fairly suddenly
because of the korean conflict and they finally granted me the degree
while I was in the service because I was only of course short or something
when I left and got out of the service and um then worked for a while and
then my wife and I and one child at that point moved to east Lansing
michigan michigan state University, It was on the faculty there for five
years until 1961. Let's go back and talk a little bit more growing up here.
You were born in pennsylvania, right, Pittsburgh pennsylvania
in the insurance business in pennsylvania worked for, well it's, we now
know them as american international group, but it was the old National
Union fire insurance and moved there for basically job reasons, Job
reasons and it was a good, it was a good town to grow up in small town
like 9000 population, one high school To motion picture theaters. It was
just, it was just a nice place to grow up in the, in the 1950s. Yeah, it's
basically the major town in the county, so all of the shopping and the
agriculture is done for the whole county there, we get back there every
once in a while, but like many of those towns, they have not uh weathered
very well. Um they've built new shopping centers on the outskirts of town
and it's just decimated the downtown district. It's uh we walk down there
, oh we were there about three years ago, I walked down the main street to
main streets and I swear every third building was boarded or storefront
was boarded up etcetera etcetera because the retailer just can't compete
with, you know, there's a walmart superstore on the edge of town and some
big stores like that down there anyway, it was a good place to grow up.
Very good place to grow up. So you, your father was in the insurance
business. Right, right. Your mother, what did she just stay home? She was
just a homemaker basically. Uh He was in the insurance business but it was
the property and casualty, not not life insurance, not that there's
anything wrong with life insurance, but A I. G. Is really a property
casualty company. Yeah. Brothers and sisters, no brothers, no sisters.
Married uh Dorothy Everton in Seymour indiana and she has no brothers and
sisters either. And but we're we both graduated from Shields High School
in Seymour indiana. We've known each other since high school, well not
really, she was a year behind me and I really didn't know her. I basically
met her at Indiana University. She was a freshman and I was a sophomore
and just went from there. And uh we uh I've told people June of 19 54 was
a pretty significant month because the one Sunday um we graduated, she
graduated from college. Uh and the next sunday we were married and the
following sunday we reported for duty with the US Army, so it was pretty
busy month, really was oh boy in that three week period of time. Yes it
was, yes it was. Well, as a boy growing up, what did you want to be? You
know, I always knew I wanted to be in business of some kind, but I didn't
know specifically what it would be and it certainly wasn't teaching at
that point. My interest in teaching basically came about while I was at
Indiana University. I did a bachelor's degree, graduated with honors in
management, uh stayed for an M. B. A. And partly. I stayed because Dottie
was in her, it was going to be in her senior year the next year. And the
chairman of the management department called me in one day and he said,
Harold, we have a project we'd like to ask you to to do. And I said, it
was john me john f me, he was a legend in the management faculty field in
the, in the world really back then. And I said, well, professor me, what,
what is it? I was one of his graduate assistants. He said, well we want
you to teach a class for us. And I said, Professor me, I've never taught a
class in my life. Why would you think I should teach a class? And he said
, well, you're, you've just graduated with honors in management. Are you
telling me you couldn't teach a class in management? And I said, no, sir,
I'm not really telling you that. And he said, well, we think you should.
Well, as it turned out, they had an extension course down in Vincent's
indiana. And Vince sends, you know, memory's a little foggy on this, but I
think it's about 80 miles from blooming tonight after drive down late in
the morning one. No wait with the class I think was 5 to 7 or 5 to 8. I
drive down one afternoon a week teach the class. And then at uh eight
o'clock or nine o'clock was over, I would drive back to bloomington on and
it was an interesting experience. Quite honestly enough so that I thought
, you know, this would be a nice thing to try sometime and see if you can
make a living at it. And so I taught the next semester also for indiana
down in Evans, down in Vince ends. And
I decided, you know, maybe what I should do when and if I ever get out of
the service is maybe I should get a doctorate and see if I might want to
teach. And so when I, I knew when I was going to be released from the army
, I went back to I, you and I sat down with Professor me and I said, you
know, I'm going to get out of the service uh in when it was May or june
and I'd sort of like to think of getting a doctorate and I'd like to apply
to Indiana University. And he said, why would you want to apply to indiana
university? And I said, well it's a good school. I'm basically a Hoosier.
I've enjoyed it here and he said, well you know, he said, all of those
things are true, but he said you have a bachelor's from here and an M. B.
A. From here and there's not much more than we can give you at indiana
University. You really need to get out somewhere else and do your
doctorate work. And I said, well that's interesting, what would you
suggest? And he said, well my suggestion would be you go to Michigan State
University because that's a program that's on the rise and a lot of good
faculty young still developing. And I said, well professor me that I I
would certainly accept your advice but will I be accepted at Michigan
State University? It's sort of interesting. He said, well mr Sharon, if I
recommend you, you will be accepted. He was literally that influential in
the management faculty ranks back then. So I applied sure enough, they
accepted me and offered me a faculty position as instructor, full time
position as an instructor, teaching basically four classes a week, four
courses classes or courses as well as four classes and wound up typically
two courses that I'd be teaching. And so I was a faculty member at
Michigan state for five years. And uh we also managed to get a PhD at
Michigan state, I would have been able to have finished it a little bit
sooner. But back then you had to have Proficiency in two foreign languages
, one of which was not English. And so you could take a romance language
like spanish or our french or Portuguese etcetera and the other language
had to be german Russian chinese, something like that. And that literally
chewed up 12 months of my time to be able to get proficient in two
languages. And the proficiency was sort of interesting. The proficiency
would be you'd go into the room, I never forget this lady mrs Sirianni who
was chairman of the language department that we always called it mu u
michigan State University because it was the egg school in the state of
michigan. And mrs Sirianni would whip out a textbook or a book and she'd
say pages 89 through 91 would you? Right out a translation of those three
pages it wasn't the speaking language proficiency, it was reading
theoretically, they want you to be able to read the journals. Well that
that was really a bunch of garbage because anything that was written in
economics was either written in english or translated into english
immediately. So you never had to read but didn't make any difference. Uh
they would whip out a book and they give it to you and give you two hours
and say you know right out of translation. Well I forget that I didn't
have any trouble. The spanish, that was a piece of cake. I had never had
any language in college or in high school back then you didn't take
language in high school, well you didn't, well I take it back I took I
took three years of Latin but which was helpful but I didn't have spanish
but I was able to pass that exam pretty easily with a little bit of home
study and I took a course then I took german,
they whipped out a book by Schumpeter. Well I couldn't understand what he
was saying if I was if I were reading english translation, let alone
reading him in the original german. Well I failed it of course and but boy
I came back three months later made another application. This time they
picked up they picked a german translation of john Maynard Keynes, the
very famous british economist. Well british, yeah british and american
economist you'd have to say. And I was able to I was able to translate
that and so about two weeks later I got a letter saying you have met the
proficiency requirements of the language department and then basically all
I had to do was to finish the dissertation and I was out of there and they
still refer to that at least the last I knew at michigan state they would
talk about, you could get one of two degrees at ST you could get a D. B. A
Doctor of business administration or you could get a PhD in management,
fans, accounting, what have you? Business administration and they still
refer to it as well. I got a real doctorate meaning I finished the
languages in order to get the thing I don't know of many programs that
require language anymore. Foreign business now they may and other
disciplines. But then I got a grant from the National well it was then the
the National Association of Purchasing Agents and the purchasing agents
Association of Chicago Of $3600. Which was a fair amount of money back in
1960
and it was to cover travel expenses in connection with the doctorate. The
dissertation I was writing and the dissertation was entitled purchasing
research in american business. And I was able to visit 10 major companies
, you know General Electric uh merc uh companies like that. International
harvester aO smith and I spent about a week with each company. And then I
did a fairly extensive mail questionnaire and the dissertation was
accepted in I guess in about April of 1961, we were still there and Then
the degree was ranted in June I guess of 1961. The dissertation finally
was published with revisions by the american Management Association as one
of their, it was about 80 pages printed pages as revised as part of their
research series, the american Management Association. So uh it was it
turned out to have been a very good selection of topics and the support of
the Chicago and the National purchasing agents let me do it. And quite
honestly I use that dissertation for the total of Well 28 years that I was
at ASU. Because my specialty was industrial purchasing and it was my
specialty because of the dissertation primarily. I had worked though for a
period of time as a purchase analyst for the old Ohio oil company which is
now the marathon corporation. And so and I was finally wound up in the
service as an army purchasing and contracting officer. Well you know, I
tell people I couldn't spell purchasing at that point, let alone know how
to do it. But of course with the military that didn't make a lot of
difference, I was a purchasing country when I was released from the
service. And so I had some industrial experience in purchasing. I was
going to ask you, you mentioned when you taught that first class, what was
your first paid job? Was that your first paid job job? Oh no, no. I worked
in a bakery starting at about age 12 in Seymour indiana after school and
on and on Sundays for Probably
4-5 years. And then when I was going to Indiana University, the uh I guess
I was back home three summers. Uh they employed me as a relief route
driver because the people who who drove the trucks that dropped off the
bread at the grocery store, the buns at the bars, what have you, They
would take their vacation in the summer for two or 3 weeks. So they had to
have somebody to drive the route. And so I would go with the driver for
about three days and learn the route and make meticulous records about
where you go to joe's bar and grill and then you get on such and such a
street and you go to such and such to such and such a supermarket. And so
I would drive relief in the summer For them. And the relief I guess I went
out from the bakery was in Seymour and I guess I went out as far as about
60 miles out because they served a lot of small basically agricultural
communities there. So that was really my first job and I was a dormitory
counselor at indiana University which paid my dormitory charges and my
tuition at IU so I pretty much worked all the way through you know. And
then and I was employed by the US army for and I was employed after I left
the army for a short period of time before I went back and went to
michigan state started working at 12. That's almost child labor. Yeah
probably was oh I was did a lot of my employment was on the donut kettles
where you you pushed the big tray of donuts down and then you had to with
a wooden stick you had to turn them after you know, X seconds. So you've
got both sides then you lifted them out, drain them and then you dunk them
in the in the sugar or the you know, whatever it was, whatever kind of
doughnut you were making and but then I did run the rotary oven, some in
fact, I used to have a number of scars on both arms because you had to be
very careful when you put your hand in to pull out a tray of bread and it
was always three loaves in a tray, you sure didn't want to let your arm go
down because boy, that would burn you immediately. But those scars are all
gone. All gone. All gone. It was a good experience. Good, well you know
back then, I don't think people were all that concerned about that. I
think I was as I remember I was paid 30 cents an hour, Which was okay, you
know by the way my my tuition Indiana University per semester was
something like $50 for the semester. So you know everything's relative
what made you choose Indiana University. Um I got a tuition scholarship at
Indian University, it was only about 60 miles away. I could afford to go
there, you know, and it was a reasonably good university and much better
university now than when I went there. But even back then it was a pretty
good university small like Golly I think when I went there they had about
11,000 students on the Bloomington campus. I don't know what it is now,
but it's much much much larger than that, but I felt like I had a very
good experience at the Indiana University. I still make my contribution to
the youth foundation because I think they do some good work there. Yeah,
so you went there just knowing you wanted to be in business, yep, yep. And
then decided after that teaching experience that maybe I'd give that a
shot, but I had to have a PhD in order to do that. So that's when I went
to michigan state, I never thought about being like a high school teacher.
No, no no, no, no, no, I don't know that, I don't know that I would
really have the patience to do. Maybe I would, I've never done it. So if
you've never done that, you shouldn't say you couldn't do it. But I know I
never seriously considered that at all, never tell me about going into the
army. Was that your choice or were you drafted, happened? Well, it wasn't
really my choice, but I had back then and it used to be that way at
Arizona State University, way back anybody, any mail Who enrolled at
Indiana University had to take two years of reserve Officer training corps
ROTC, whether they liked it or not, they took two years, they took a
course every semester for two years uh taught by the army and so obviously
I took that and then at the end of that they said if you'd like to take
two more years, of course is taught by the army we will commission you as
a second lieutenant in the United States Army the day before you graduate
from indiana University. And that paid, I remember that was a sweetheart
deal because they paid us
$30 a month to do that because you were paid as a private in the army I
guess was how they made the calculation. But yeah we gotta check every
month for $30 from the the U. S. Government. So that was a great deal. And
of course I didn't really understand I guess fully that along with that
was when you graduated they didn't care if you were one course shy of
getting your masters or what you got an envelope that said on this date
you will be at Fort Sheridan which was what happened. And so I went to
Fort Sheridan, my new bride and I went to Fort Sheridan and I was inducted.
And uh I was already a second, a reserve second lieutenant. But I was put
on active duty and it was a great experience. Absolutely great experience
for me. I never went to Korea. But then again the Koreans never landed in
the US either. So I protected the U. S. And uh I was at about three
different posts during that period and it was a good experience.
Absolutely. And and I was in the quartermaster corps which is the business
arm of the army. So it it worked worked very well for me and when I, when
I went back to uh are you fully thinking I was going to go there and get
my doctorate and they told me no, I was going to michigan state and I said
fine, there was a faculty member at indiana by the name of keith Davis,
very fine faculty member, world renowned human relations was his field.
And
sometime during the period I was in the service, he left indiana
University and became chairman, the first chairman Of the Management
Department, I guess it was the 1st Department at Arizona State University.
So keith was chairman of the department of Management and for some reason
keith always kept track on me during the service, I've taken a couple of
graduate courses from him, I think I took another graduate course too. But
you know, we always got a phone call from him at the holiday season and I
got a note from him every once in a while and when he found out I was
getting very close to finishing a PhD at michigan state, he said well what
are you going to do when you get your PhD? And I said well keith I even
still then called him dr Davis, I said dr Davis, I assume I will go into
the job market and I will wind up going to, he said where? And I said well
keith I assume I'll go to back to indiana University as an assistant
professor or Ohio state or Illinois or Wisconsin one of the big 10 schools
and he said well had you ever considered a place like Arizona State
University?
I said no I said I don't even know where it is. And he said well he said
we're a growing school and there's a lot of opportunity here and you
really ought to consider Arizona State and you know I uh you know valued
his advice and I said well dr Davis alright I would consider Arizona State
University. And he said fine look at the calendar, tell us when you can
come out and spend a couple of days at Arizona State University and talk
to the dean and the and by that point there were I think three department
shares at Arizona State and some of the faculty and then we'll see what
happens. So I said fine. I made a reservation, flew out, got off the
airplane And that was back in that was probably 1960. And that was the
time when there was only one terminal at Sky Harbor terminal one. And if
you got when you got off the it was either T. W. A. Or american, you got
off, you didn't go into that big ramp. You got off on a series of steps
and walked down to the tarmac and then went in and your luggage came on an
outside carousel there but when I walked off that plane about eight or
nine o'clock at night I'd left michigan and there was snow on the ground,
there was always snow on the ground in the winter and here were these big
palm trees waving and it was still probably 60 degrees or 65 degrees at
eight or nine o'clock at night. I thought, you know, this place has some
attractions. And so I talked to the people and they made me an offer right
on the spot. Really, Assistant professor of management. I was paid the
munificent sum of 50 600 for the academic year. And
so I called Dottie and I said, you know, we may have found a nice place to
spend a vacation For a year or two. And she said, well is it that? And I
said, let me tell you, it is a nice place. Said, I'm not sure I want to be
here for the long run, but it's certainly a nice place. So I said, well I
will accept the job and I will take it for two years And you have my
resignation right now because at the end of two years I'm out of here. And
they said, well let's see what happens over the next two years. As a
matter of fact, they couldn't even give me a two year contract. Everything
back then was a one year appointment. Everything had to be made, year by
year by year. And At the end of two years
I stayed and they became an associate professor At the end of my 2nd year.
And so I stayed. And at the end of my Fourth year which would have been
1965, I was promoted to full professor. And I've been there ever since I
was there for 28 years from September of 61 too. I think about June of 89
. I was part of the first, I think it was the first early retirement
program of the university. Uh What happened was some legislature got the
bright idea that we're paying elementary school teachers. $47,000
a year. Can you believe that to teach elementary school for nine months?
Why don't we get rid of all those teachers that are making those uh you
know obscene amounts of money and hire new graduates from A. S. U. Or U.
Of A. Or flag because we can hire them for $16,000 a year. So they went
into an early retirement program And the early retirement program provided
that if you were I think you had to be, you had to have at least 10 years
service uh in the school system and your age and your years of service
head total two
85
or 65 85 65. Um Well I had at that point 20 eight years of service
And I was about 50 anyway. I made it just within about three months of the
the being able to take early retirement. So basically I tell you, I left
there two months later, left a. S. U. Uh in 1961 And the end of my 28th
year because the early retirement program was quite an attractive program.
Okay, I had planned to stay till I was 65 or longer, but you know, I just
didn't have a lot of choice. I had had to go with that On that. Financial
arrangement was good. Good. 28 years. Let's go back to when you came in
1961, you described the airport really well. What was a S. U. A. S. U. Was
a very fine small college campus. I'm going to guess, I'm going to guess
the enrollment was probably in 61, 11,012,000 students and uh it was a
very compact campus. Uh they had just moved into the new football stadium
and the old stadium was right on Apache. And college because College
Avenue was still open then ran right through the middle of campus and they
just finished the new stadium. The Union building was a much smaller
building, The Memorial Union because they hadn't put the the extension or
expansion on it and there was a lot of green grass around. Unfortunately a
lot of the grass is gone now, it's all cement, but it was, it was just a
nice, nice, attractive campus. Um The faculty was very collegial back then.
The faculty wasn't large and the there was a faculty dining room or
dining area dining room over in the union building and on Sundays You
could go over there 11-2 or something and uh have lunch, have brunch and
so we used to take the boys after church and stop by there and have brunch
and you know, one week you'd sit down at a table and there'd be faculty
members from the english department or the psych department or the engine
school or what have you. And so you got to know a lot of faculty members
in different departments, okay. But much, much smaller and much more
collegial atmosphere. The president was uh, gee homer, Durham who later
became the commissioner of higher education for the state of Utah and
homer was, it was just what you would expect a college president to be at
that time because I sort of think maybe he was a scholar and I'm gonna
guess greek or one of the fairly obscure fields and he just sort of had
the demeanor of a university president and everybody knew him. Everybody
knew him and you'd see him out on campus all the time strolling around,
not all the time, but you know, you'd see him occasionally and just a very
pleasant gentleman, the management department in the college of business
and was then It was the College of Business Administration was very small
. I think I was the 6th faculty member in the department and
We were perhaps the largest department in the college. I don't remember.
Total faculty in the college probably was not a bit about 50 people and
it was just, it was a fun place to be. I enjoyed it. We used to remember
in the department, one of the fun things was right adjacent to the
football field was the baseball diamond. So we used too often in the
afternoon during the spring, two or three of us would get together and we
could just go over and watch a couple of innings of baseball and then come
back. You know, if you're grading papers or whatever, you could grade and
then go over there and have a couple innings of baseball. It was free back
then. The baseball was free and at least for faculty and students. It was
back then. I think I think the public had to pay a dollar a ticket or
something like that to get in. But it was just, that was that kind of an
atmosphere at Arizona State University. And where was the College of
Business And the manager um physically located, the College of Business
Administration was a wing off of the administration building. Um
I think maybe at one point that he was even called the Egg building. And
you could even get from the College of Business Administration to the
administration building through a secret passage that connected the two
that very very few people knew about. Ah
In fact I you you used to used to chuckle and we were there during the um
Vietnam era and there would be a lot of student um riot. Well I won't call
them riots, protests etcetera etcetera. And the president at that point
was john swatter and john didn't have a lot of sympathy with this but he
knew how to get from his office in the administration building through the
College of Business out to the parking lot and be gone. And that was his,
that was his emergency exit.
It was it was it was an interesting time, interesting, interesting time.
Had a number of uh
pretty good students as a matter of fact, many of which were quite
successful on graduation. Now we didn't have many graduate students back
then there was an M. B. A. Or maybe then it was an M. S. In in management
degree. Didn't have a doctorate. And you didn't have a lot of people in
the graduate program. They're almost all undergraduates. But a nice bunch
of students. And uh and uh some of them did very well in the job market
when they graduated. So it was it was a rewarding place to be. Tell me,
what do you remember about that Vietnam era. Mhm. Did you ever get
involved in any of the protests? No, no no no no no no College of business
by and large. Never got involved in things like that. Nor the College of
Engineering. Um Oh I I remember some of the, some of the brouhaha
concerned right out in front of the administration building. There was a
circle, I think the circle may still be there big flagpole. And they used
to run the american flag up to the top and then right below it was the
Arizona flag. There may even been an Arizona state flag that was there,
but the protesters would take the flag down. Well the university would put
the flag back up and back and forth. And uh there was one point they used
to have whole flowerbed all around the flagpole is beautiful, beautiful
flowers. Well one of their protests that students trampled all the flowers.
The president got shot, I was very unhappy with that. So he made this
student, it would have been student association reimbursed the university
for the cost of replanting all the flowers etcetera etcetera. And
interesting times, interesting times. But he pretty much stayed out of it.
Yeah, I wasn't, I was not, I was really involved in my teaching and
trying to do things professionally. Writing speaking et cetera and I
really didn't have time to and as a matter of fact I really
I didn't have time to even go to too many of the athletic events so I
school the football games and the basketball games and an occasional
baseball game. I didn't go to into the minor sports at all and dr Davis
keith. Davis keith was chairman for about three years after I joined and
then he was replaced by joe shea backer whom we had hired from University
of Wisconsin and then I replaced joe as chairman and I think I became
chairman. I was in my sixth year, I became chairman of the department, I
was chairman for 16 years of the management department and we went from
six full time faculty when I joined the department I think it was 19 or 20
full time faculty when I left the chairmanship of the department. And so
the department has pretty good growth because you know the student
enrollment just kept going up up up almost every year. That was pretty
quick advancement for you to go from being an assistant professor to
chairman of the Department six years and for professor in four years. Yeah
well and obviously that was one of the reasons that I stayed here because
I talked to the people at U. C. L. A. And Ohio State about leaving a state
and going there. But of course one of the real questions was uh could they
justify hiring you as a full professor at Ohio State University or U. C. L.
A. They might not have been able to anyway I didn't go I didn't I talked
to them interviewed them with them but decided no and our kids were in uh
our kids were in elementary school. Uh at that point rick and scott and uh
it just didn't seem appropriate to take them out of school. And then of
course in later years they were in McKamey Intermediate school and we
don't take them out of that. And then they were a temper union high school.
And hey, it didn't seem right to change high schools until they graduated.
So we basically made way back a decision. We're going to stay here till I
get out of high school. And although The older son is now 50 and so he got
out of high school 30 plus years ago and we're still here. How's that?
Yeah, they know. No, they both went all the way through public school in
in Tempe airs on the kindergarten through Tampa Union High School had a
great experience to there.
How was the management field changing over the years since you started in
it? Uh, it is when I started in it, uh, teaching and as a student, it was
much more, I would use the term pragmatic than it is today. Um, it was
very work oriented, very industry oriented, very concerned with, well, how
does a manager, what does the manager do to be successful? Okay. At some
point and I can't really tell you when that was whether it was 1971 or
1979.
The feeling became, well, you know, for us to have real academic
respectability,
we have to begin doing some esoteric research. Okay. And we have to have
some fairly complex statistical models, etcetera etcetera. And so it
certainly has changed in the sense that they're they're less work oriented
and more academic oriented than they were 40 years ago. Okay. And
it's sort of interesting. Not all schools have followed that approach. For
example, Harvard University there college. Well it's not uh college events
, the B school we are, we always call them the B school, they are still
very industry oriented. Uh They still hire people as full time faculty
members who don't have a doctorate, some of whom don't even have a
master's degree, but they had been president and chairman of three M or
ford or General Electric. And they're saying, you know, those are the kind
of people that ought to be in the classroom. Uh Whereas I don't think that
kind of an individual would ever be hired at Arizona state now because
they don't have the credentials, which in my view doesn't make a whole lot
of sense, but nevertheless, that's the way it's changed, you know.
Mhm. What do you remember most of the specific incidents about your career
in the issue
currently? Oh,
you know, the the only, I don't remember any specific incidents, Oh, one
thing you think back was was sort of fun. The big quad or the big grassy
area between the old college of Business administration building and the,
you know, if it was the geology building, I think maybe, I don't know,
that wasn't what it was called was a huge grassy area and that's where
they basically filmed a lot of the, a lot of the, I guess it would not be
the real story items but sort of the background of the movie, the nutty
professor that starred jerry Lewis and so you'd look out there and there
are these camera crews out there and trucks and lights and etcetera
etcetera. And always a big group of students standing around watching and
every once in a while, jerry Lewis, I've really never met him, but you'd
be teaching a class and he'd pop in the classroom just walk in and say
hello to the students and the professor and joker too and gone. And that
was sort of sort of an interesting experience. Remember he did that in a
faculty meeting in the college of business. He popped in for two or three
minutes sort of unannounced and just crazy. And I've, I've, I've seen the
movie, The movie is sort of an interesting movie and a lot of, it's the a
state background shots and um, I guess when you say incidents,
early incidents, that was, it was probably what I would remember that kind
of thing. Oh, I guess you sort of talked about it, but at what point you
said you came here thinking you were only gonna stay two years. At what
point did you decide that you were going to stay longer? Oh, I suppose uh
, at about the end of the fourth or fifth year, we decided we were going
to stay here permanently. And
it was, was, you know, in retrospect, a very good decision. Very good
decision. Um, Was it a good decision to a state as chairman of the
Management Department for 16 years? I don't know that that was all that
good a decision. But I was, I was involved in building something and he
was pretty rewarding too to, to do the hiring and see the young faculty
developed, many of which left of course. And you know, one of them is now
the dean at Kent State University. One of them is the dean at, oh, the
university in Atlanta Georgia. I can't even think of the name of it, tim
Meskin was the name number the faculty went on and had pretty successful
careers. And one of them is a named professor at University of florida. Uh
, No, no University of Miami. And so, you know, the faculty that we hired
, we hired very good people. Always young people and young people don't
tend to stay all that long. And uh, but you know, my argument was, hey, if
they stay for four years or five years, they'll make a real contribution
to the program. And we'll say thank you very much, we appreciate you being
here. And if you've decided you have to go to Pepperdine godspeed and a
lot of them did.
And you mentioned some of your students that you remember some of them go
into business and have notable careers there. Oh yeah, I had, one of my
students became, well, he was the head of the
uh program in phoenix. The uh, it was then Sperry flight systems program
out on the Black Canyon highway and he left that and became
became president of Sperry in Minneapolis. Okay, so he did very, very well
now retired of course. And a couple of the guys became, went into the
service and became one of them became a major general in the army and won
a major general in the air force. So they had a pretty interesting career.
One of the fellas, one of the few american indian students that we had,
we didn't have a lot of american indian students, you might think we would
have, but we didn't became the business manager. Well, he went to work for
Douglas aircraft for well, quite a few years in purchasing materials and
pretty successful. Then he became business manager of the um, out east of
here. The Apache, uh, um, nation. And he became businessman still is to my
knowledge business manager. I still get calls occasionally at home from
somebody who says professor, I'm gonna be in town uh, next week on Tuesday
, is there any chance you would be free for lunch. And I always say, you
know, I'll make myself free for lunch if I'm in town. Let's have lunch.
It's always fun to talk to them and find out what they've done. And of
course many of them of course are now retired or retiring Because you know
, I left there in 89 and that was what, 15, 16 years ago, 17 years ago.
And so a lot of the lot of those students have gone to work, spent 25, 30
years with the company and they're retiring where most of the students,
young students right out of high school. Yes, Yes. Almost all, almost, I
won't say all, but almost all were part had part time jobs. Uh, they were
a very serious students. In fact, I remembered I made a great push when my
, when I was chairman of the management department. Oh and by the way I
started another department called the department of purchasing
transportation operations, PTO department, I was its chairman for I guess
about four years and I always made the argument with the faculty. You know
, if the students who get out of here do not have to find jobs long term,
we don't have jobs because if the people will graduate aren't being hired
, employers are going to quit coming. The Arizona State University and
then they'll need a lot fewer faculty. But I remember being told by the
head recruiter of Raytheon, they used to come down here twice a year,
always hired three or four students twice a year, once for the people who
graduated in december and then the people who graduated in May and it
always took him back to, I think it was a one year training program back
in massachusetts where Raytheon's headquartered. And I remember there
chief, well, chief recruiter is the vice president of purchasing and
Raytheon because these people are all being hired into the purchasing
program said one of the reasons we like to come to Arizona State
University, the students already know how to work. They've had some
experience. They've been in the job market. It may, they may have had a
job flipping hamburgers somewhere. But so be it, they know you've got to
be there on time and you have to do your job etcetera etcetera. So that
was very impressive to a lot of these employers? And we placed a lot of
students with the Raytheon's, the General electric's, the ibMS, the
boeings, uh, three M The oil companies, big recruiters mobil Exxon Chevron
always, we're recruiting here. In fact we in the management department and
then later on in the PTO department, we used to make it a point to know
which companies were recruiting which days and then one of the faculty
members would make it a point to go over to career services and have lunch
with the recruiter and ask the recruiter, is there anything any comments
you'd like to make about the students that you've talked to or about what
you understand the program to be any changes you would suggest the faculty
ought to make in the academic program. So we tried to keep very close to
the job market and I still think that's a very, very smart thing to do. I
would think that would attract more students to. Oh, yes. Well the, the
sure, the College of Business grew very rapidly and largely because they
were able to place a lot of students and in very good jobs in some
instances, in fact the area that was always the highest paid starting
salary was the accounting field. But the purchasing grads overtook them
and they were for a period of time, the highest paid, uh, new hires out of
the college, whether they still are not, I don't know. But yeah, and that
, that of course, word of word gets out pretty quickly among the students.
You know, hey, a major in such and such boy, the recruiters are really
interested in talking to to you. Yeah, it worked. You said you started a
new department department of purchasing transportation operations, which
taught the courses in purchasing materials, traffic, transportation and
production. Why did you start that? Oh, we made it for a couple of reasons.
We knew that having a separate department would allow us to attract
better faculty members and that's those specific disciplines. Okay.
Secondly, we knew that it would let us attract more and better recruiting
companies, the campus And it was a small department, I think when we
started it had something like 11 faculty in it. It wasn't a huge
department. I don't know what they have now it's much larger but he was a
relatively small department and I was its chairman until I was its
chairman until I left one year before I got the early buyout retirement.
So I left in 88 as chairman of the department because I was convinced that
I could start a research institute which we did called the Center for
Advanced purchasing Studies which was the first tenant in the new A. S. U.
Research Park down on Elliot. And I was the director of the Center for
Advanced Purchase Studies for Its 1st 10 years. And I left that part of
the issue. It's interesting was it part of a issue or not? I was not an A
. S. U. Employee because I was a retiree. So I was a contract employee,
two caps. E they couldn't pay me through a issue because I was retired and
taking a pension so they had to pay me as an independent contractor. But
everyone who is on the payroll except me was an ASU employee. Okay. But
the agreement we made with the university was we would not request any
funding from A. S. U. We would pay all of the employees out of money we
raised. We would not need any physical space because we were going to rent
space down at the research park which we would pay for. So the interesting
thing is the university get all upset in the, in the years in the 90s
because they'd get into budget crunches and they'd go out to all the
departments and say you've got to give us what they call it, revert mint
or something meaning you have to give us back 5% of your budget. So they
used to always come to me and say, well, you know, and I'd say, well, wait
a minute guys, let's look very carefully. I'll be happy to give you back
5% because you haven't given us anything. So there's no money to give back.
So they never bothered us a bit because we, we were never a budget item
of the university still operates that same way. It is a joint project of
the National Association of Purchasing Management whose national
headquarters are down at the park and the college. Well now we call it the
hmm, what do we call the college now? Uh,
well, who is the gentleman who gave us The $50 million? Yeah, now it's the
Carey school. So it's a joint project of the Kerry school and ah, the
National Association of purchasing Manager still operates in the very same
way. And by the way, let me suggest one of the reasons that I set it up
that way was I wanted to be able to raise money from individuals and
companies that would let us pay faculty pay researchers, pay
administrators administrative assistants, secretaries, data processors,
etcetera, etcetera and pay the rent on the physical quarters we occupied.
And I knew that the only way you were going to be able to raise that kind
of money and we said it's gonna take at least a million million and a half
dollars a year Being raised is you're going to have to convince companies
that if they will give you a check for $50,000, the research that will be
done will be useful to industry. Now, that means you can't have a faculty
committee telling you, oh, does it meet the particular statistical tests?
They don't care, they want to know, will it let us be more efficient? And
it seems to have worked. I left that in 99 I left that in uh 1999
99, Yep, Yep. So I left there after, after 10 years.
This is tape too. I told you I can talk, I'm a people, I used to, people
used to ask me, what do you do? And I say, well I'm a professor or was the
professor, do they profess?
Mhm. Yes,
one more question about the center for advanced purchasing Studies caps?
Oh, the purpose was to improve the performance of purchasing by US
companies. It was to do research that would help us companies improve the
way they spent the purchasing money And uh it seems to have worked seems
to what we put out about five, a major research studies a year. We do
about 10 benchmarking studies a year. They have an annual purchasing
roundtable up at the formation or the Biltmore where they bring the head
of purchasing of major, about 80 major us and and quite honestly there's
some international companies in there now people come from England and
Germany and the like to attend the roundtable so it's it's been an and
they do a lot of, most of the research is done by faculty members. Uh the
majority of the majority, the largest number of studies done bye faculty
at any university are studies done by faculty at Arizona State University.
But caps pays them to do the studies caps literally pays them over and
above their faculty salary to do the studies but they have faculty from
michigan state U C L A. Harvard all over that do the studies and it's all
entirely funded by corporate, corporate and individual funding. Um As a
matter of fact they, even in order to assure its continuity. See I was
always afraid that when I left there, if if it went to a department in the
college
depending on who was running it, they might decide we want to do only
research which is academically respectable. Okay. And if that's the case
it's going to dry up your funding because General Electric doesn't give a
darn about whether it's academically respectable. They are concerned about
, does it give us information that will let us more efficiently and
effectively run this company. Okay. So I said well how do we accomplish
that? So Cap set out to establish an endowed chair
for the director of caps so that that money was secured. There was no
question. Well there is a question depending on the interest rates. But
anyway, we were able to raise $2 million dollars by basically corporate
contributions and some individuals and they established the Harold Lee
Furin chair in purchasing which is designated to be occupied by the person
who runs the center for Advanced purchasing studies. Now, will that do the
job? Not really, because if the interest rates drop 22% Even though you
have $2 million, your interest only throws off about $40,000 a year. Well
that's not going to do The job. If the interest is 10, if if you can get
10,010%
interest then it's gonna throw off $200,000. Okay. And the money is
actually invested by the ASU. Foundation. The money's actually was put on
deposit with the Foundation, but and they hired a superb individual from
michigan State University uh Phil carter to become the new executive
director of caps. And and he's been in that job since 99 I guess and done
a fantastic job. His, The ability to raise money is evidently better in
mind because they raised more per year than I used to raise when I was
director of camps. But of course you can say it's now 15, 20 years old or
maybe 25 years old now? And uh, We are 20 years old. And so it's got a
track record, which is very helpful. That sounds like a big part of your
job. There was raising money, Oh, I was on an airplane once a week, going
somewhere with my hand out or had out trying to get money. And I remember
I enlisted the help of some industry people as a retired gentleman up in
Scottsdale who was vice president, Quaker, oats and vice president of
the Railroad, not Southern Union pacific Union, pacific. And then he
retired and I convinced him he should go with me on the road to talk to
head the purchasing of companies. Remember we Bill and I were a company in
Pittsburgh goes back 15 years ago and we were putting a, the verbal uh,
pinch on this guy too. You know, you ought to be a supporter of caps and
you're using the research, why aren't you? And you know, finally, he said
, guys, wait a minute. He said, I have one question. And we said, what's
that? And he said, how much do I have to give you for you to just get the
hell out of my office? And we said, well, Let's start with $10,000. He
said, it will be in the mail in a week. And it was, and we left, we left
immediately And he still gives the company still gives $10,000 a year. Oh
well they don't come close to him. You know, he said, I, what do I have to
get you the hell out of my office?
And as partly as a result of that michigan State University and my, my old
professor up there, john Hoagland retired and he really needed to be
remembered. So I, One of his ex students came to the university and said,
we'd like to give, I'd like to give you 300,000 a check for $300,000. And
have you established the john Hoagland Scholarship fund and how I got
involved in it? I don't know. But anyway, the Dean there and I were
talking and I said, you know, That's not enough. I said you ought to take
that $300,000 and piggyback that into enough to endow fully endow a chair
for Professor Hogan. Of course he's retired. Um, even before, Well, you
know, after I did, but he's still been retired for 15 years. And the Dean
said, you know, that's an interesting idea. They said, who will head up
the fundraising drive? And I said, well, I said, get one of your real
interested alums and bob Duncan said, well, hal you're an alum of michigan
state. I said, okay, So I headed up the drive and we did raise $2 million
dollars and I'm having lunch today with Dean Duncan up in Scottsdale. So
we still keep in touch. Thank you. You mentioned, you know the kind of
research you were doing was things that will help industry. Do you think
of an example of a particular research project? Well, I started a Arizona
business conditions study where we surveyed uh purchasing managers around
the state every month and then put out a really a press release, a news
release, whatever that attempted to say what's happened to the economy in
Arizona for in the last month and make some projections about what does
that say about the economy down the road. And I uh I ran that project as
an S. U. Faculty member for
Golly. I ran it for about 25 years every month and it is still run, but
now it's run by the center for Business Research in the Kerry school
because I'm not I'm not involved in it anymore at all. And uh Professor
Knox of the economics faculty and I did for I think it was about three
years. We did a half hour Television show once a month on Channel eight. I
know what they called it. They probably called it the the economic outlook
, but it was always referred to as the bob and house show. And it was a
lot of fun. Absolute. A lot of fun to be in front of the camera for 30
minutes and go back and forth about. Well, so what is what are the
employment figures really mean? And you know, why do we think prices are
going to stabilize and etcetera and I still am very interested in that.
But in all honesty once I went to caps I just really didn't have time to
do that anymore. So that's when I turned it over to the Kerry school and
said you people have to do it. They are, they're doing it. And what years
was the tv show on? I couldn't even tell you. Absolutes couldn't I don't
have any any recollection of what it was. Well it had it had been in the
90s, Teen early 80s. Probably Glenn Wilt was the moderator. I think Glenn
is still on the faculty at A. S. U. And bob Knox was chairman of the
economics department, I was chairman of the management department. And
then we used to do an annual january 1st, second big big forecast meeting
down town. Typically at the Del Webb townhouse, we used to get 1200 1300
people attending the luncheon forecast and it was fun. It really was fun.
No, no, no. I'm sure there must be copies somewhere but I sure don't have
any of them. I, you know that that's something that's way in the past as
far as I'm concerned
talking about the caps and that the research part. How is that related to
the Institute for Supply Management? Well, um
Oh yeah but there's the national arts was Arizona uh it's sort of a long
story, but make it very short. Um When I started caps I said this has to
be self funding
and they said yeah that's a great idea. And I said, well let's think about
self funding. Should the National Association of Purchasing Management be
one of the people who helps fund it? It won't be the university. And they
said, yeah, interesting idea. We will consider providing some funding for
a center for Advanced purchasing Studies. And as a matter of fact they
provided the money to pay the rent down at the park for the first year or
two years. I don't know how what period of time was. And so they would
come out to Tempe occasionally to visit. They said this is a fascinating
area. So I finally convinced him to have one of their three national board
of Directors meetings out in Tempe in the winter. You know, they came out
my gosh, did they love it out here? So we finally convinced them to move
out of new york city and move down to the A. S. U. Research Park. They
were the first building built. Now I want the first building built, they
were the first building built and occupied. The university had built
buildings but they were empty. Our building was built by a architect and A
PM hired or the now it's called the instant Supply Management. Then it was
the National association purchasing management. They hired the architect,
they paid for the building, etcetera, etcetera. And one of the agreements
was they would give caps, free space in the building. Okay, so that's the
tie in between the center for Advanced purchasing Studies and caps. So
it's a joint project between into supply management and the Kerry school.
Now,
one other thing I didn't ask you about, I noticed on your resume that you
served on several appointments from the Governor's, I
was approached to make a, Oh gosh, this goes back probably to 1960
three or 64. It was soon after I got here. They
Arizona was the only state in the union that did not have centralized
procurement. Every agency did their own thing. And I became aware of that
because of my membership in the purchasing Management Association of
Arizona. And so the association went to the Governor's office and said,
you know, this is ridiculous that we're the only one of the at that point
was that 48 states or I don't know where Alaska and Hawaii were at the end
, but he said we should consider that. So he asked the association ah, to
basically do a study of this and he appointed me as the chairman of the
study group. We did the study, believe it or not. And then we went to the
legislature and introduced and they introduced the bill, which failed. So
we were determined, we went back the following year and introduced another
bill it passed. And so the state of Arizona now has a central purchasing
department that does not do all the purchasing for the state for example
Arizona State University still has its own purchasing department but it
does all the purchasing for the agencies which are not large enough to
really be able to afford a really first class purchasing operation the
governor at that time. Ah
well
I can't really even tell you who the guy it was had to be before Bruce
babbitt. I don't know who the governor was even then.
Well Wesley was not there that long. He was his Raul. Castro Castro was
role as a matter of fact I was down making some speeches in Argentina
during the time that role was was the ambassador. So I called the embassy
and I said Professor Karen from Arizona State University. I realized that
that the honorable, whatever we called him uh ambassador is is very busy
but I just thought I would let you know I'm in town for the next two or
three days should he want to talk to me. And sure enough I got a call that
evening from the embassy and said well we will have and Basically an
armoured car at your hotel the next afternoon at 3:00 and the ambassador
would like to talk to you. So I was there and it, I won't say it was an
armored car but it was a big black car with marine protection and took me
over to the embassy which was really a fortress. And I went in and spent
about an hour with Castro and because we had a lot of, we knew a lot of
people in common and he was interesting. Well he's still, I don't know if
he still practices law. He did until recently practiced law and up in
Scottsdale he may still be practicing law. Oh is he down in Nogales now?
Okay. I have not talked to him in in years, Bruce babbitt then appointed
me, oh and I don't know how many years ago this was to be the one of the
members of the state of Arizona
public
A. S. P. R. S. Arizona state
public safety retirement fund and it handles the retirement for the
highway patrol, basically all of the police departments, the fire
departments, the prisons, the judges etcetera etcetera. And he appointed
me to that group of three that run the investment fund. And then at the
end of the term of the person who was the fund manager, I. E. The chairman
of the, he appointed me as the fund manager or the chairman of the group
and I ran it for I guess three years. And we too, I tell people, well they
said how did you do? And I said well you know, hey when I became the fund
, pardon me fund manager we had a portfolio of about $500 million. When I
left three years later we had a portfolio of over a billion dollars and
they said, oh you did a great job. And my answer was, yeah, but let me
tell you, I'd rather be lucky than smart any time the market did us great
favors and we were very, very lucky and when I left the fund it was in
very good shape. It's still in very good shape, still in very good shape,
interesting, interesting. It was pro bono non paid, I didn't even get any
expenses but it was interesting, interesting experience. It's one of the
things that got me really up to speed in the investment business Because
you know, we were running a $500 million dollars portfolio. You had to be
up to speed to do that. And I it was a great experience, absolutely great
experience. Um but you know, after I had been there for about six years,
it was enough. You know, you can only do any one thing for so long, you
were doing all those things while you were still chair of the department
to So that must have been. Yeah. And then one summer, huh? They had a
problem at there's a state hospital, very serious problem. And
the then governor and I don't remember again who it was leaned on john
Travolta and
they convinced me I should go down there as the materials manager of the
state hospital, which I did for three months. I think we got it
straightened out. There was no way in the world I was gonna stay there,
you know, that was fine. Three months is great. But I was going back as a
faculty member then in september, which I did, which I've had a lot, had a
lot of opportunities here, which I just would not have had if I had gone
to Ohio State or indiana as a faculty member because they had a whole
complement of very experienced people there already. This was a small
place, It was growing, you could accomplish something and see the results
of it. Great experience for me. Did you ever think it would grow to the
extent that it has today when you came here in 1961, absolutely not. And
uh, we're not that close to the university anymore. Probably don't get on
campus once a year, twice a year. Um, and you know, as with a lot of the
retired faculty, we say, you know what, this was a nicer place 35 or 40
years ago, you didn't have the traffic, you had a lot of green space. Uh,
but I also tell people the university is a far better university than it
was in 1961 when we came here. It really was, faculty is better. The
program is better. Their ability to do things is much greater than it used
to be. But by the way, you can say the same thing when I graduated from
Michigan State University in 1961. Was it a good university? Yes. Was it a
great university. No, but it may be approaching greatness now. And uh, you
know, you have to have maturity, seasoning, etcetera etcetera. Which I
think is what Arizona State University has gotten Over the last 40 years.
Some departments and people we've talked to struggled with budgets and
things as department heads. Yeah.
We always had struggles. And you, you talked talked about an interesting
incident. I submitted my budget request one year
and we had an increase in students but not a huge one. And my budget
request was for slightly less money than I'd had the previous year. Well,
let me tell you, I was called on the carpet immediately and told you do
not submit a budget request for less than you currently have. You just
don't do that. And I said, well, we've made some, we don't want to hear
that. We want to know what kind of an increase are you going to request? I
thought that was a classic example of bureaucracy.
Mm hmm. I had a question from professor,
you seem to have been a professor at the beginning or maybe before the
computer. Can you just a little bit of how the computer changed all, all
that? Well, yeah, when I joined. Well, hey, when I did my dissertation at
Michigan state, it was done on the computer. Yeah, on the computer. Was
done with IBM punch cards. And let me tell you it was a it was a nightmare
when I got to A S. U. I'm not even sure the university had a computer.
Certainly there were no computers in the departments or anything. And It
as I remember it, I left in 89. The computer sort of arrived in about 1980
I'm gonna guess was when it arrived. And let me tell you it sorely sorely
needed and you know, we fumbled the ball many times in getting it to
really work for us. But finally it got to where it produced useful
information that you could make some decisions based on. And let me
suggest caps could not operate without their computer systems because
50% of what they do is computer based now. You know the benchmarking is
all computerized. When I started those studies Back in 1990 they were
pretty much done with a hand calculator and a ballpoint pen. Well gee who
is that was not very efficient at all now it's all data entered into the
computer and uh you know the calculations are all made. So it's had an
amazing effect on the university and
all parts of the university And certainly I would think oh yes absolutely.
Absolutely. Looking back over your career with a S. You, is there
anything that you can think of that you're proudest of? Well yeah I guess
the the one, well two things I would,
three things I guess I would list first would be. I'm very proud of the
success that some of my students have had once they left the university.
You know, they got a very good treatment here at A S. U. And they made the
most of it and you have to be proud of those kinds of things. Secondly, I
started the first academic journal, I guess maybe the first one ever to be
at A. S. U. It was certainly the first one ever to be in the College of
Business and was the first one ever in the purchasing materials field. The
Journal of purchasing and materials management was started at A. S. U.
1965. I was its editor for 10 years and then it moved to new york city is
still in operation, still being published. I'm very proud of that and the
fact that you know, 40 years later it's still going. And then the last
thing that I am certainly proud of is the success that caps has had in
terms of being the the preeminent research organization in the world, in
the purchasing materials field. And uh and I'm very happy it is at A. S. U.
And it will always be at A. S. U.
I have assured that that's correct.
Okay, what kind of advice do you give to young people today that might be
just trying to decide what they want to do with their life and their, well
my advice is usually pretty simple. I have always been in the business
field, I've been, you know, greatly successful in the business field. I've
enjoyed it really. I, one thing I didn't mention, one of the things I did
was it while I was at A S. U. Or after I started getting, I was one of the
six people who started the real slow to bank in Tempe and it's now the
National Bank of Arizona down on southern, that big tall building down
there. Um, I've always been been blessed with success in the field. So I
would suggest that you might want to consider, but what you really have to
do is what you want to do. And if you tell me that I'm just convinced I
could be a concert violinist, I would say go for it. But let me tell you
this young man or young lady, I want you to become the best if you're
gonna do it, I want you to be the best. But if you want to write the great
american novel and they're convinced you can do it. Have at it. Okay. And
You know, so I would say do what you are comfortable doing and it's not
necessarily business or engineering or medicine, it may be any one of 300
different things. I gave that same advice to my kids, my boys, they both
picked the business field, but I guarantee you, I did not in any way
encourage that, except I'm sure a lot of it rubbed off because you know,
they heard the discussions at the dinner table all the time and so that's
what they elected to do. Oh my my goodness. One of them is Executive Vice
President, Chief Financial Officer of a company that employs about 60,000
people and has revenues of about I think there are 13 billion a year now
all over the world. He loves it, absolutely loves it. And the other son is
a man, is president and owner of his own investment fund in California. He
runs about $270 million dollars a year in investment money and he loves it
, absolutely loves it. But I guarantee you they are not doing that because
I told them that's what they should do, they're doing it because they
decided hey it might be fun and they, I've talked to both of them and I
said now did you make the right career choices? And they both said we love
it, Absolutely love what we're doing. So that's my advice very simply do
what you want to do. When you started off in your answer, you mentioned
starting the rio salado bank, was that something that you just wanted to
do or No
long story, but I'll make this very short. I've always had my hair cut at
raise a S. U. Barbershop Ray Bowles, everybody in Tempe knows Ray Ray
Bowles, he's the world's oldest and richest barber. I was down there
having my hair cut and I had just come from home. I was on my way to the
office but had gone home for lunch. I've always lived very close to campus
so I can go home for lunch. And and I I stopped at the barbershop parked
in the College of Business parking lot, walked over to the raise a issue
barber shop in the Temple center having my hair cut. And I was saying you
know Dottie was at her bank, our bank where we bank for 20 some years and
she was to cash a check and they asked her for two items of identification.
I said Ray there's something wrong. Ray said hal why don't we start
attempted bank? That's where it all started. We and he was one of the
founders to and and that was sort of how how that got started. We don't
own it anymore. It was bought out by actually by Zions Bank or out of
Saarland. Salt Lake City. So they go under the name first National Bank of
Arizona. There really wholly owned by Zions bank or a Salt Lake City. It
was a great idea. The bank was very successful. I was sorry to see it sold
because Tempe now no longer has its own community bank but the price that
the shareholders were was were offered was such that you had to sell. You
absolutely had to sell it. Which we did. You did okay with it. Oh my
goodness. I won't. Yes. It's going to pay for a good part of my
grandchildren's college education. Yes. How do you start to think very
carefully? Uh, you first go down and get to know the state Banking
commissioner and find out what hoops you have to jump through and then you
have to have an economic study to prove that the community, the local
economy really does need it and etcetera etcetera. And then you've got to
raise the money to make sure that if the bank goes defunct, there's some
money there to pay the, the depositors and and away you go. It probably
took us two years to get us started. Yeah, it was, it was fun though. It
was great fun. Great learning experience. Absolutely. A great learning
because I was chairman of the board and chairman of the holding company
board for a period of time that was on the board the whole time. And great.
Really was a great learning. If you, if you talk about interesting
experiences and I won't give them to you. But boy, we had some interesting
experiences like the time we naively took as collateral a racehorse. Was
that a bad decision? And then another time we very naively took a persons
airplane is collateral whether blooming airplane flew out of the state.
What a mess. But we learned we learned we survived.
Mm hmm
any more interesting experiences. Well, I can tell you several with the
bank. Like we had a person on why I was the only player we paid him by the
job and his job was to hotwire cars as needed. Because occasionally a
person would would take his collateral some, I probably shouldn't say this
attorneys Mercedes and the loan would go defunct. Well, we would find out
what the guy's schedule was when he was down attending a meeting in Tucson.
Our guy would go down there and hotwire the car and drive it back and put
it in our garage and he repossessed it for us. But we literally had a lot
of instances where we had to do those kinds of things. You know, and I
don't know if it's totally legal, but we did it. We got the car. How's
that? I guess you gotta get that collateral. That's right. That's right.
We never did get the airplane back. It's gone. We didn't know where it
went.
Anything else that you wanted to talk about? You know, I think that's
probably pretty well covers it was, it was a great ride. I enjoyed every
minute of it and I do it all over again. But I'm also glad that it's
behind me and not in front of me. How do you want to be remembered here?
Oh, at a. S. U. Or in the community. Well, I want to be remembered as an
honest business person who had the community's interests at heart and the
university's interests at heart. That's the way I want to be remembered.
Jr bobby. You have any questions you wanted to ask? You know I can't think
of any. The only thing you didn't mention that. I was hoping you would. Uh
oh when I joined the College of Business uh Dino vermin Glenn Overman was
the dean and he served as dean for gosh 25 years maybe. And then he was
replaced by uh Lonnie Bill rife as acting dean. And then Bill Seidman
became dean for about three years and then john craft became Dean and then
Larry Penley and now the current dean.
And I learned from all of those people.
Ah I also learned that in no way did I want to spend my time being deemed
and why is that? Oh a lot of reasons you can accomplish. I could never
have accomplished what I accomplished as being deemed. I could certainly
never make the money that I made as Dean.
I don't think I'd have had the satisfaction either. I mean it it's it's a
very confining kind of existence. Oh yeah yeah and I just you know I'd
rather be on an airplane going somewhere.
He was our next door neighbor for for about 15 years on Fairmont. Yeah.
Yeah. We still live there. We built the house our house in 65 66 we're
still in the same house and he bought the house next to us in about 70 and
lived there till the Passed on, which was about 95,
I'm going to guess. Just just a wild guess. Yeah, yeah. And, and by the
way, I thoroughly enjoyed all the presidents of the university. To gee
homer, Durham was a, he was a real gentleman. Absolutely. Uh, he left here
and went to Utah as commissioner of higher education and every time I'd be
up in Utah and I did this two or three times I'd have lunch with me homer
and he was just fun guy to talk with. And john Suada was a tough president
who, I think he did a superb job. Of course, it was a little bit of a
problem with the athletic program uh, during his and, and it, it, it
absolutely wasn't john's problem, but let me tell you when things go wrong
, the buck has to stop at the top and it did and it did. And he then had a
pretty successful career building houses after that. And we knew john very
well, still know his wife very well, Wilma, she's, she's a very good
friend of ours and who was the president of the atlantic. Sure, because
Russ, J russell nelson. Oh yeah, Russ was one of the investors in the bank
and he did very well. He always reminds me, he said, where can you point
me to another investment hal that did as well as that. And I'm saying Russ
, you're going to be in line after after me if we can find another one.
And then I guess it was laddie lady whom I really never knew because I had
pretty much left
the president of the university. Very, very low key, very non directional
,
nice guy. He's a professor of finance at University of Minnesota as I
remember way back and
you know, uh, of all of the people as president, there's, there's no
question. The person who really fit the mold was gee homer, Durham. He
really did fit the mold that I had of a university president. Uh, he
certainly has not been, was not nearly as successful in the fundraising
arena as the current president and as, uh, as laddie cour, but that didn't
used to be as much as the job. Oh, no, that's right. It wasn't the job of
the president was not fundraising. The funds were supposed to come from
the legislature and the tuition and
we did that change. Hmm, interesting, interesting question. And I don't
know if you, hey, I'm sure there are several books have been written on
that, but I don't really know, I don't know when it changed and I don't
know why jane, it's, it's always been the case at, it's always been the
case at most of the premier universities. I'm talking about the Yale's the
darkness, the Harvard's the Stanfords. It's always been the job of the
president to raise money because they had to have money to really higher
distinguished faculty members? Oh, they're all private. Ah And people
don't like to hear me say this. But
most of the really distinguished universities in this country are private
and probably always will be, probably always will be private. Uh, and you
may be able to gain on them and I think Arizona State University has
gained on them. No question, will you be ever able ever to equal them? The
answers. I doubt it. Just look at their endowments. I mean it's mind
boggling when you look at the endowments of Harvard, Yale stanford. My
gosh gee. And let me tell you, they know how to raise money. They, we have
our Children went to Harvard stanford Northwestern and let me tell you,
why are their fundraisers all over us all the time? I mean, they, you know
, it made our kids may have been there 25 years ago. It doesn't make a bit
of difference. They're after us all the time. Oh, there. After the parents.
Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh, there after the kids to in fact, our younger sons
endowed a chair at stanford, The fund manager one and they're after him
all the time. As you might imagine. Yeah. So one of the change, I don't
know, there's gotta be a book, probably going to amazon and type in uh,
when did? And they'll probably come up with six titles. Right,
okay. Did we do it? Okay. I'm gonna get to my luncheon with michigan state
then. Hey, enjoy chatting with you. It's always nice to reminisce and to
do it in a non threatening environment because I know nobody's ever gonna
see this.