Perry

                       

I had just returned home after undergoing four interviews with members of the law department of a financial services corporation in Minneapolis, when the phone rang and they asked me if I would be willing to come back for another interview the next day.  I was wondering what more there was to say, but I needed a job, so I agreed to come at 10:00am the next morning to interview with a Vice President and Assistant General Counsel.

It was early 1984 and I was trying to break into the white-collar world.  I had determined that my future as a railroad trackman was limited and in the summer of 1983 I had completed a paralegal certificate program at Roosevelt University in Chicago.  Since then, I had been working temporary jobs and trying to land my first real job in the legal field.

So the next day, I put on the second of the two suits I owned, the second of the three ties in my collection, and my last clean dress shirt and headed back downtown.  When I arrived, the HR manager I had been dealing with asked me if anyone had talked to me about Perry.  I said no and was told he could be a bit gruff.  Being duly warned, I joined the manager as we rode the elevator to the law department.  We were met there by the Deputy General Counsel of the company, who took me aside and asked me if anyone had talked to me about Perry.  I remember thinking that after working on the railroad, “gruff” was not going to be a problem.

When I entered Perry’s office he was sitting with his back to me with his legs propped up on the credenza behind his desk.  I noticed about six inches of very white, hairless leg was showing and he was reading something while smoking a cigarette.  Another cigarette was burning in the ashtray on his desk.  As he slowly turned around I saw a large bald head that vaguely looked like a bald eagle peering at me over a pair of glasses propped on the end of his nose.  His shirtsleeves were rolled up and each forearm was decorated with sailing ship tattoos (this was long before every teenage girl got tattoos).

After looking me up and down, he said, “I like your shirt.”  I wasn’t sure how to interpret that opening, so I just thanked him.  As he looked over my resume, he started asking me about the railroad.  Where had I worked?  What were my duties?  Had I ever worked as a brakeman?  Did I operate any heavy machinery?  Had I worked on rail gangs?  This went on for about twenty-five minutes and then the interview was over.  As I left his office, I thought, “Damn, he doesn’t think I can handle this job.”  I had wondered how my last three jobs, window washer, truck driver, and trackman were going to play in the white-collar world and now I thought I had my answer.

I went home thinking my job search would continue.  Early that afternoon, a law firm I had interviewed with called and offered me a job.  I asked for a day to consider the offer.  Around 3:00 the financial services company called and offered me a job that I immediately accepted.  The financial services job paid two thousand dollars a year more ($14,000 to $12,000) and I had a feeling that the corporate job was a better fit for me. I was probably right, as I would spend the next 25 years with the company.

So I went to work for Perry.  One of the first things I noticed was the fierce pride he took in his work and the work of his subordinates.  He helped me define professionalism.  He was interested in excellence and when you fell short of his expectations you heard about it.  He did not suffer fools gladly and patience was not his long suit.

His reputation around the company was one part awe and two parts trepidation.  I quickly learned that being perceived as his lieutenant could be used to my advantage as people often preferred to deal with me and would meet me more than half way rather than tangle with Perry.

There are many, many stories about Perry. One of the many I witnessed and/or participated in illustrates the fear he could engender.  John was a second year law student who was working as a summer law clerk.  He worked directly with Perry and had, what I perceived to be, a good relationship with him.  One day Shelly, Perry’s long time secretary, told me that John was going to be married in a week and he had not told Perry that he needed a week off for his honeymoon.  Shelly had been telling John for more than a month he needed to talk with Perry and let him know he would be gone the week following his wedding.  Shelly offered to tell Perry for John but he kept saying he would do it but never did.  On the Wednesday before the wedding Shelly finally walked into Perry’s office and told him John was getting married on Saturday but was apparently to frightened to tell him he would be gone the next week on his honeymoon.  Perry looked at me and grinned and told Shelly to go get John and bring him to his office.  When John walked in Perry told him that the company had just been served with a large class action lawsuit and it was going to require us all to work Saturday and Sunday.  John got a little pale, hesitated for a moment, and said “OK,” and walked out of the office.  I stood there with my mouth open, unable to believe what I had just witnessed.  I was already envisioning the conversation John was probably formulating in his mind in which he tells his bride he has to work on his wedding day.  Perry told Shelly to go get John and then congratulated him and told him he understood he would be out the following week.

After I had worked for Perry for a couple of years, budgets were tight and we were short a worker or two and the workload required we work on Saturdays.  Perry would pick me up Saturday mornings around 7:30 in a great big green 1977 Cadillac.  The thing was a mile long and had the famous Cadillac fins. Everything in it was immaculate except the ashtray. We would first meet to discuss what he wanted me to spend my time on and then we would each work separately.  At 11:30 we would go to lunch and I would go to school.  I was allowed to ask any questions I had and he took the time to not only give me the answer but to explain the whys and wherefores.  He would share insights and viewpoints that I as a lowly paralegal would have had no way of knowing about and taught me how to think through issues.  He took the time to educate me far beyond what was necessary for my immediate job and I consider what he did to be a gift I could never begin to reciprocate.

Sometimes at lunch, he would tell me about his life.   He had been orphaned and was living on the streets of Minneapolis with his 13-year-old cousin.  They made their money selling newspapers and he started smoking when he was about five or six years old.  Eventually his uncle, who was a railroad engineer (the type that drive the trains) came down to the Twin Cities from Thief River Falls Minnesota and took both of them in and raised them in northern Minnesota.  Quite a few of his uncles worked on the railroad.  That is when I learned that what I had perceived as a negative in my job interview, had been, in fact, a huge advantage.

When World War ll broke out he ran away at age 16 and tried to join the marines.  He was in boot camp in California before his uncle was able to track him down and return him to Minnesota to finish high school.  He graduated at 17 and with his uncle’s permission, enlisted in the navy.

If you have seen WW ll movies of fighter planes with the glass bubble on the bottom with the machine guns, then you know where Perry spent approximately two years during the war.  He told me he had seen and participated in some horrible things but he never went into much detail.  He knew I was interested in history and I think that led him to open up a little bit about his war time experiences.  Like most veterans who were actually involved in heavy combat operations, he didn’t talk about it much.  He once told me, he had talked to me more about his experiences in the war than anyone else, including his family.  One time he looked up and said, “It’s strange to think that the most important thing you did in your lifetime was done when you were 19 years old.”

I doubt Perry could survive in today’s corporate culture, let alone flourish.  He had no trouble speaking truth to power and considered it an essential part of his job.  That is an attribute that became increasingly rare over my 25-year career.  One time a young attorney was having trouble scheduling dates for the deposition of a couple members of the executive team including the CEO.  They kept blowing her off and treating her requests for dates as a nuisance.  When she told Perry the problems she was having, Perry told her to follow him as they went up to the CEO’s office.  When they got there Perry asked if the CEO was in and his secretary told him he was in but he was meeting with the other member of the executive team that was going to be deposed and they couldn’t be interrupted.  Perry walked into the CEO’s office and told him to get out his book (calendar, in those days people kept paper calendars).  Looking over the CEO’s shoulder, he quizzed him on the importance of certain meetings and events listed on the calendar, getting the CEO to admit he could miss several of the up coming events if necessary.  He told the young attorney that all of these dates were open for the deposition.  He then turned to the other executive in the office and told him to get out his book and repeated the exercise.

  It is almost unimaginable that such a scenario could play out today. Such a stunt would almost certainly spell career suicide.  After Perry retired, I felt the company missed his willingness to tell the business side the harsh truths they sometimes did not want to hear.

Perry was a man of high integrity and often told me, “They don’t pay me to cheat, lie, or steal.”  He would usually follow that up with, “If anyone is going to prison, it is our job to make sure it’s not you or me.”  He told me of a couple of times, in his career, when he had made it known that if certain decisions were made he would resign.  Luckily for him and the company he never had to take that step.

There was another side of Perry that surfaced at unexpected times.  One time a financial planner in Indiana got in trouble and was summoned by Perry to come to the home office in Minneapolis.  Before he got to town Perry did some research into this individual and found out the man had a very sad childhood and had been troubled all of his life.  When he entered the conference room where Perry, an outside counsel, and myself were waiting for him, Perry treated this man gently and elicited the necessary information while all the time being kind and considerate.  After the interview I was walking the planner to where he could get a cab to the airport when he told me that Perry wasn’t a bad guy and when he had talked with him on the phone a few days before he thought he was 7 feet tall and 700 hundred pounds.  Perry had demonstrated that there was no need to intimidate, brow beat, or judge this poor guy who was going to lose his job and quite possibly end up in prison.

Years later, I found myself in a similar situation.  A financial planner who had been fired for a combination of poor performance and alcohol use on the job had filed a wrongful termination suit against the company.  A Kansas judge had ordered the parties to get together and see if they couldn’t settle the case.  I was sent to Wichita to represent the company.  The meeting was to take place at 10:00am and at about 10:20 a woman walked into the conference room and identified herself as the wife of the planner.  She told me that she had been driving her husband to the meeting when he became so agitated and nervous that he had thrown open the car door at a red light and ran away.  She was late because she had been out looking for him.  I sat down with this poor woman and explained why the company had terminated her husband.  I could tell she had never heard any of this stuff before but her experience with her seriously alcoholic husband lead her to believe what I was telling her.  She agreed to go look for her husband and called about an hour later and we set up an afternoon meeting.  This time he came and one look at him told me this was an individual who was going to hit rock bottom soon and get help or he wouldn’t live to be a middle-aged man.  Remembering Perry’s demeanor years before, I tried to make the man feel at ease and eventually offered him $500 to make his suit go away. The $500 let him feel he had, in someway, won something and had been treated with respect.  It was a tiny fraction of what it would have cost to defend the lawsuit.

Whenever people who worked with Perry get together and his name comes up the stories start to flow.  He was a unique character and one of the most intelligent men I have encountered in my lifetime.  He had argued and won a case before the U.S. Supreme Court, taught at Marquette University Law School and was friends with the likes of Walter Mondale.  When he retired, the company hired two attorneys to replace him.

I worked with Perry for the last six years of his career.  During the course of those six years I learned many invaluable lessons that helped me one day rise to the level of vice president.  Our personalities were very different ( believe it or not, I was known as a nice guy), but lessons on integrity, professionalism and empathy transcend style.  I will always be grateful to him, not just for the knowledge he imparted, but also for his willingness to invest the time and effort to help a trackman find his way in an alien culture.  The day he retired, I said to Shelly, “ I don’t know what the future will bring, but I very much doubt it will ever be this much fun again.”  I was right.