Working. Part 27

"I lived in a small mining town in Canada, a G.o.d-forsaken place called Flinflan. In the middle of nowhere, four hundred miles north of Winnipeg. It was a good life, beautiful winters. I remember the Northern Lights. Dark would come around three '. Thirty below zero, but dry and clean.

"I lived across the street from the rink. That's how I got started, when I was four or five. We never had any gear. I used to wrap Life magazines around my legs. We didn't have organized hockey like they have now. All our games were pickup, a never-ending game. Maybe there would be three kids to a team, then there would be fifteen, and the game would go on. n.o.body would keep score. It was pure kind of play. The play you see here, outside the stadium, outside at the edge of the ghetto. I see 'em in the schoolyards. It's that same kind of play around the basket. Pure play.

"My father bought me a pair of skates, but that was it. He never took part. I played the game for my own sake, not for him. He wasn't even really around to watch. I was playing for the joy of it, with my own peers. Very few adults around. We organized everything.

"I see parents at kids' sporting events. It's all highly organized. It's very formal. They have referees and so on. The parents are spectators. The kids are playing for their parents. The old man rewards him for playing well and doesn't reward him for not doing so well. (Laughs.) The father puts too much pressure on the kid. A boy then is soft material. If you want a kid to do something, it's got to be fun.

"I was a skinny, ratty kid with a terrible case of acne. I could move pretty well, but I never really looked like much. (Laughs.) n.o.body ever really noticed me. But I could play the game. In Canada it is part of the culture. If you can play the game, you are recognized. I was good almost from the beginning. The game became a pa.s.sion with me. I was looking to be somebody and the game was my way. It was my life."

At sixteen, while in high school, he was playing with semi-pro teams, earning two hundred dollars a week. At eighteen, he joined the Toronto Maple Leafs.

There's an irony that one get paid for playing, that play should bring in money. When you sell play, that makes it hard for pure, recreational play, for play as an art, to exist. It's corrupted, it's made harder, perhaps it's brutalized, but it's still there. Once you learn how to play and are accepted in the group, there is a rapport. All you are as an athlete is honed and made sharper. You learn to survive in a very tough world. It has its own rewards.

The pro game is a kind of a stage. People can see who we are. Our personalities come through in our bodies. It's exciting. I can remember games with twenty thousand people and the place going crazy with sound and action and color. The enormous energy the crowd produces all coming in on the ice, all focusing in on you. It's pretty hard to resist that. (Laughs.) I was really recognized then. I remember one game: it was in the semifinals, the year we won the Stanley Cup. I was with Chicago. It was the sixth game against Montreal. They were the big club and we were the Cinderella team. It was three to nothing, for us, with five minutes left to go. As a spontaneous gesture twenty thousand people stood up. I was on the ice. I remember seeing that whole stadium, just solid, row on row, from the balcony to the boxes, standing up. These people were turned on by us. (Sighs.) We came off, three feet off the ice . . . (Softly) Spring of '61.

When Toronto dropped me I said, "I'm a failure." Twenty-two, what the h.e.l.l does one know? You're the boy of the moment or nothing. What we show is energy and young bodies. We know our time is fleeting. If we don't get a chance to go, it makes us antsy. Our values are instant, it's really hard to bide your time.

Violence is taken to a greater degree. There is always the specter of being hurt. A good player, just come into his prime, cracks a skull, breaks a leg, he's finished. If you get hit, you get hit-with impersonal force. The guy'll hit you as hard as he can. If you get hurt, the other players switch off. n.o.body's sympathetic. When you get hurt they don't look at you, even players on your own team. The curtain comes down-'cause it could have been me. One is afraid of being hurt himself. You don't want to think too much about it. I saw my teammate lying there-I knew him pretty well-they put forty st.i.tches in his face. I saw him lying on the table and the doctors working on him. I said, "Better him than me." (Laughs.) We conditioned ourselves to think like that. I think it's a defense mechanism and it's brutalizing.

The professional recognizes this and risks himself less and less, so the percentage is in his favor. This takes a bit of experience. Invariably it's the younger player who gets hurt. Veterans learn to be calculating about their vulnerability. (Laughs.) This takes a little bit away from the play. When I was young, I used to take all sorts of chances just for the h.e.l.l of it. Today, instead of trying to push through it, I ease up. It takes something off the risk. The older professional often plays a waiting game, waits for the other person to commit himself in the arena.

The younger player, with great natural skill, say Bobby Orr, will actually force the play. He'll push. Sometimes they're good enough to get away with it. Orr got hurt pretty badly the first couple of years he played. He had operations on both knees. Now he's a little smarter, a little more careful, and a little more cynical. (Laughs.) Cynicism is a tool for survival. I began to grow up quickly. I became disillusioned with the game not being the pure thing it was earlier in my life. I began to see the exploitation of the players by the owners. You realize owners don't really care for you. You're a piece of property. They try to get as much out of you as they can. I remember once I had a torn shoulder. It was well in the process of healing. But I knew it wasn't right yet. They brought their doctor in. He said, "You can play." I played and ripped it completely. I was laid up. So I look at the owner. He shrugs his shoulders, walks away. He doesn't really hate me. He's impersonal.

Among players, while we're playing we're very close. Some of the best clubs I've played with have this intimacy-an intimacy modern man hardly ever achieves. We can see each other naked, emotionally, physically. We're plugged into each other, because we need each other. There have been times when I knew what the other guy was thinking without him ever talking to me. When that happens, we can do anything together.

It can't be just a job. It's not worth playing just for money. It's a way of life. When we were kids there was the release in playing, the sweetness in being able to move and control your body. This is what play is. Beating somebody is secondary. When I was a kid, to really move was my delight. I felt released because I could move around anybody. I was free.

That exists on the pro level, but there's the money aspect. You know they're making an awful lot of money off you. You know you're just a piece of property. When an older player's gone, it's not just his body. With modern training methods you can play a long time. But you just get fed up with the whole business. It becomes a job, just a s.h.i.+tty job. (Laughs.) I'm not wild about living in hotels, coming in late at night, and having to spend time in a room waiting for a game. You've got a day to kill and the game's in back of your mind. It's hard to relax. It's hard to read a good book. I'll read an easy book or go to a movie to kill the time. I didn't mind killing time when I was younger, but I resent killing time now. (Laughs.) I don't want to kill time. I want to do something with my time.

Traveling in the big jets and going to and from hotels is very tough. We're in New York on a Wednesday, Philadelphia on a Thursday, Buffalo on a Sat.u.r.day, Pittsburgh on a Sunday, and Detroit on a Tuesday. That's just a terrible way to live. (Laughs.) After the game on Sunday, I am tired -not only with my body, which is not a bad kind of tiredness, I'm tired emotionally, tired mentally. I'm not a very good companion after those games.

It's a lot tougher when things are going badly. It's more gritty and you don't feel very good about yourself. The whole object of a pro game is to win. That is what we sell. We sell it to a lot of people who don't win at all in their regular lives. They involve themselves with their team, a winning team. I'm not cynical about this. When we win, there's also a carry-over in us. Life is a little easier. But in the last two or three years fatigue has been there. I'm sucked out. But that's okay. I'd sooner live like that than be bored. If I get a decent sleep, a bit of food that's good and strong, I'm revived. I'm alive again.

The fans touch us, particularly when we've won. You can feel the pat of hands all over. On the back, on the shoulder, they want to shake your hand. When I'm feeling good about myself, I really respond to this. But if I don't feel so good, I play out the role. You have to act it out. It has nothing to do with pure play. It has nothing to do with the feeling I had when I was a kid.

'Cause h.e.l.l, n.o.body recognized me. I didn't have a role to play. Many of us are looking for some kind of role to play. The role of the professional athlete is one that I've learned to play very well. Laughing with strangers. It doesn't take much. It has its built-in moves, responses. There is status for the fans, but there's not a whole lot of status for me. (Laughs.) Not now. I know it doesn't mean very much. I shy away from it more and more. When I'm not feeling good and somebody comes up-"h.e.l.lo, Eric"-I'm at times a bit cold and abrupt. I can see them withdrawing from me, hurt. They want to be plugged into something and they're not. They may make a slurring remark. I can't do anything about it.

I'm fighting the cynicism. What I'd like to do is find an alter-life and play a little more. I don't have another vocation. I have a feeling unless I find one, my life might be a big anticlimax. I could get a job, but I don't want a job. I never had a job in the sense that I had to earn a living just for the sake of earning a living. I may have to do that, but I sure hope I don't.

I have doubts about what I do. I'm not that sure of myself. It doesn't seem clear to me at times. I'm a man playing a boy's game. Is this a valid reason for making money? Then I turn around and think of a job. I've tried to be a stockbroker. I say to a guy, "I got a good stock, you want to buy it?" He says, "No." I say, "Okay." You don't want to buy, don't buy. (Laughs.) I'm not good at persuading people to buy things they don't want to buy. I'm just not interested in the power of money. I found that out. That's the way one keeps score-the amount of money you earned. I found myself bored with that.

I've worked on construction and I liked that best of all. (Laughs.) I'd been working as a stockbroker and I couldn't stand it any more. I got drunk one Friday night and while I was careening around town I ran into this guy I knew from the past. He said for the h.e.l.l of it, "Why don't you come and work on the Hanc.o.c.k Building with me?" He was a super on the job. The next Monday I showed up. I stayed for a week. I was interested in seeing how a big building goes up-and working with my hands.

A stockbroker has more status. He surrounds himself with things of status. But the stockbroker comes to see me play, I don't go to see him be a stockbroker. (Laughs.) The real status is what my peers think of me and what I think of myself. The players have careful self-doubts at times. We talk about our sagging egos. Are we really that famous? Are we really that good? We have terrible doubts. (Laughs.) Actors may have something of this. Did I do well? Am I worth this applause? Is pus.h.i.+ng the puck around really that meaningful? (Laughs.) When I'm not pus.h.i.+ng that puck well, how come the fans don't like me? (Laughs.) Then there's the reverse reaction-a real brashness. They're always rationalizing to each other. That's probably necessary. It's not a bad way to handle things when you have no control over them. Players who are really put together, who have few doubts, are usually much more in control. If you're recognized by your peers, you're all right.

I still like the physicality, the sensuality of life. I still like to use my body. But the things I like now are more soft. I don't want to beat people. I don't want to prove anything. I have a friend who used to play pro football, but who shares my philosophy. We get into the country that is stark and cold and harsh, but there's a great aesthetic feedback. It's soft and comforting and sweet. We come out there with such enormous energy and so fit. We often go into town like a couple of fools and get mildly drunk and laugh a lot.

Being a physical man in the modern world is becoming obsolete. The machines have taken the place of that. We work in offices, we fight rules and corporations, but we hardly ever hit anybody. Not that hitting anybody is a solution. But to survive in the world at one time, one had to stand up and fight-fight the weather, fight the land, or fight the rocks. I think there is a real desire for man to do that. Today he has evolved into being more pa.s.sive, conforming . . .

I think that is why the professional game, with its terrific physicality-men getting together on a cooperative basis-this is appealing to the middle-cla.s.s man. He's the one who supports professional sports.

I think it's a reflection of the North American way of life. This is one of the ways you are somebody-you beat somebody. (Laughs.) You're better than they are. Somebody has to be less than you in order for you to be somebody. I don't know if that's right any more. I don't have that drive any more. If I function hard, it's against a hard environment. That's preferable to knocking somebody down.

I come up against a hard young stud now, and he wants the puck very badly, I'm inclined to give it to him. (Laughs.) When you start thinking like that you're in trouble, as far as being a pro athlete is involved. But I don't want to be anybody any more in those terms. I've had some money, I've had some big fat times, I've been on the stage.

It's been a good life. Maybe I could have done better, have a better record or something like that. But I've really had very few regrets over the past twenty years. I can enjoy some of the arts that I had shut myself off from as a kid. Perhaps that is my only regret. The pa.s.sion for the game was so all-consuming when I was a kid that I blocked myself from music. I cut myself off from a certain broadness of experience. Maybe one has to do that to fully explore what they want to do the most pa.s.sionately.

I know a lot of pro athletes who have a capacity for a wider experience. But they wanted to become champions. They had to focus themselves on their one thing completely. His primary force when he becomes champion is his ego trip, his desire to excel, to be somebody special. To some degree, he must dehumanize himself. I look forward to a lower key way of living. But it must be physical. I'm sure I would die without it, become a drunk or something.

I still like to skate. One day last year on a cold, clear, crisp afternoon, I saw this huge sheet of ice in the street. G.o.dd.a.m.n, if I didn't drive out there and put on my skates. I took off my camel-hair coat. I was just in a suit jacket, on my skates. And I flew. n.o.body was there. I was free as a bird. I was really happy. That goes back to when I was a kid. I'll do that until I die, I hope. Oh, I was free!

The wind was blowing from the north. With the wind behind you, you're in motion, you can wheel and dive and turn, you can lay yourself into impossible angles that you never could walking or running. You lay yourself at a forty-five degree angle, your elbows virtually touching the ice as you're in a turn. Incredible! It's beautiful! You're breaking the bounds of gravity. I have a feeling this is the innate desire of man.

(His eyes are glowing.) I haven't kept many photographs of myself, but I found one where I'm in full flight. I'm leaning into a turn. You pick up the centrifugal forces and you lay in it. For a few seconds, like a gyroscope, they support you. I'm in full flight and my head is turned. I'm concentrating on something and I'm grinning. That's the way I like to picture myself. I'm something else there. I'm on another level of existence, just being in pure motion. Going wherever I want to go, whenever I want to go. That's nice, you know. (Laughs softly.) GEORGE ALLEN.

Head coach and general manager of the Was.h.i.+ngton Redskins. One word, if but one were chosen, describes him: intense. One aim, if but one were chosen, explains him: to win. An air of monasticism as well as industry pervades. He is Parsifal seeking the Holy Grail each Sunday afternoon of the season.

We're at the headquarters of the professional football team. It is an enclave in Virginia, some twenty-five miles outside Was.h.i.+ngton. It has the appearance of a successful industrial complex. Aside from blackboards, chalked with arcane diagrams, there are plaques on the walls of the offices bearing the recurring encomium: ". . . for the unselfish sacrifice while serving with outstanding leaders.h.i.+p, vision, ability. . . ." Most striking are two silver discs under gla.s.s: it is the Fiftieth Anniversary American Legion Award for G.o.d and Country.

The conference room, in which the frequently interrupted conversation took place (his secretary, besieged by callers, in person and on the telephone, beckoned him out every few minutes), has the feel of "clout." The enormous table should be the envy of any board of directors. He appears harried by the pressures of the moment. Tomorrow the training camp opens in preparation for the forthcoming season.

I took the job and walked out in the middle of this woods. I call it our Shangri-La. We've got everything we need here to win. And we're going to improve it. We're putting in a hundred yards of Astroturf, and they're replacing the cinder track with a synthetic track, tartan. There will be no distractions.

We've been working in the off-season as much as twelve, fourteen, fifteen hours a day. When the season begins, it's seven days a week, morning, noon, and night. To get ready for football.

I like to make notes at home and go over things. I take a pad and a pencil and carry it around with me all the time. I want to read, things that have to be done.

Among the books in his office were The Encyclopedia of Football, Best Plays, several by himself, including Defense Drills, How to Train a Quarterback, The Complete Book of Winning Football Drills, as well as the Football Register, the Congressional Directory for the 92nd Congress, Outstanding Young Men in America, and What the Executive Should Know About the Accounting Statements.

You have to put a priority on everything you do each day. If you don't, you won't finish it. If you enjoy your job, it isn't work. It's fun. If you detest going to work, then you're looking for ways to beat the clock. I'd rather come to the Redskin Park and do my thing, so to speak, than I would play golf. Golf is a fine sport, but it's too time-consuming. I don't have that time schedule.

When you get so engrossed in your job during the season it has to come ahead of your family. I'm fortunate that I have an understanding wife, who's a good mother. My children have now kind of accepted that routine. They've been brought up with it and it's just the way I am. It may be a mistake. It should be that your family and church come first. But I think that during the season there's so much to be done. I am even working right up to the kickoff to figure out a way that we can still win.

Everything we do is based on winning. I don't care how hard you work or how well organized you are, if you don't win, what good is it? It's down the drain. You can have a tremendous game plan, but if you lose the game, what good was the plan?

One of the greatest things is to be in a locker room after a win. And be with the players and coaches and realize what's been accomplished, what you've gone through. The rewards are not necessarily tangible. It's the hard work and the agony and the blood and sweat and tears.

When you lose, it's a morgue. That's the way it should be, because you've failed. Once in a while you'll see some tears. I don't think there's anything wrong with crying. I think it's good, it's emotional. I think when you put a lot of yourself into something it should take a lot out. Some people can lose and then go out and be the life of the party. I can't. The only way you can get over a loss is to win the next week.

Grantland Rice, who was one of our great sports writers, said it didn't matter if you won or lost, it was how you played the game. I disagree completely. The main thing is to win. That's what the game is for. Just to go out and play and then say, "Well, I didn't win but I played the game, I partic.i.p.ated"-anybody can do that. You have to be number one, whether it's football or selling insurance or anything.

Most coaches aren't too business-minded. I'm the general manager of the Redskins, so I have to be a little more aware of business than just a coach. I'm more interested in how we can get more income in, to use that to help us win. So we can spend more money. Anything you can learn on accounting or business is helpful. We're an organization.

Each player is part of a whole team. A football team is a lot like a machine. It's made up of parts. I like to think of it as a Cadillac. A Cadillac's a pretty good car. All the refined parts working together make the team. If one part doesn't work, one player pulling against you and not doing his job, the whole machine fails.

n.o.body is indispensable. If he can't play, we let him know that he's not going to be with us. "Do you want to play somewhere else?" We try to improve and replace some of the parts every year.

The only time you relax is when you win. If you lose, you don't relax until you win. That's the way I am. It's a state of tension almost continuously.

Allen's Ten Commandments59 1. Football comes first. "During the off-season, I tell my players that their family and church should come one, two, with football third. But during the six months of the season, the compet.i.tion in the NFL is so tough that we have to put football ahead of everything else."

2. The greatest feeling in life is to take an ordinary job and accomplish something with it. . . .

3. If you can accept defeat and open your pay envelope without feeling guilty, you're stealing. "You're stealing from your employer and from yourself. Winning is the only way to go. . . . Losers just look foolish in a new car or partying it up. As far as I'm concerned, life without victories is like being in prison."

4. Everyone, the head coach especially, must give 110 percent. . . . "The average good American pictures himself as a hard worker. But most persons are really operating at less than half-power. They never get above fifty percent. . . . Therefore, to get one hundred, you must aim for 110. A man who is concerned with an eight-hour day never works that long, and seldom works half that long. The same man, however, when challenged by a seventeen-hour day, will be just warmed up and driving when he hits the eighth hour. . . .

5. Leisure time is that five or six hours when you sleep at night. "n.o.body should work all the time. Everybody should have some leisure. . . . You can combine two good things at once, sleep and leisure."

6. No detail is too small. No task is too small or too big. "Winning can be defined as the science of being totally prepared. I define preparation in three words: leave nothing undone. . . . Nowadays there is . . . no difference between one team and another in the NFL. Usually the winner is going to be the team that's better prepared. . . ."

7. You must accomplish things in life, otherwise you are like the paper on the wall. "The achiever is the only individual who is truly alive. There can be no inner satisfaction in simply driving a fine car or eating in a fine restaurant or watching a good movie or television program. Those who think they're enjoying themselves doing any of that are half-dead and don't know it. . . ."

8. A person with problems is dead. "Everybody has problems. The successful person solves his. He acknowledges them, works on them, and solves them. He is not disturbed when another day brings another kind of problem. . . . The winner . . . . solves his own problems. The man swayed by someone else is a two-time loser. First, he hasn't believed in his own convictions and second, he is still lost."

9. We win and lose as a team . . . .

10. My prayer is that each man will be allowed to play to the best of his ability.

IN CHARGE.

WARD QUAAL.

We're at Tribune Square, Chicago. We're in the well-appointed office of the president of WGN-Continental Broadcasting Corporation-"the most powerful broadcast medium in the Midwest." He has been battling a slight sinus condition, but his presence is, nonetheless, felt.

"I'm responsible for all its broadcasting properties. We have radio and television here. We have a travel company here. We have a sales company here. We have the Continental Productions Company here. We have radio and television in Minnesota and translator systems in northern Michigan, Wisconsin, as well as Minnesota. We have cable television in Michigan and California. We have television in Denver. We have sales companies in New York and Tokyo. I operate sixteen different organizations in the United States and j.a.pan."

My day starts between four thirty and five in the morning, at home in Winnetka. I dictate in my library until about seven thirty. Then I have breakfast. The driver gets there about eight ' and oftentimes I continue dictating in the car on the way to the office. I go to the Broadcast Center in the morning and then to Tribune Square around noon. Of course, I do a lot of reading in the car.

I talk into a dictaphone. I will probably have as many as 150 letters dictated by seven-thirty in the morning. I have five full-time secretaries, who do nothing but work for Ward Quaal. I have seven swing girls, who work for me part-time. This does not include my secretaries in New York, Los Angeles, Was.h.i.+ngton, and San Francisco. They get dicta-belts from me every day. They also take telephone messages. My personal secretary doesn't do any of that. She handles appointments and my trips. She tries to work out my schedule to fit these other secretaries.

I get home around six-thirty, seven at night. After dinner with the family I spend a minimum of two and a half hours each night going over the mail and dictating. I should have a secretary at home just to handle the mail that comes there. I'm not talking about bills and personal notes, I'm talking about business mail only. Although I don't go to the office on Sat.u.r.day or Sunday, I do have mail brought out to my home for the weekend. I dictate on Sat.u.r.day and Sunday. When I do this on holidays, like Christmas, New Year's, and Thanksgiving, I have to sneak a little bit, so the family doesn't know what I'm doing.

Ours is a twenty-four-hour-a-day business. We're not turning out three thousand gross of shoes, beans, or neckties. We're turning out a new product every day, with new problems. It's not unusual for me to get a phone call on a weekend: "What are your thoughts on it, Mr. Quaal? Would you speak out on it?" I'm not going to hide my posture on it. I'm going to answer that. This may mean going into the studio to make a recording. Or I may do a tape recording at home. Or maybe I'll just make a statement. I am in a seven-day-a-week job and I love it!

"I grew up in a very poor family. Not only did no one come to us for advice, we went to other people for advice. We wondered what we were going to do for the next dollar. We did manage during the Depression. But I know others who didn't extricate themselves from these difficulties. I won't forget them. A letter from one of those individuals asking for help is just as important to me as a suggestion from the chairman of the board of the Chase Manhattan Bank. They get the same weight. They get a personal letter from me. He didn't write to my a.s.sistant, he didn't write to my secretary. He wants to hear from Ward Quaal."

When I come to the Broadcast Center, I'll probably have about five or six different stacks of mail. One stack is urgent and should be acted upon before I make any phone calls. Once I handle that, which usually takes about fifteen, twenty minutes, I start the important phone calls. In-between these phone calls and others of lesser importance, I get into the other mail. On a typical day we'll get thirteen hundred pieces of first-cla.s.s mail addressed to me personally. Every letter is answered within forty-eight hours -and not a form letter. There are no form letters. If they write to the president of the company, they don't want to hear from the third vice president. They hear from the president. Mail and the telephone, that's the name of the game in this business.

I imagine your phone calls are not long in nature?

No, they're not long in nature. I have this ability-I learned this when I was an announcer years ago, and we were feeding six networks out of here. I could listen to all these channels with earphones and I knew when to say the right cue at the right time. I can still do that.

"In high school I wanted to be a good football player, a good basketball player, a good baseball player. I managed to be captain of every team on which I ever played. At the end of my freshman year my coach said, 'There's a shortage of people to do oratory and declamatory work.' He said, 'We've just simply got to have somebody with your voice. If you would do this, I would excuse you from football practice a couple of nights a week.' I won the oratorical and declamatory champions.h.i.+p for the state of Michigan. On the night of the finals in Ishpeming, which were broadcast, the chief engineer of a radio station, a Polish gentleman, called my mother and told her I'd be a network announcer someday.

"I started working during my freshman year in high school as an announcer at WBEO in Marquette. I worked from 10:00 A.M. to 10:00 P.M. and got $17.50 a week. At the same time, I drove a commercial milk truck from four in the morning to eight, and I got $22-50 a week for that. The two jobs gave me money to go to the University of Michigan. I have great pride in my university. I was chairman of the Alumni Fund and its Development Council.

"I won the job as a Detroit radio announcer at thirty-five dollars a week, while still a student. I hitchhiked or took a bus every day from Ann Arbor to Detroit. On the campus I was promotion manager of the yearbook. I was sports and feature writer for the Michigan Daily. I was on the freshman football team, baseball team, and basketball team. And I was president of the fraternity. All at one time. Shows you can do it if you work hard enough.

"When I applied for admission at the university, I was asked what my goal was after graduation. I said, 'The announcing staff of WGN.' I finished my last exam June 8, 1941, and I started at WGN the next day."

I had no desire to be an announcer forever. I wanted to become general manager. I think this is something anybody can do. The number one thing in any business is to go get a background, so you can show your people you can do anything they can do. My people today know I can announce any show they could, I can write a script, I can produce a show, I can handle a camera. If I still had the voice, I would enjoy being back on the air again.

I've had to develop a team effort with all people. I prefer being called Ward rather than Mr. Quaal. Ninety percent of the people do call me by my first name. The young women of the organization do not, although I certainly would not disapprove of them calling me Ward. The last thing I want to be is a stuffed s.h.i.+rt. I'm trying to run this organization on a family basis. I prefer it to be on the informal side.

I've always felt throughout my lifetime that if you have any ability at all, go for first place. That's all I'm interested in. That doesn't mean I'm trying to be an autocrat. Lord knows I'm not a dictator. I try to give all my colleagues total autonomy. But they know there's one guy in charge.

Of course, you have to be number two before you become number one -unless you're born into something. I was born into a poor family. I had to create my own paths. Sure, I've been second vice president, first vice president, and executive vice president. But I had only one goal in life and that was to be president.

A fellow like Ward Quaal, he's one of the old hands now. That doesn't mean I'm going to vegetate. I intend to devote more time to our subsidiaries and to develop young people who come forth with new ideas. I don't look forward to retirement. I feel I have many useful years ahead of me. When the time comes to step aside, I won't regret it at all. I have a lot of writing to do. I'll have so much to do.

You're more of a philosopher-king than a boss . . .

I think that is true. When I came here sixteen years ago, August first, I never had any desire to be a czar. I don't like to say I ruled with an iron hand, but I had to take charge and clean up the place. I am the captain calling the signals and every once in a while I call the right play and we're pretty lucky.

I don't feel any pressure, though my family says I sometimes show it. I'm not under tension. I go to bed at night and I sleep well. The company is doing well. My people are functioning as a team. The success story is not Ward Quaal. It's a great team of people.

POSTSCRIPT: "On a typical day we get about seven hundred phone calls. We average eighty a day long distance." I estimated that during the time of this conversation, there were about forty phone calls for Ward Quaal.

DAVE BENDER.

It is a newly built, quite modern factory on the outskirts of a large industrial city. Scores of people are at work in the offices. Sounds of typewriters and adding machines; yet an air of informality pervades. He has come into his private office, tie askew; he's in need of a shave. We have a couple of shots of whisky.

"I manufacture coin machine and vending machine parts-components. We also make units for amus.e.m.e.nt devices. We don't know what they're gonna do with it. We have ideas what they might. I have about two hundred employees. I never counted. They're people. We have tool and die makers, mold makers, sheet metal, screw machine, woodwork, painting, coil winding. You name it, we got it."

I just stay in the background. Myself, I like making things. I make the machinery here. I'm not an engineer, but I have an idea and I kind of develop things and-(with an air of wonder)-they work. All night long I think about this place. I love my work. It isn't the money. It's just a way of expressing my feeling.

When we started here we were strictly in the pinball game part business. I kept adding and adding and adding and never stopped. Finally I got into the jukebox end of it. Of course, slot machines came in and then slot machines went out. Never fool with Uncle Sam. When they said no slot machine parts, they meant it and I meant it too. I don't want them checking up on us. You can live without it. We make so many different things. A little of this, a little of that. Not a lot of any one thing.

I made a machine that makes plastic tubes. It becomes like a parasite. It runs through 250 feet a minute, five tubes at a time. I made it with a bunch of crazy ideas and junk I found around the place. I can sell that machine for twenty thousand dollars. If I dress it up and put flowers on it, you can sell it for much, much more.

I was a no-good b.u.m, kicked out of high school. I went up to a teacher and I said, "If you don't pa.s.s me, I'll blow your brains out." I stole a gun. (Laughs.) I was kicked out. It was my second year. I did some dirty things I can't talk about. (Laughs.) When I was thirteen years old I took a Model T Ford apart and put it together again in the bas.e.m.e.nt. I did some crazy things.

When I talk to people about plastic I take the position I'm the plastic and how would I travel through the machine and what would I see. Maybe I'm goofy. In business I take the position: where would I be if I were the customer? What do I expect of you? Some people are natural born stinkers. I try to find a way to get to them. You can break down anybody with the right method.

I sell all I make. I don't know what to do with 'em. (Laughs.) They use 'em for packaging. I work with wood, plastic, metal, anything. I work with paper. Even at home. Sunday I was taking paper and pasting it together and finding a method of how to drop spoons, a fork, a napkin, and a straw into one package. The napkin feeder I got. The straw feeder we made already. That leaves us the spoon and the fork. How do we get it? Do we blow the bag open? Do we push it open? Do we squeeze it down? So I'm shoving things in and pus.h.i.+ng with my wife's hair clips and bobby pins and everything I can get my hands on. I even took the cat's litter, the stuff you pick up the c.r.a.p with (laughs), even that to shove with the bag, to pull it open. This is for schools, inexpensive packaging. It sells for about a penny a package. Plastic. In a bag, the whole darn thing. So what can I tell you?

Everybody is packaging the stuff. Their method is antique. My method is totally automatic. I know what my compet.i.tors are doing. I never underestimate 'em, but I'm ten steps ahead of 'em. I can meet them any way they want. But not to cut their heart out. We all have to make a living.

"I started this whole d.a.m.n thing with forty dollars. In 1940. I borrowed it. In 1938 I was a big dealer. I was the greatest c.r.a.p shooter in the world. (Laughs.) I was makin' rubber parts and plunger rods for the pin games. Then the war broke out in '41. Where do you get the rods? I took a hacksaw and went to the junkyards. Remember the old rails that went up and down on the beds? I cut that out and made plunger rods. I did some crazy things.

"I started with a couple of people. I made fifteen dollars a week for myself and I didn't even have that. Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, I tried everything. Making work gloves. I was eighteen, I went into the coal business. I borrowed two hundred dollars from my brother. Suddenly I had four trucks. I got sick and tired of coal and gave my father the keys for the four trucks and I said, 'Pa, it's your business. You owe me zero.' What else did I do? Oh G.o.d, making things. Making a factory. I love making.

"Business to me is a method of engineering. Even in advertising. I've always wondered why they don't get people for what they really are. Like this Alka-Seltzer commercial. I operate business the same way-in getting to the people. What are we other than people?"

Even during the war, I never took advantage of a price. I used to sell something for thirty-five cents. During the war I still sold it for thirty-five cents. A customer said, "Dave, I'll never forget you." They're liars. They did forget soon afterward. I never took anybody. I built my business on that. My compet.i.tors came and they went and I'm still at it. I'm bigger now than ever.

I hope to be going public. So I have to show an increase. That's the name of the game. I have workers been here twenty-seven, twenty-eight years. I feel I owe them something. I don't know how to compensate them. At least if I go public, I can offer them stock. I'd like to repay people. This is a way of saying thank you.