THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM

Two men with whom I worked became successful owners of their own business firms. This story describes how their dreams became realities. 12/21/2016

THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM

Eb Brazelton and Fred King, fellow employees of the Foster Wheeler Corporation, made lasting impressions on me. This is a bittersweet vignette that describes our relationship.

In 1954 FWC transferred me to Arcata, California. Eb and his wife were already living there in a trailer park next to nineteen year old Fred, his wife and their infant girl. Eb recommended I interview Fred to become my office assistant. Fred had an imposing physique, standing six foot three inches and weighing 220 pounds who had just lost his football scholarship at Southern California University due to an injury. He impressed the heck out of me so I hired him after a brief interview. When the Arcata office closed, I got management approval to relocate him with the original NYC staff to our new office in San Mateo.

While working with us in that location, Fred began night school to acquire an accounting degree and asked me to loan him $300. It made me sad when I had to turn him down as Angie would not allow me to take such a risk. In time, Fred earned his degree, resigned and joined a small firm that manufactured printed circuit boards. In a very brief amount of time, Fred learned the business such that when it failed, he and two others formed their own company. A year later, he bought out his partners. Then, serendipity happened.

Eb left FWC in 1963 and opened a business making a variety of wood products. He visited Fred’s shop and offered to make him a variety of custom designed sinks, work tables and benches that soon impressed engineers from Hewlett Packard and other high tech Silicon Valley firms that had been buying boards from Fred. Now these very large firms began ordering specialty items from Eb who prospered significantly, but not nearly as much as did Fred who became extremely wealthy.

Unfortunately, their symbiotic relationship came to an unhappy end. They severed all contact with each other after their wives had a falling out. I found this state of affairs unfathomable. For a brief period of time, our lives had intertwined harmoniously.

In 1980, a business jaunt took me to San Jose where Fred told me over lunch about his business career. By then, he had earned millions. In the early ‘70s he had opened a plant in Phoenix, commuting from the Bay area as needed, piloting his own plane. He traveled to Japan frequently to oversee work he subcontracted there.

He credited much of his success to following a rigid business plan. Initially, he grew his printed circuit board business slowly, focusing on quality. To do that, he limited his sales to just a small number of units at a time. “My typical day began trying to obtain a trial order; stay up all night making the boards; deliver them for testing the next day. If they passed, I’d hope to get a small production order that frequently required me to work around the clock in order to meet a delivery deadline. I did all my own accounting to minimize expense. I rarely slept. Had I known how hard it would be, I would never have made the effort.” Modestly, he said he now lives in a new home he had built on a ten-acre lot he purchased in upscale Las Gatos. It appears he hadn’t really needed that $300 loan from me to become a business tycoon.

After that luncheon, Fred disappeared from my life. We never met again. I could never discover his whereabouts. Endless web searches have revealed nothing. There is no final chapter to his life that I can describe. It leaves me with a sense of incompletion, an unfinished tale.

In contrast, Eb and I stayed in touch over the years. He designed and built a unique second home on property that bordered a reservoir in Morgan Hill, California. It was there that he taught me and a number of my children how to water ski. But after reaching the pinnacle of business success, his life spiraled downwards. He sold his business in order to retire from its active management. He wanted to devote his time to creating new products for the firm rather than be its CEO. In short order, the new owners ran the place into bankruptcy. Tragically, Eb’s wife, Jobie, died soon afterwards. Even more tragically, Eb became a victim of Alzheimer’s disease and died, unable to remember how extraordinary a man he had become.

That’s my job now. I will never forget him.

I never dreamed that Fred and Eb would rise far above me in the business world. Perhaps the key to their success lay in the fact that they lived in trailers earlier in their lives. I have concluded that apartment dwellers like me don’t develop entrepreneurial skills.

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