Uncommon People I Have Known: Sixteen Individuals Who Have Made a Difference

Copyright © 2013 by Frank P. Sherwood.

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CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter One A Patriot Above All Else: Amin Alimard

Chapter Two Reformer in Salvador da Bahia: Margarida Maria Costa Batista

Chapter Three A Man of Many Parts: Edwin A. Bock

Chapter Four Have Newsprint—Will Travel: Fred Fisher

Chapter Five The Abracadbra Kid Who Became the Kids’ Favorite: Sid Fleischman

Chapter Six The First Family in Public Administration: Nesta and Edward Gallas

Chapter Seven A Creator of New Visions, Strategies for Human Potential In the Public Service: Neely D. Gardner

Chapter Eight The City Manager Who Loved Covina: Neil Goedhard

Chapter Nine He Did It All: George B. Hartzog, Jr.

Chapter Ten Marvelous Manager, Superb Professor, Eminent Municipalist: Diogo Lordello de Mello

Chapter Eleven The Civil Service Model: John W. Macy, Jr.

Chapter Twelve The Man Who Triumphed over the System: Edward J. Perkins

Chapter Thirteen The Pioneer of the City Magazine Movement in the United States: Edwin F. Self

Chapter Fourteen Coping with the Tragedies of a Chaotic Country: Lem Hoang Truong

Chapter Fifteen At Least Bordering on Perfection: John P. Thomas

Introduction

The title of this book would appear to say a great deal about its subject matter. Yet a question continues to nag. What makes a person uncommon? Why should such people be identified and have a book devoted to them?

It is quite clear that uncommon people are not common. By definition they are rare; the dictionary suggests they appear infrequently. That does not necessarily mean they have special attributes. So we have to go beyond their scarcity to discover what it is that makes them worth our attention. Again, the dictionary provides us a clue. The key synonym it provides for uncommon is exceptional. There we find an array of descriptors that reveal uncommon people as truly special: outstanding, excellent, brilliant, extraordinary, and incomparable. While I will not argue that the people in this book possess all these traits, they do have enough of them. It is fair to say they are uncommon, and I am proud that I knew them.

How the Book Got Started

I am very clear about the individual who prompted me to think first about the uncommon people I have known. His name is Neil Goedhard, and his story is included in this book.

Neil was very much present when I was deeply involved with city managers in Southern California, primarily in the 1950s. It is hard to say who was the very best of a classy group of individuals but he stood at the top of my list. Perhaps that was because I felt I had a lot to do with his development. He came to me as a student in 1952, with his sole career aspiration to be a city manager. Through a special chain of events, many of them of his own manufacture, he became the manager of the small, yet well established, town of Covina in the east San Gabriel Valley. He stayed there for 15 years, during which I carefully observed his behavior, his problems, and his successes. He performed in the role as few others did. He brought an integrity and commitment to his job that served his community very well. Covina was a larger, far better town when he left than when he arrived.

His success, though resented by some, did not go unnoticed. He received many offers to move but resisted them all. His tenure in Covina was a long one. Finally, though he really loved Covina, he told me that I was the one who had convinced him that his career development required that he go to another larger city. The municipality he chose next to serve was the larger Fresno. He had been there three years, found he had some things to learn, and was making some real progress when he suffered an untimely, early death. He was 44.

His loss hit me very hard. As I often tend to do in such circumstances, I wrote a rather long piece about the Neil I knew, tracing his career experiences from graduate school, the long tenure in Covina, and on to Fresno. I hoped I could get it published as a tribute to him. But no such luck. The two editors to whom I entrusted it did not like it. They thought it too much of a puff piece and that also I had displayed too much emotion.

I wrote the first draft of the paper in 1972, which means that it has rested in my files for about 40 years. Periodically, I re-read what I had written and was once again impressed with the sterling qualities of Neil Goedhard. I still wanted to secure some sort of publication on the theory that a few budding administrators might find it helpful. Somewhere, out of those ruminations, came the realization that I knew a number of people who, in various ways, were Neil’s twins. For a while there was the question whether there were enough of such people to constitute a book. Subsequently, in writing the book, I have found I suffer from an embarrassment of riches. I know a great many people who qualify as uncommon, and my sadness is that I can include only a few of them in this effort. In effect, I have found that uncommon people are not so uncommon.

One small pleasure has come from a follow-up on the Goedhard family. At the time of his death, Neil left a lovely wife, Gloria, and four young girls. I wanted at least one of them to read the manuscript and give me their approval. I also needed a picture of him. It turned out that Gloria (who died in 1999) and the four girls remained in Fresno. The four are all married and are very tight with each other, living in close proximity. I am sure Neil would have been very happy with the way things have turned out.

Dimensions of the Book

So much for the origins of this book. Now to the rest of its character and content. Its 15 chapters contain the stories of 16 people. The reason for the additional individual is that Nesta and Ed Gallas, who completed nearly 67 years of marriage and were major, joint contributors to the field of Public Administration, are present in a single chapter. Single individuals are the subject of each of the other chapters, and their chapters will appear alphabetically. Thus the first chapter will be about Amin Alimard. I am not particularly happy with this sequence but could not think of any other way to avoid the suggestion that some individuals were more important than others.

Not all essays appearing here were written for this book. Indeed, two appeared in scholarly journals, one as a lengthy obituary about John W. Macy, Jr. and another as an introduction to a symposium about the work of Neely Gardner, who died in 1987. Another was written and published in a book I edited on the history of the Washington Public Affairs Center.¹ It covered the career of Edward J. Perkins. Three essays were written at the time of the deaths of important people in my life, Edwin F. Self, Diogo Lordello de Mello, and Amin Alimard. The essay about Edward C. Gallas was also written at the time of his death in 2010. One chapter, that about John P. Thomas, contains very little of my writing. John had published a book, My Saints Alive, that contained brief but lively accounts of his life and make for great reading. The book is about his continued relations with two dead and deeply loved wives. The chapter about Frederick Fisher contains a mixture of things. It includes much of what Fred has provocatively written about his early days but also contains pieces I have written and published about his consulting work.

Four chapters were prepared specifically for this book (Edwin A. Bock, Sid Fleischman, Margarida Costa Batista, and Lem Truong). Another, about George B. Hartzog, Jr., is an original for this book but it builds on material I wrote for a book, George B. Hartzog, Jr., A Great Director of the National Parks Service, published by the Clemson University Press in 2011.²

One group deserves special mention. They are the colleagues I loved and valued in my early days of teaching at the School of Public Administration at the University of Southern California. We worked together to create a top-ranked institution (some put us no. 1 and virtually all placed us in the top three programs in Public Administration education in the United States.) Very fortunately, three of my old colleagues were working on a volume that recorded the early times of the School. They asked me to write brief biographies of the School’s pioneers, all of whom I knew well. They are Emory E. Olson, John M. Pfiffner, Henry Reining, Neely Gardner, Alberto Guerreiro Ramos, John Gerletti, William B. Storm, Robert Berkov, David Shirley, and Richard W. Gable. Sadly, all of them have died. Indeed, it was a decision of the editors that no one currently alive would be included in the biographies. Otherwise, three of the book’s editors, Ross Clayton, Elmer Kim Nelson, and Chester Newland, would have enjoyed biographies.³ I have made only one exception to my general judgment to consider these biographies sufficient. Neely Gardner was a special case because he had had a 30 year career in California state service before he began his quite lengthy and brilliant service at USC. There was simply much more to record about this remarkable man.

As has already been reported and also indicated in the book’s title, these uncommon people have all been my friends. The character of our associations, however, has differed greatly; and specific details about these relationships are best covered in the individual chapters. There is one common element, though, that will be found in 13 of the 15 chapters. That special link developed from my work as a university professor of Public Administration. I was tied to these great individuals because we were all Public Administration people, either working directly for government, serving in allied fields, or teaching in the discipline. The biographies of these uncommon people should therefore have special meaning for readers involved, in some way, in Public Administration. The other two people in this book were friends from childhood. It’s a great joy to report that such old chums have done so very well.

The People Covered in the Book

Amin Alimard

Amin Alimard, an Iranian, is the subject of the first chapter. His personal ethic of integrity and absolute commitment to the public interest are particularly noteworthy. His service to Iran was uprooted at the peak of his career by an unexpected revolution in Iran in 1979. The feelings generated by that upheaval were so strong that anyone who had served in a high government position in the previous regime was considered a criminal and subject to long years in jail, if not execution. Amin was a Minister of the Government, as head of the State Office of Management and Employment, at the time. The office was considered non-political but that had no consequence for the new political masters. At age 53 Amin was ousted from his position, kept under surveillance, constantly threatened with imprisonment, and finally concluded in 1981 that he had to leave Iran. The escape was unbelievably dramatic. He arrived in the U.S. penniless, but was fortunately able to secure a position as an Assistant Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. He taught there for over 20 years and died while he was in its service. Fortunately his wife Tala and his two sons were able to join him in 1982. All three continue to live in Virginia. The chapter is greatly enhanced by an essay in which son Ramin reflects on the qualities of his father.

Margarida Maria Costa Batista

Margarida Batista was born in Salvador da Bahia, in Brazil, and has lived there her entire life. She was a founding professor at the School of Administration at the Federal University of Bahia and served that institution until her retirement. Professors like Margarida Batista did not confine themselves, however, solely to classroom teaching. It is noteworthy that she, along with colleagues, José Meirelles and Jorge Hage, engaged in a variety of outreach activities, all undertaken to improve the quality of government in the state of Bahia and more generally in Brazil’s northeast region. Her long leadership of the Institute of Public Service (ISP), which was part of the office of the Chancellor of the University, involved engagement in a wide variety of activities and brought much credit to the University. Some of these efforts had nation-wide impact. ISP played a major role in a reform that converted Brazil’s federal universities from a European system which placed authority in individual professors to an American system that was departmentalized and placed more emphasis on structure. Margarida has written prolifically on her experiences with administrative reform in Bahia and has pioneered efforts to introduce a more behavioral orientation to the thinking about Public Administration. Margarida’s husband is a well known dentist, now retired, and they have two sons, one a doctor in Sao Paulo and the other a lawyer in Salvador.

Edwin A. Bock

Back in the early days of World War II, the roughly 3000 students at Dartmouth College had only one thing on their minds: where would they land in the military? Those who were graduating in June (the Class of 1942) were actively negotiating with the military services for commissions and the 1943s (who would graduate in December) were busy checking all the opportunities. It was a thriving employment market. Only those with poor eyesight and other fairly minor physical disabilities saw themselves as draftees. The hustle for most was a commission.

Ed Bock, who was editor of the highly influential college newspaper, The Dartmouth, had other ideas. He editorialized that the better way would be to have a true national service draft, in which the government would decide where the country’s needs were and where the nation’s relatively small population of college graduates should be best deployed. As one of those with punk eyesight, I thought it was a great idea but none of those with locks on commissions did. Things stayed very much the same—except for one person, Ed Bock. He revealed his intellectual integrity at an early age. He followed the logic of his editorial and was drafted early in 1943. Though he had every credential for a commission, he served throughout the war with the 78th infantry division as an enlisted man. This kind of entry into the system was more democratic and perhaps in the long run more efficient in his mind, and so Ed Bock forsook all the privileges and perquisites of a commission to honor a principle about which he felt strongly.

This story emphasizes Ed Bock as an individual. And it should. He is, first and foremost, a unique individual: remarkable ethics and integrity, warm and fun-loving friend and associate, highly committed to the intellectual and artistic, a world traveler, a dedicated collector of old and fine books, and the head, with his lovely wife George, of a family of five accomplished children.

From the career perspective, there is perhaps no one who has had as much influence on the teaching of Public Administration in America’s universities. Only Leonard D. White, the author of the first textbook, might rival him. His 40 years as Director of the Inter-University Case Program, which produced a number of books and publications, enabled him to provide support to programs across the country and, indeed, around the world. At the same time he spent a career teaching at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. There he assumed responsibility for the final course in the university’s highly regarded end on end Master’s program in Public Administration, as well as launching pioneer courses in Political Science that persisted over the decades.

Fred Fisher

There is no one in this book who can match the written output of Fred Fisher. And much of what he has produced has been brilliant, beautifully phrased and provocatively put. On many occasions Fred’s materials have been humorous, critical, and caustic. All these seemingly contradictory characteristics have melded on the same page. It would be wrong, however, to visualize Fred Fisher as an isolated individual pondering his prose. Fred has been very much an activist, heavily engaged in the communities of which he has been a part.

The first part of his chapter calls upon a bit of his own writing. Published as part of an essay he prepared for a book on the Washington Public Affairs Center, he reveals his difficult times as a young man growing up in impoverished circumstances in Western Pennsylvania.⁴ As he describes the situation, he was a young man going nowhere in a hurry. But he found mentors, first at Antioch College and then at Allegheny College. We soon discover him preparing for a career in city management at the nation’s most prestigious training ground, the Fels Institute at the University of Pennsylvania. When he was well established in his second city as manager, he was summoned by his professional organization, the International City Managers Association, to head its training and development operations.

There Fred invested heavily in his own personal development. He went to every training and development program that a city manager might possibly find relevant. He may have come to know more about available training and development resources for the public service than any one in America. What he saw, though, was that there was a big gap. Nothing brought the many pieces together in ways that were digestible for the average local government official. Essentially alone, he conceived an umbrella program, the Continuing Education Service, and he secured major funding for it from the Ford Foundation and the new Intergovernmental Cooperation program of the Federal government. This, indeed, was a big deal, and the credit for it goes entirely to Fred Fisher.

What emerged was a major enterprise, the National Training and Development Service for State and Local Governments. For a variety of reasons, Fred was passed over for the presidency. He accepted the vice-presidency, largely because he believed so much in the mission. The enterprise had its successes, but unfortunately too many failures. Fred resigned and accepted a professorship at Penn State University, where he stayed several years.

Then he made a major career shift. He accepted a position with the Federal Agency for International Development in Kenya. There he undertook to use the tools he had acquired in the United States, many of them from his collaborator, Neely Gardner, and achieved remarkable success in working with community groups. From that beginning Fred launched his own consulting business that led him to assignments primarily in Asia, Africa, and Europe, virtually all of them in the lesser developed societies of the world. He produced learnings which people could understand and to which they could relate, created excitement about new possibilities, and recruited networks of people to participate in the emerging opportunities. The second part of the chapter is composed of two essays I wrote for the PA Times, a publication of the American Society for Public Administration. In one article I sought to explain how he worked; in the other I listed his many publications that will enable others to replicate his work.

Sid Fleischman

Sid Fleischman is one of the two people in this book where our friendship goes back to grammar school. The association with Sid was not nearly as close as that with Edwin Self, with whom I went to college and then into business. But Sid and I never really lost track of each other, and he achieved his success so early in life that it would have been quite impossible to lose him. Further, he was the kind of individual who never forgot his old friends. When we saw each other, it was as if the years had simply melted away.

Curiously, it was a book that brought me much closer to Sid. The title is, The Abracadabra Kid: A Writer’s Life, and it is a refreshingly exciting story of Sid Fleischman’s life, kept simple and easy to read because Sid wanted young people to digest it.⁵ By the time he wrote, he was well settled into a career as a highly successful children’s author. He had long ago learned that kids were far more responsive to his books than adults. He simply loved connecting with them and traveled the country to engage his young audiences. The Abracadabra Kid is the only autobiography I have ever read where the intended audience was young people. Sid was certainly on to something. It was a delight.

Equally important, the book brought me much closer to Sid. I think I engaged in my first reading about Sid’s life when I was about 75, around1995. My edition shows a 1996 copyright, but I think I had an earlier version. Over the years I have bought a number of copies of The Abracadbra Kid and made particularly sure that my five grandchildren had the book. I can’t testify that they have all read Sid, but I am reasonably sure about several of them.

While we were engaged in the usual high school activities, Sid was learning magic. He reports that he was the youngest member of the San Diego Magic Society, whose headquarters were in a real estate office in uptown San Diego. Sid was quick to display his newly learned tricks in various high school events. Indeed, we predicted great success for him and thought he might well be the next Houdini. When he graduated from high school, he set out to prove we were correct. The book records his theatrical career as a very young man, much of it spent with a fellow San Diegan who also saw his future in magic. Ultimately, Sid ended up in a medicine show in the Midwest. The war, however, put an end to his ambitions; and he joined the U.S. Navy.

What I have found fascinating is that Sid, despite his great success as a writer, never fully gave up on his magic. He reported that his many trips to meet with children always included a certain amount of his magician’s paraphernalia. The kids loved his magic, and he was delighted to entertain them. Much the same thing happened at the 60th reunion of our high school class in 1988. Sid’s feeling was that his classmates would not be much interested in an account of his writing successes. They would much rather see him perform as he did in high school. And that is what he did. We never did hear from Sid Fleischman, highly successful author. This chapter hopefully pays much less attentioon to his magic and explores his special chemistry as a writer.

Nesta and Edward Gallas

Nesta and Ed were, in many respects, the first family in the Public Administration community. The two were active in Public Administration throughout their married lives. They held jobs of major consequence in the public sector, provided leadership to emerging areas of Public Administration, engaged in a wide variety of consulting assignments in the United States and abroad, were heavily involved in professional societies, and were regular attendants at a host of Public Administration and Public Personnel conferences. Indeed, things did not seem right if the Gallases were not present.

Having done very well with his private investments, Ed left the public sector at about age 60, joined a consulting organization, and also served in various volunteer capacities. Nesta taught for several years more at John Jay College in the City of New York university system and then joined Ed in a life of some retirement mixed with a variety of professional activities. They had homes in Point Pleasant, Pennsylvania, and in Manhattan Beach, California. A period in the Hawaiian Islands was also a part of their routine for many years. They had deep roots in Hawaii, where Nesta had once been Director of the Civil Service in the City and County of Honolulu and Ed had operated a consulting firm that serviced public sector clients throughout the South Pacific.

When I was preparing this book, Ed died in 2010. Feeling a deep personal loss, I quickly recognized Ed as one of the uncommon people I had known. He had to be in the book, and so I wrote a chapter about his career. Since Nesta was very much alive, I confess I restricted myself to a few references about their remarkable marriage. At the time I thought I would be writing only about people who had passed away. Later, I found that my list of uncommon people had to include some who were still alive. Before the book was completed, Nesta died in 2012. The chapters for this book were essentially finished by that time, and I had to face two realities: (a) I had not done the necessary research and therefore did not have sufficient data to do a full paper on Nesta; and (b) my age was reducing my energies and I could not invest more of my limited supply in further writing. I feel, therefore, that the book does not do full justice to Nesta. The reader will find in the chapter on the Gallases a substantial obituary about Nesta, written by Chester Newland and which he has given me permission to publish; a short, and much more personal, piece about Nesta that I have authored, and the full essay about Ed. There is a need for much more about Nesta, and it is my hope someone will assume that task.

Neely D. Gardner

If you had encountered Neely Gardner many years ago, the first impression would be of a pleasant, laid-back, unassuming individual. You most certainly would not have seen him as a person with a formidable agenda that might well involve you. But you would be wrong. There was far more to Neely than appeared on the surface.

Some sense of that is revealed by Camille Cates Barnett in a delightful vignette, which is included in the chapter on Neely. She found him arranging chairs for a future meeting. It bothered her that he seemed to be working below his pay grade. On the contrary, he said, this was the most important thing he did. What she came to recognize was that there was design and intent in everything Neely did. The arrangement of the chairs predisposed people to work in ways that he desired. Most important, the participants would never know that the unseen hand of Neely Gardner had already been active.

Neely was a revolutionary. Unlike the people who marched in the streets, however, he worked inside the bureaucracy. He had the strong belief that most people had very positive instincts. They want to succeed and accomplish things. He saw the typical organization designed, however, to make sure individual success was not achieved. Whatever was being done in an organization was suspect, and the best possible move was to get rid of everything that had gone before. He proposed preparing organization charts in disappearing ink because they always portrayed relations that no longer existed; and, even if they did, they were preventing people from following natural channels of communication. Better, then, to have the organization chart disappear as fast as possible.

It was typical of Neely that he re-phrased the familiar saying, So far-so good to So far-so bad.

The chapter about Neely contains two of my writings. The first was published in slightly different form in a scholarly journal under the title, A Great Humanist, Educator, and Public Servant, in 1992. The full citation is provided in the chapter. The second paper, which contains excerpts from several other authors, appeared as Chapter 8 in Futures of the Past, whose full citation was provided earlier in this chapter.

Neil Goedhard

The vital role Neil Goedhard’s city manager experience played in the development of this book was described above. It need only be reported that the chapter contains several letters by Neil’s colleagues, in response to my essay. They essentially validate my opinion that Neil was an uncommon individual.

George B. Hartzog, Jr.

I studied the leadership of George B. Hartzog, Jr. in the nine years he served as Director of the National Park Service, and I had the good fortune to count him as a close friend over the last 40 years of his life. We had many stimulating discussions on a wide variety of topics over that time. Further, his own book, Battling for the National Parks, provided me insights on his executive philosophy, behavior, and strategies that have gone far beyond anything I have obtained from any other source. It is a marvelous reference for understanding the public executive and also for appreciating George.

When I think about his accomplishments that will last over time, nothing rivals the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. There is a widely held opinion that George made the difference. There would have been no Arch without him. When George arrived in St. Louis in 1958, there was no Arch and relatively little expectation one would ever be built. He was Superintendent of a very small operation with an overwhelming name, the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Historic Site. A fair amount of money had been allocated for the construction of the Arch but it had been untouched for more than two years. In the end it was Hartzog who appeared individually before the Comptroller General of the United States and secured the change order necessary to obtain the release of the funds. There were many other ways he got things going, including figuring out how to operate a train system that was neither horizontal nor vertical—and pay for it.

But the penultimate contribution came when he was Director of the Park Service. The contractor had decided there was no way he could build something that was not vertical but really leaned, in a sense defying gravity. He said the structure would collapse and petitioned the Secretary of the Interior to call a halt to things. While the theory of the structure was well understood in Europe, it had not been tried in the U.S. The assumption was it would fail. George believed his architects and engineers. He made a proposal to the Secretary. Let the construction proceed. If the building collapsed, blame Hartzog and fire him. The Secretary agreed, the building was finished just as planned, and today it stands nearly 65 stories high, one of the manmade wonders of the world. And, of course, George was not fired.

The chapter in this book is new. But it builds on my previous writings. A small volume I edited, George B. Hartzog, Jr.: A Great Director of the National Park Service, and George’s own Battling for the National Parks, are frequently mentioned in the chapter. Citations for the two publications are provided elsewhere.

Diogo Lordello de Mello

I first encountered Diogo Lordello de Mello in January, 1952, on the campus of the University of Southern California. He and seven other Brazilians had just arrived for 18 months of study in Public Administration. Six of them were preparing themselves to become the professorial core of the newly established Brazilian School of Public Administration (EBAP) in the prestigious Getulio Vargas Foundation. The six were residents of Rio de Janeiro.

Two young men deviated from this core group. One was Lordello de Mello, who had retired from the Brazilian Air Force as an officer, had received his college degree from the University of Parana, and had lived for a number of years in that state. He had been orphaned at an early age in his native state of Bahia and had enlisted in the Air Force in escape the grinding poverty of the Northeast. His expectation was to join the state government unit providing technical assistance to the municipalities of Parana. The purpose of his education, then, was to build a knowledge of local government and the ways in which greater help could be provided in Parana.

It turned out that Lordello had a great companion with a similar agenda in Paulo Neves de Carvalho, a native of Minas Gerais and in every way a dedicated Mineiro. He had been educated in Administrative Law at the Federal University, and his brilliance had quickly hoisted him to the academic top. At an early age he had been named a full professor, a Catedratico, which at the time had much greater significance because academics of such rank were fully in charge of their disciplines. Though he had excelled academically, Paulo was very much an activist. He saw the great importance of local governments in state operations and so was at USC to learn all he could about municipalities and their operation. The assumption was that he would simply fold his new knowledge into his activities as a professor.

These two fine men provided me with the greatest learning experience I have ever had as a professor. Though I was charged with providing them academic leadership, the fact is that I knew very little more about Southern California’s local governments than they did. It was my assignment to know a great deal more, and so we spent the time (18 months for Lordello, two years for Paulo) learning all we could on how things were done at the local level in a state that then had the best local governments in the nation.

Paulo went back to Minas Gerais, became active in governmental affairs, and performed a huge variety of valuable services. But he never would leave Minas, despite many attractive offers. Sadly, I lost touch with him. Lordello provided a different story. His Brazilian colleagues were profoundly impressed with him. They decided he should not go to Parana but join them on the faculty of the new EBAP. It took little urging and Lordello served over 50 years on the EBAP faculty, retiring only two years before his death.

But teaching at EBAP in those days was not a full-time job. Inflation was already a real presence in Brazil, and everyone held at least a couple of positions to make ends meet. Not long before, Cleanto Leite, an enterprising businessman with strong public service interests, had established a new organization designed to provide technical assistance and supports to Brazil’s municipalities. It was called IBAM, the Brazilian Institute of Municipal Administration. Further, Clelanto had convinced Simões Lopes, the highly regarded President of the Getulio Vargas Foundation, to chair the Board of Directors. Together they found Lordello and convinced him to take the leadership of the fledgling institution. The association was a most fortunate one. Rather quickly, he made IBAM into a model organization. He achieved this remarkable result with only the barest of resources. It can be argued that Brazil’s IBAM was the most outstanding organization of its kind in the world. People came from all over to examine its operations, learn all they could about it, and carry back insights to apply in their own country.

Though he wandered a couple of times from IBAM and passed the leadership on to others, Lordello never really left the place. It was his home and his preoccupation. Fifty two years later, now with dementia, he was still showing up at an office immediately next to that of the Director. He was 80 years old when he died in 2004.

John W. Macy, Jr.: The Civil Service Model

It would be hard to imagine anyone who personifies the Civil Service ethic to the degree John W. Macy, Jr. did. It isn’t that he spent so many years in the classified service but rather that he always seemed close to it, reflected its finest traditions, and always sought its finest moments.

I remember a part of a conversation with him at the time we were discussing my becoming the leader of the new Federal Executive Institute. He reflected on an earlier effort to develop an executive development program for the top leaders in the Federal career service at Princeton University. He felt that he was patronized. The Princeton people said quite flatly that the Federal government had no capability to offer a program with any intellectual dimension on its own. It would have to rely on a prestigious institution like Princeton; and therefore the University would dictate the nature of the program and the arrangements. Macy walked away from that experience deeply resentful of the putdown of the Federal government and its resources. Essentially his only demand of me was that we show those Princeton people that the government could produce a program of quality.

John’s commitment to the Federal government and its service came early. In fact, it can be argued that he was among the first to embrace Federal service as a career opportunity. After graduation from Wesleyan University in 1936, he was in the first group to enter the National Institute of Public Affairs the following fall. The Institute, established by Rockefeller Foundation money, was the organization designed to give meaning to the concept of a Federal career. It scoured the nation’s college graduates for the best and brightest to engage in a year’s action learning program. Central to the undertaking was an internship at a sufficiently high level to produce insights on the challenges involve in managing a major human enterprise. Macy completed the NIPA program and then proceeded to a responsible position in the Department of the Army.

His advance was rapid. When Dwight Eisenhower became President, the Civil Service Commission was identified as a place requiring thoroughgoing reform. Phillip Young, a son of the long-time heard of General Electric, became the new Chairman. His selection as Executive Director was a young John W. Macy, Jr. The experience with Young revealed something important. It showed that the Democrat Macy could work effectively with Republican Young in building a stronger, better, and politically neutral Civil Service. This ability to subordinate his political convictions to broader public interests appeared during the Presidential administration of Lyndon B. Johnson. Having occupied the Chairmanship of the Civil Service Commission under John F. Kennedy, Macy undertook to do even more with Johnson. He took on a second full time job as head of personnel for the White House. Not only was there the problem of time management, but there was the question how to mesh the obvious political imperatives of the President with those of an organization specifically created to keep politics out of the picture. Macy held the two jobs for five and one-half years. While he had his share of critics, I never heard anyone question his integrity or claim that he in any way subverted the goals and obligations of a politically neutral Civil Service. If anything, he may have brought a President with heavy political baggage to believe more fully in the government career people.

Finally, John W. Macy, Jr., was my boss on two different occasions. He was the best person for whom I ever worked. Being his subordinate was not always easy, however, because John was another one of those with animal energy. He always had too much on his plate, and booking a time for meeting was therefore extremely difficult. I remember people telling me that they would drive by the Civil Service Commission as late as 11 p.m. and see the Chairman’s office fully lit. Yet John was deeply committed to the idea of quality time. When you did get some moments with him, he was totally devoted to you. His attention was absolutely concentrated. Your issues and problems were his priority. His provision of such quality time meant a great deal, not only to me but to others in the organization.

Secondly, John loved ideas. As soon as a new thought was exposed, John was in rapture. He sought to carry it as far as possible. In the earliest days of our relationship, the discussion was almost entirely on the conceptualization of the Federal Executive Institute. I was bringing a number of ideas to him for consideration. I really think he was in Seventh Heaven. He simply loved to work them through. With all this John W. Macy, Jr., was a warm, compassionate, loving man. His kind is hard to replace.

Edward J. Perkins

Born in extreme poverty in the Deep South and left to fend for himself in much of his youth, Ed Perkins struggled against these immense odds to become a classic American success story.

And he achieved in areas where the going was particularly tough. He did not go into business, identify some special public need or enthusiasm, and then work very hard to bring in big bucks. Instead he undertook to operate in a bureaucratic world of highly educated, merit-oriented individuals. The system in which he sought to excel was the Foreign Service in the Department of State.

As has happened in the United States and in many other parts of the world, the Armed Forces served as a great equalizer. Ed saw the military as an opportunity to get started on a career. Ultimately he devoted close to a decade of his life to military service, both in the U.S. Army and then in the Marines. In the process he held positions of responsibility, found an environment in which his native discipline was much valued, and in which there were opportunities for personal growth. Ed came to understand that he loved learning and that there were rewards attached to such efforts.

Much of his military service was in Asia. The Army first placed him in Korea (well before the outbreak of hostilities there), and a year later he was in Japan with the 8th Army. In the aggregate on his first tour he spent about five years¸ two in the military and three as a civilian, in Japan. As a young man in his early twenties, he found it an exciting time to be in a country with a profound cultural heritage and then struggling to rise from its defeat in World War II. He has written, The early 1950s were good years for young black Americans to be in Japan. I enjoyed being involved in a new setting, and I reveled in the freedom that I had not experienced in my own country.⁶

It was also a time of great personal development for this young man. He invested large amounts of time studying the language and also Asian philosophy. In doing so, he developed patterns of behavior that have persisted throughout his life. He was very much attracted to the codes of conduct developed over the centuries for the Samurai warriors. He says he rereads certain of the books every year . . . because I believe the way of a person is always in the making.⁷

After the long stay in Japan, Ed returned to Portland. He was about to give college a try and enrolled in Lewis and Clark University, near the city. Though now at an age when many were finishing their undergraduate degrees, Ed needed a broader experience base before settling on formal education. After the years in Orient, he now saw Portland as a relatively unexciting, parochial place. He needed to roam further. For a time he thought of joining the Foreign Legion. It was not an option, though, because he could enlist only when firmly planted on French territory. Ed simply could not finance the necessary transportation to such foreign shores and so decided to enlist in the Marine Corps in 1954. It was four year commitment, and Ed would be 30 when he completed his service.

Ed valued his service in the Marine Corps. He was back in Asia, first in Korea. He called it enriching. Much of the time was spent in Japan, where he was able to establish further fluency in Japanese. His work in investigations brought him into contact with a seamy side of life, and his account of his experiences seemed to add spice to things. Perhaps most significantly, Ed took full advantage of the educational opportunities that then existed for military people overseas. He secured his undergraduate degree from a unique institution, the University College of the University of Maryland, which had a very extensive overseas operation.

When his four years in the Marines were completed, he again opted to stay in Asia. There were two reasons behind this decision. One was a lovely Taiwanese woman, Lucy Cheng-mei Liu. They met shortly after he had taken a civilian job with the vast PX operation in Taiwan. The courtship was a clandestine one, requiring the utmost secrecy, because she had parents who were much opposed to her marrying anyone like Ed Perkins. The knot was finally tied, however, and they enjoyed a long and happy marriage, producing two children.

The other reason was determination to get into the Foreign Service. A first step in that direction was the U.S. Agency for International Development, which was tied to the State Department as the unit through which assistance efforts were channeled. He first served a six month internship in Washington, D.C., and then was posted to Thailand, a country which he came to love. While in Bangkok, he applied for educational leave with pay, a kind of sabbatical, to attend the School of Public Administration at the University of Southern California. While he took a heavy course load and finished in 18 months, much of his energy was directed toward the Foreign Service exams, which he was eligible to take as a lateral entrant. He wrote: With my formal education well in hand, I set my sights on another career mountain peak. In the 1970s, the Foreign Service was known as a closed, elite organization of white, Ivy League men. For a black man, a female, or a member of any other minority to aspire to a career in the Foreign Service was more than life on the edge. It was over the top.⁸

But Ed persisted. In 1972, at the age of 44, he was admitted to the Foreign Service as a commissioned officer. I was by all accounts a late entrant, but I did not intend to be a placid one. I was resolute about being a proactive professional.⁹

Ed’s successes in the Foreign Service are well documented in the chapter on his life. But it is easy forget that those great triumphs came after many difficult times. It was not easy to find the resources and supports to make for a brighter personal future. I found it fascinating to write about Ed’s career, and particularly to link his great successes to the highly conscious way in which he prepared himself for such a future. A reading of his chapter will provide substantial detail on his management of his career accomplishments.

Edwin F. Self: The Pioneer of the City Magazine Movement in the United States

Ed Self is one of the two people in this book with a personal connection to me that goes back to grammar school days. The other is Sid Fleischman, about whom I have written above.

Of these two relationships, the one with Ed Self was the far more intimate. We became best friends in the fifth grade; and that is the way we felt about each other for at least the next 20 years. We finished high school together, spent most of our time in college as a team, suffered through World War II, and then became partners in two publishing ventures. I don’t remember a time when there was a cross word between us.

After we had sold a weekly newspaper in the suburbs of San Diego, we decided to shape a partnership of a different sort. Ed’s consuming interest was in magazine publishing. Mine seemed more hands-on. I wanted to own the establishment that printed the magazine. Thus we struck a deal that we would jointly own a magazine to serve the community of San Diego, but it would be his burden to wrest a living from it. I would assemble a printing operation, which I did, and we would produce as much of the magazine in it as was feasible. It turned out that magazine press equipment was far beyond my means to own, and so we did the composition and then contracted for the press work.

The Magazine San Diego he produced in October 1948 really rocked the town. There was nothing like it in the nation, where the typical community magazine was published by a Chamber of Commerce or similar-type organization, provided mostly business news, and spiced things up with a bit of local history. Not only was Ed’s magazine a masterpiece in design, but it had a much broader range of content. It was not for everyone. It was basically addressed to the town’s elite and assumed their interests lay in public affairs, entertainment, fashions, fine dining, and community history. He was able to enlist some of San Diego’s best writers to submit manuscripts for virtually nothing.

About five monthly issues of Magazine San Diego had been published when tragedy struck. Our printing operation was hit by fire and was destroyed.¹⁰ I no longer had anything to offer our partnership. Further, I do not recall that we had any real record of our financial performance in those first few months. My sense is that Ed was able to pull some money out, but I think we were getting nothing for the composition we were doing. It was a long term investment I was happy to make. With the printing plant gone, though, Ed would be on his own. I had to get out and make a living myself.

The next few years were very tough for Ed. The number of issues published was reduced to six from 12. As Ed has reported, it was an infusion of money from a wealthy Jello heir, Jack Vietor, that provided some hope for the future in the late 1950s. In time San Diego Magazine, as its name was reshaped, became extremely profitable, and Ed remained its publisher for 45 years.

If Ed’s accomplishments with the magazine were limited to San Diego, that would be quite sufficient. He built a media property that was second only to the powerful daily newspaper, The San Diego Union, in its influence. But San Diego Magazine had consequence far beyond these territorial boundaries. Today practically every community of any size has a clone of Ed’s undertaking. Further the city-regional magazine has staying power. Where much of the print media seems to have fallen by the wayside, these very local periodicals continue to prosper.

A large part of the chapter about Ed Self was written shortly after his death in 1996, at the age of 75. In it I undertook to recount our many, early years together. I had some question whether this history of two young men had a place in this book. I concluded it did, on the theory that uncommon people do have their moments of maturation

As I have taken pains to emphasize above, however, this is not just