Oral History Program Nancy Freeman Interviewed by Richard Sadler and Gene Sessions 30 May 2006 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Nancy Freeman Interviewed by Richard Sadler and Gene Sessions 30 May 2006 Copyright © 2011 by Weber State University, Stewart Library Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The Utah Construction Company/Utah International Inc. Oral History Project was created to capture the memories of individuals associated with the company. Several of the interviewees are family and relatives, others are personalities involved with Utah Construction Company/Utah International Inc. and some of the company’s prominent figures. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Nancy Freeman, an oral history by Richard Sadler and Gene Sessions, 30 May 2006, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Nancy Freeman. It was conducted by Dr. Richard Sadler and Dr. Gene Sessions of Weber State University on May 30, 2006. Ms. Freeman worked for Utah Construction/Utah International for over forty years, during which time she served as the administrative assistant to Edmund Wattis Littlefield. The interview concerns her recollections of UCUI during this time. Lisa Largent was also present during the interview. GS: We are grateful to you for your hospitality. Maybe you could begin by telling us a little bit about your early life, Nancy. Where were you born and where did you grow up? NF: I was born in Brinmore Hospital in Pennsylvania and grew up in Radner, Pennsylvania. My mother had been attending the Brinmore and Radcliffe Colleges, she was a blue-book type, and my father was from Kansas. He was in advertising with Curtis Publishing. The two of them didn‟t totally agree on what should happen with their kids. My sister and I were determined that we were never going to have coming-out parties and be debutantes. My mother was a fox hunter and always had her own horses. She promised that if we would go to Brinmore and do all of this, that we could have our own horses. That didn‟t go over very big with us. So that mainline Pennsylvania thing was very good until we could get away from it and then, of course, we never wanted to go back. I went to Penn State. Then, when I went to New York, my father said, “Give it a year and if you like it, great. But be sure you don‟t just stay for the sake of staying in New York.” Of course, I stayed for five years. I was roommates 2 with a friend of mine from home, and we ended up marrying two men who knew each other. My first husband was a teacher who had signed up to teach in the dependent schools for the Air Force in Europe. Of course, you have to wait and wait to do that, and meanwhile, we had gotten married. By the time he was accepted, I was about to have a baby and we were the first married couple ever to go teach in the dependent schools. We lived in France for a year, England for a year, Libya for a year, and then back to France for two years. It was incredible. My daughter was just a tiny baby so we put her in the back of the Volkswagen and traveled all over Europe and had a ball. GS: Did you learn French? NF: I didn‟t study it, but I certainly learned it. The people there were so sweet. The first two weeks there, I had my child under my arm in a diaper and a T-shirt and the women were just horrified; they would keep trying to cover up Anna. She was healthy as can be. We had an apartment with almost no heat and she had the best bedroom. She would sleep cross-wise on the double bed. In the winter, we would go in there in the morning and the laundry hanging on the line would be frozen solid. GS: You were five years there? Then what? NF: And then Buzz decided to go to graduate school at Gannon. GS: What was he majoring in? NF: He was into education and he was going to come back and get more. He ended up being a principal in the last couple of years. 3 GS: Where did the accident occur? NF: My parents were living out here at the time. We had called them and said, “We are in Tahoe and we‟re coming on down.” They even said, “You know, it‟s late, you shouldn‟t do that.” We stopped to get something to eat. Occasionally, my husband had seizures. He hadn‟t had one in two years or something, but of course, we were so exhausted…he was driving and had a seizure. It was just awful, absolutely horrible. It is probably lucky that he never survived because he would have been a vegetable and it would have been just terrible. You make friends with all these people because you are so vulnerable I guess, and the doctor who sewed up my face used to visit us, bring food over for Anna and me, and sit around and talk. He said it took him an hour and a half to sew up my face. He said, “You were speaking French the whole time,” and I said, “Well, that‟s pretty unbelievable. I‟m sure I was repeating myself a lot.” My French wasn‟t that good. GS: Now, you moved home with your folks. Where did they live? NF: They lived out in Park Merced, here in San Francisco, but I didn‟t stay there long. The first thing I did was drive around and find a school that had child care and then I found the first apartment that had a place for rent which was right on the next block. GS: Was this 1964? NF: This was 1964. We had the accident right around Labor Day and he died October fifth. Then it was a matter of getting my act together and trying to get through all this. 4 GS: If you don‟t mind repeating, tell us about how you went to Utah and began to be interviewed and all of that. NF: Some employment agency sent me on various interviews, and one of them was at Utah. I got the bus down, got off the bus, walked into the building, and had this feeling: “This is where I‟m going to be,” which has happened to me any number of times with other situations. GS: Like with this house. NF: Yes, with this house. I went in and met Mack Chamblis. It turned out he had lost one of his parents—I forget if it was his mother or his father—when he was eight years old, so he totally understood my situation and was so gracious. Charlie Traverse kept calling me back saying, “Now this isn‟t going to work,” and Mac said, “It‟s going to work with me.” He and his wife befriended us and they would steal Anna from me on the weekends to give me a break once in awhile. GS: How old was she? NF: She was just turning five when this happened, so it was very tough. GS: Was she injured at all? NF: She was in the back seat sound asleep and got thrown against the back of the front seat, but no, thank goodness. We had a tough adjustment but she and I were so bonded. We look a lot alike. We act alike. We think alike. Here she is 3,000 miles away and three different times we have done exactly the same thing like bought the same thing. Twice we have done that—bought identical clothing at the same store. Things like this we do all the time. We will both say the same thing at the same instant just out of the blue. Of course, we know each other so 5 well, we still do it. Her husband is Austrian. She met him in Austria. He wouldn‟t let us sit next to each other if he was across from us because it would just drive him crazy and he couldn‟t stand it. GS: So you started with Utah Construction in November of 1964. NF: Do you remember hearing about Mannis Cannon? He was in the personnel department, and was the one who hired all of the construction guys. He never had anything written down anywhere. It was all in his head. He was unbelievable. This went on for years and years. He knew exactly where everyone was, where to find them. Then he started to have a heart attack at work and he was out for a while. Everyone went into a panic because it was all in his head. GS: How long did you work for Utah? NF: Forever. After I started, they moved me upstairs to work for Bob Wheaton, who, I‟m sure you know, was the administrative assistant at that point. Then I worked for Albert Reeves, which was lovely. Very interesting fellow. I worked for him…I guess for five years or so. I started with Littlefield at the end of 1970. GS: You were with Reeves just before that? NF: Yes. GS: What was working for Albert Reeves like? NF: He had a lively ego and always wanted to be center stage. He was very bright. His enunciation was perfect and so was everything that he wrote. He always wanted to be in control of the situation and be the center of attention. When we had board meetings, he would ask me to come in and I said, “I won‟t do it.” I had a tendency to do things my way. 6 GS: What was his job title? NF: He was the senior vice president. He was a lawyer. He and Orville Dykstra were an interesting combination. They had many differences, but it was great because they were constantly challenging each other. GS: Now, you are strong willed and he was strong willed. You got along for five years. How did you do that? NF: He could be very difficult. When I went in there to work, I had no goal of making a career of this job. I did it because I had to survive. I had to work. I had to bring up my daughter. I think my whole attitude was a lot different from other people. When the day was finished, I went home to take care of my daughter. I was never trying to climb up. I wasn‟t competitive with anyone because I let everyone do what they want. I think that took people aback a little bit because I wasn‟t trying to get anywhere. This worked for me because I wasn‟t pushing anybody‟s buttons and they thought, “Well, Nancy is easy to get along with, we‟ll just…” GS: You arrived in San Francisco in 1964. What was San Francisco like in the „60s? NF: Oh, much different. It was the beginning of the Haight-Ashbury and all of that, but there was nowhere near the congestion and traffic. As you can probably see while you are here, you can‟t get anywhere and you can‟t park anywhere, but I love it. Then it was much simpler, although I have always felt that San Francisco is such a friendly place to live. I have no desire to live anywhere else. Jack wouldn‟t mind leaving, but then I say, “Well, where would you go? There is no place like here.” 7 GS: Now, you started working for Ed Littlefield in 1970. How long did you work for him? NF: In 1992, Utah had an opportunity for people who were of certain ages and who had been there for a certain period of time to take early retirement and still keep all their retirement plan, health benefits, and everything else, and I felt that this was the time for me. Of course, I adored him, so when I said, “You know, this might be a good idea for me because Heaven knows if they are ever going to offer it again.” He absolutely had a fit. He said, “You can‟t do this.” So I said, “I will move my office to my house. I will set up an office at home. We will have the fax machine, the computer, the phone, everything else. I can come into the company as often as you want me to, but not every day.” So finally I convinced him that this would be great because I was a big rower at the time and I always have to be doing something physical. I just had to do it. He was furious for a few weeks. Then he realized how easy this was. I always worked much better under pressure and could just never fail to get the work done, which was good with him, believe me. He was so fair. He ended up loving it because then he could have me go down to the house and meet him or I could just go into the office and we would go to lunch and in some ways it was a lot simpler then. I did that from 1992 until after he died, and then I worked with the family. Finally, in 2002, I said this is enough, so it was just under forty years. GS: That is a great contribution. If someone were to say to you, “We don‟t know anything about Utah Construction,” how would you describe the company to them? 8 NF: I found it an amazing place to work, mainly because the same people kept coming back, and in the construction industry that is unusual. They were so well taken care of. Everyone who knew Ed Littlefield loved him so much that they had to do everything they could to keep him in their basket. GS: How would you describe Ed Littlefield? I mean, you worked with him for nearly four decades. What kind of a person was he? NF: When I first moved upstairs to work for Bob Wheaton, Mr. Littlefield interviewed me. I went in and he did most of the talking, which I found fascinating. He was just talking about the company and this, that, and the other thing, and I hardly had to say a word. Of course, he had heard, I‟m sure, from other people what I was all about. He was always so fair. I was talking to Leo yesterday—I hadn‟t talked to him in ages and we had a hysterical conversation. He used the word, “He had so much grace.” I said, “Well, that is interesting that you say that because my immediate reaction to Ed Littlefield is the way he could listen.” He would sit and let whoever it was say what was on their mind. He never interrupted. He let them go through the whole thing, which for a man of his stature, I find fabulous. He just had patience for things like that. Now, if you send him to a doctor‟s appointment or somewhere else and he had to wait, that was a whole different story. He had no patience at all. He hated it. But he was incredible with people. He was so fair, and I think having the land division, the construction and the mining—those three different elements—that was very intentional because each of those departments had to come up and prove themselves. Even though he was the overseer of it all, he 9 loved delegating. He loved to have whatever the contingencies were among those groups. He found that worthwhile for the company and it sure paid off, it really did. GS: What kind of an opportunity did you have to meet Marriner Eccles? NF: Oh, I knew him very well because Albert Reeves‟ office— which I sat outside of— was right off the entrance to Marriner‟s area—his office—and so Marriner would come by back and forth all the time, and we would always have these wonderful conversations. He loved to talk, so you could just go into his office when you knew that he was all by himself and he wanted to talk, and you would hear these stories that were just marvelous. GS: What kinds of stories did he tell? NF: Oh the historical stuff. Things about the Federal Reserve. He was delightful. And then, of course, he and Ed would have long discussions on “where do we go from here,” because they didn‟t think totally alike but they always ended up agreeing. GS: How would you characterize their relationship? NF: Oh, they were very fond of each other. They had so much respect for each other. When Marriner got older, it was hard to keep up the momentum with him because he would kind of lose track. GS: What kind of time frame was that? You began to see him a lot in the late „60s. How long was he pretty vital? NF: He kept that office for quite awhile, and certainly after I moved down the hall with Ed he was still there, but I don‟t remember what year he stopped coming in. 10 RS: He began to fade out of the picture in the early „70s. NF: That could be. GS: It probably would have been more when you were with Mr. Reeves. NF: I certainly saw more of him then. GS: Did Mr. Eccles talk at all about his early background in Utah growing up, that you remember? NF: It was wonderful because we would have certain days, well Marriner didn‟t do a lot of this, but people would have Christmas parties and things. Everyone was there from the top all the way down to the mail people, and you would have these wonderful parties and people would sit around and talk and communicate, and it went on year after year. A lot of times a bunch of us would go across the street to the bar to have a drink. Ed or some of these people would come and join us, which was unheard of in other situations, but they did it. GS: Everyone was a family. NF: It was definitely a family. And they all looked out for each other. It was amazing. I had déjà vu in 1982. When my daughter was graduating from high school, she didn‟t feel like going right to college and she worked in a boutique. Finally I said, “Alright, you are going to go to Vienna,”—where my aunt had lived since before the war, “—and stay with Tottie for a while.” So she went over there and it worked. She studied German and went through all this stuff and then she came back. During one of her stays over there, she was in a horrible car accident. The whole thing was déjà vu. Absolutely dreadful. So, somehow, I had to go over there and deal with that. Ed was unbelievable. Everybody there was just 11 unbelievable. They were so fair and constantly calling to check. It was definitely family. Absolutely. GS: I‟m not sure we have on the tape the description you made about when you started to work for Utah and shortly thereafter they donated blood to the hospital. Would you mind telling us that again? NF: Buzz had been in the hospital for a month, and when I started that job and told them what had happened, I found out that they had donated like twelve pints of blood to the hospital to make up for what he had received. GS: Here you were just a brand new employee. NF: They had never heard of me before, except that when I went in for the interview, I gave them a reference of a man for whom I had worked in New York and they called Norman, who said, “No, you can‟t hire her. You send her right back here.” GS: You had great references. RS: You mentioned, just a little bit about going to social affairs. As a person who was very close to Ed, did you get involved in much of the social aspect of the company? I mean, you said that the administrators would come over and have a drink and this and that, but talk about that a little bit. We have heard a little bit about the picnics. NF: Oh, the picnics were great. They went on year after year and you would all compete together, you would dance together. GS: Very egalitarian. NF: Oh very. They had bridge, so some of the bridge players wouldn‟t show up for awhile, but then even they would all join in with the group. There were a lot of just 12 sit-around sessions at the office. Well, with the General Electric merger, of course, I was working all the time with that, and everybody was very secretive about everything, but the comradery among all the people was just incredible. There was so much that went on in the company. We would have meetings and things that always ended up having social aspects to them. It really seemed to work. GS: Did the merger change things? NF: Yes, it was very hard for a lot of people because the company had such an incredible reputation. And, of course, as Ed said, “We have got to take care of the shareholders. They have to come first.” He was right. Heaven knows what would have happened if Australia had just suddenly said, “Well, we‟re going to nationalize everything, and that‟s it.” So it was a brilliant move, but it was very hard for a lot of people to take. GS: What was the size of the staff before the merger and then after the merger? What did the merger do? NF: It didn‟t really change much because they left Utah as its own entity in many ways. Of course, Ed was on the board at GE, so he had a close association, but for the rest of it, very few people from GE came to San Francisco and got totally involved in what was going on because they knew we had a lot more expertise in that field than they did, which is, again, why they ended up selling us, because it wasn‟t their field. GS: When they sold to BHP, what kind of changes were there? 13 NF: That was worse. None of us were really very happy about all that. The Australians—who I feel really wanted us because the company had been doing so well in Australia—they had all this experience and had made lots of good money. Of course, they kept pulling more and more of our people over to Australia, but then kept trying to take over, so it was just like something moving in on you. I think if they had left Utah to its own devices, in many ways, it would have been much better off for both of us, because they didn‟t commingle very well. And then BHP never really wanted to communicate with San Francisco, they didn‟t want to get involved in anything here, politically or in any other way. They came in with this company and didn‟t do a lot. They never did anything on a charitable basis or for the community, so they weren‟t the best loved around. GS: And they eliminated the Utah name. NF: We were just heart-broken when all of this happened. Luckily, I was getting near the end of things, because for me to see these people being moved out and then away…a lot of good stuff went with all of that. GS: They show very little interest, now, in Utah with regard to the collection and getting cooperation from them. NF: They wouldn‟t do anything when we were trying to collect all that stuff; they were just shrugging their shoulders. GS: Would you talk a little bit about the collection? Do you remember when I came down and you helped us do all the research, and then Sterling began to work with Ed to get the collection sent to Ogden? 14 NF: I wasn‟t as involved in that. Chris Grey worked for Bud Wilson. She had a lot to do with it. She is from Utah, so she loved having it go there. I think the Utah people had a little archive where a lot of it came from. Of course, reams of stuff came from Littlefield‟s files and the photographs were incredible. Absolutely incredible. GS: Somewhere in the neighborhood of a million photographs. So, you didn‟t have a lot to do with it? NF: I didn‟t have a lot to do with that, no. I was the secretary of the Executive Committee. I was his administrative assistant, so I always had to do the Executive Committee minutes and that type of thing. Of course, a lot of this thing with the archives came much later, while I was working at home in 1992. GS: What was a typical day like for Mr. Littlefield? About what time did he arrive and what was he like? NF: Thank goodness he didn‟t come in before 8:15 because I was rowing three days a week. We would row in the bay and I would come into the office with my clothes for the day, take a shower, and get all ready for work before he came. It was terrific, because otherwise I never would have made it. He came in around 8:15. This is earlier, before he really started to retire. But he kept himself busy all the time. He always had an agenda. He kept voracious notes—all those notebooks that were in the closet outside the boardroom. He used to take lengthy notes on everything that happened. Of course, he stopped doing that later. He was on a number of boards when I first went to work for him. He was on all sorts of boards of directors and, of course, our own board with meetings here and 15 there. He was constantly asked to give speeches. They were just marvelous. When he dictated speeches, you hardly ever changed anything. Of course, he would go back over them, but they were incredible, really good. He never got bored in the office. He wouldn‟t just sit there. He kept things going. With these administrative assistants, he was constantly pushing them to make something of themselves. Leo commented on the phone yesterday, he said, “I‟ll never forget him telling me „Move up from the bottom. Don‟t ever let me come from the top and get you somewhere.‟” That sort of wording, but not exactly, and he took that seriously, because he knew he had to move up on his own. GS: What did he do for lunch everyday? NF: When I worked there, we ate in or we would go to lunch or he would have meetings. Of course, the Pacific Union Club was up the street and he would go up there. He would have to play golf occasionally. He belonged to a lot of golf courses so he had to make use of them. He traveled a lot, of course, in the business end of things, a lot of trips to Japan and Australia in the earlier years. When he got older, then he was president of the business council for a couple of years, which was great for me because I would get to go back with him or get to go to New York, occasionally, when he was going to meetings. He was busy. He tried to find enough time for his family, which is hard to do when you are at the top. There were so many people who just adored him. People in government would have loved to have Ed come to D.C., and whatever he wanted to do they would have put him in there. People like George Shultz and Kissinger, all those people, called him about various things off and on, either soliciting information or 16 help. You have got to have a lot of respect for the guy. He was so straight-forward with them. He wasn‟t ever dealing with anyone for his own end. If they came to him with a question, he answered it in a way that was going to be good for them. It had nothing to do with him. He was so fair that way. You didn‟t find that with a lot of the other men that you met in business. You really didn‟t. It was amazing. GS: They are in it for themselves sometimes. NF: Yes. He was so proud of what he had been able to do. Of course, imagine ending up being the biggest shareholder of General Electric, and all through your own doing. RS: Look at what he did for all the other Utah shareholders. GS: The Utah shareholders just did beautifully. Other than what you‟ve told us, what do you think were the keys to his success as an executive in a big business? NF: I think his childhood made a huge difference. I used to hear a lot about his childhood with his parents being very strong…and, of course, his grandfather, the Wattises and those people. He had to do a lot of learning on his own. He was a very shy kid, as I understand. Well, actually, he was very shy as an adult if he was in any kind of a situation with which he wasn‟t familiar. We would be going to a meeting and would get into an elevator. I always talked to everybody in the elevator and he couldn‟t believe that I could do this. He was very shy that way, which I found fascinating because he could get up in front of a crowd of people and just knock them over. They just loved him. GS: So, his youth and heritage? 17 NF: Yes, and being switched back and forth from one parent to the other, I think, made a big difference. He was constantly trying to please on either side. That took a lot of adjusting. The whole time I knew him, he was ready to listen. He would pay so much attention to what other people‟s needs were. I think he learned from that, too, because he would utilize that in dealing with people. A few times with friends of mine who were trying to make a switch in their life I would say, “Ed, could you possibly talk to so and so?” He would be so delighted to do it. They would be just blown away because they had so much respect for him. “He listened to me.” I think that really helped to make him—he was constantly aware of what was here and what was going to happen and that sort of thing, because he was never taken too much by surprise at all. He didn‟t like surprises. You couldn‟t give him a surprise party because he didn‟t like those. GS: How did he run meetings? Did he set the agenda, or did you set the agenda? NF: When Reeves was the corporate secretary, he would try to do all the agendas, but Littlefield had the last word and they would always look to him to run the meetings. Well, even when Marriner was chairman, Ed did more of the running of it. Of course, he picked fabulous directors, as you well know: Arjay Miller and Arbuckle, and all of those people were just incredible. They did so much. RS: What do you see as your greatest help to him during all those years? What did you do that made you the most proud? NF: I don‟t know, but we adored each other. I think just because I never changed. I was always, and always have been, just myself. I am just kind of out there. I am always the same, no matter what circumstance I am in, which drives some 18 people crazy, I guess. I don‟t sit there and think what I‟m going to say. So he knew me pretty well because he knew exactly what to expect, although he didn‟t always expect to hear what he heard from me. We would have incredible conversations about bringing up kids and that sort of thing; and, of course, I was coming from a totally different direction, obviously, than he. On some points he would end up agreeing with me. “I think you are doing the right thing.” But we were able to sit down and talk, knowing it would never go anywhere else. Ed had told me things that I‟m sure nobody else in the world had ever heard, you know, of the insecure stuff or some of this sort of thing, that no one would want to hear or expect to hear, but that he needed to relate to people. I think he and I did a good job of that, and in confidence, you know. Which gave me a great feeling because I think he had a lot of respect for the fact that he could totally trust me, and I had so much respect for him. RS: If you had to list three things that happened while you worked for Ed that are memorable and exciting, bad or good, what would they be? NF: There were so many. I used to have to do these intricate financial reports for him, every month, and of course, you can imagine Ed. When I went to work there, I didn‟t know a thing about finances or accounting, nothing. I would go in and say, “I can‟t do this.” He would just say, “You can do it.” So I would go back and I would struggle and I would end up figuring it out. Well anyway, over the years, I will never forget the day that he walked by the desk and I said, “Ed, I want you to know, you are now a billionaire.” He was like, “Wow.” That was so great. 19 There were just so many wonderful stories with him. Of course, each of his kids got married and there was the grandfather thing. Although he couldn‟t be with them all the time, he was thrilled with the family. Jeannik was so great for him because she handled all of the household stuff and the various properties. GS: Do you remember when the company went public? That was before you worked for Ed. NF: Yes, but I certainly remember it. That was incredible. It was a big moment in his life, too. He was so proud of that. GS: In the early „70s, he began to worry about the company focusing too much on Australia, and then the Marcona stuff. Did you witness him worrying? Did he talk with you about that? NF: He was constantly concerned. He would look at me and he would say, “We have way too many of our assets over there and we have got to diversify.” GS: Either diversify or merge. NF: Yes, or merge. Of course, he relied on the geologists and the rest of those people. He was wonderful about using people to make the company better and he was so good at that. Well, you could see him struggling with it, and yet he was always on top of it. I think it must have been in the back of his mind for a long time, that he knew exactly what he was going to do because he had to do it; he just had to do it. Luckily, he had Ray Jones and some of that. GS: Well, his concern for the shareholders was obvious in the book. NF: That was most important. 20 GS: I was just amazed. It would have been easy for a CEO to say, “Well I‟ve got my billion,” but he couldn‟t do that. NF: Oh, he never could have done that. RS: Where do you think that loyalty to the shareholders came from? The fact that a lot of them were family? NF: I don‟t think it was just that. He had the right kind of discipline for something like that. When they made him the chairman of the business council, that was an incredible time, but he knew that people had faith in him, that they trusted in him, and that they were relying on him. It was obvious he had to do the right thing for the shareholders. He wouldn‟t have had it any other way. He never would have walked off and said, “I‟m happy, good-bye.” A lot of people would do that, which is shocking. GS: Were there two or three people that he had a lot of confidence in, that he had a lot of trust in, that advised him more than others? NF: Well, it all depended on what it was about, you know. With the mining end: Wilson. Jim Curry was his protégé; he adored Jim, and Jim did a lot for him over the years. That is interesting because Jim and Leo were very competitive with each other. You better not tell Jim I talked to Leo. But he had a lot of faith in him. And Reeves, he knew he had him there for the right reason because of the legal background. Of course, Orville Dykstra, as well. He had a lot of faith in each of them for different reasons. Keith Wallace and all those mining people were so valuable. Wes Berret. In construction, what was his name? Starts with a C. Oh, Sparry was one of them, but there was another one. Chamberlain? He would 21 regularly bring these people in for whatever purpose they were named to take care of, and he never avoided working with any of them. He would have them in separately or in groups. He wanted the satisfaction of what each of them had to offer, which I found wonderful. And then, of course, the administrative assistants he had over the years brought him all sorts of different facets. That worked, too. They could also communicate with some of the division people and then get back to him. GS: He had hired most of these people, right? NF: They were mostly from Stanford and had gotten their MBAs. He would interview them and decide whether or not he wanted them. That really worked for him. He loved that because they, of course, could do all the research and then come to him with, “My feeling is you should go here or here.” He would weigh it and make his decision. RS: Now, you witnessed him dealing with the board of directors. Talk about that a bit because that is a little different. NF: Yes, but he wasn‟t all that formal. Of course, some of them were family—the Brownings, and the Dees, and all that. He had known all those people for so many years. If it had to do with banking, George Eccles would come in. A lot of them had a lot to offer, but not as much, by a long shot, as people like Arjay Miller and Arbuckle, those people on whom he relied a lot because they were outside the company and he got that wonderful pump from people outside. RS: I guess what I‟m asking is: a lot of CEOs deal really easily with the vice presidents, but when they deal with the board, they have a real problem. 22 NF: No, he wasn‟t like that at all. Of course, they would debate things and come up with an answer on which everyone agreed, but he was never in a really vulnerable position with the board of directors. They just adored him. They might disagree, which was wonderful because then they could all work out the right solution; he was amazing that way. GS: What time of day did he usually go home, on the average? NF: Early on, he would stay till six or something, so that he didn‟t have to drive with the traffic, I think was a lot of that. Towards the end, of course, he would just come and go as he pleased. Then he had a driver, too. GS: Did he drive most of the time? NF: Yes. He loved to drive. I still have his 1990 BMW downstairs which he gave me in 2001. I love it. They had a number of cars. They had like three BMWs, two jeeps. The duck hunts and things—he had to have a jeep up there. Then they had to have a jeep in the desert. So there were a number of cars around, but he loved to drive, and he felt much better driving than having someone drive him, until he got older. Of course, he was always on time to get everywhere, except for once that I remember. My daughter and son-in-law and their two kids were here and we invited Jeannik and Ed to dinner. They were supposed to be here at six-thirty or something. They were never late for anything, ever. Well, he had this driver who wasn‟t the regular driver, and of course, you get two men in a car, and they absolutely refused to ask for directions. They got totally lost. I‟m sure he must have had a cell phone and he was too embarrassed to call, so they kept driving. Finally, we were calling the house and talking to the maid, who said, 23 “Well, gosh, they left ages ago.” They finally arrived totally mortified. I mean, absolutely. I said, “Well, why didn‟t you call?” And Jeannik is saying, “Well, of course, they can‟t call.” They were so sure they were right. But usually he drove everywhere. GS: He loved to hunt, too. NF: He loved to hunt, but not animals so much. He would go on the Hewlett Packard deer hunt and he would make sure that he didn‟t shoot one. Down in Florida he would go on these wonderful quail shoots with a bunch of people. He loved that, and golf he adored. He loved to fish. GS: Where did he go fishing? NF: I know he went to Sun Valley a lot. One of the Dumkes had a place there and they would go fishing a lot. He would go up to Northern California with people. He belonged to the California Fishing something-or-other, and they would go on trips. He loved to fish. RS: Mrs. Littlefield told us that they loved to entertain. NF: She would set it all up with the caterers and arrange all of it. She wouldn‟t cook. It could be at the apartment, it could be at the house, it could be down in the desert, because they had a number of homes. GS: Did he keep an apartment in the city? NF: Yes. His mother moved here from Salt Lake or wherever, and he found her an apartment on Knob Hill, right across from the Pacific Union Club on Sacramento Street. It was on the thirteenth floor with a gorgeous view of the whole city. We used to run up there and watch the Blue Angels fly. They would come right in 24 front of our noses. That was where she lived until she died. They kept the apartment so that if they were going to the opera or something, they could just stay there in the city. They had that and they had the house in Burlingame. Then they bought the house behind them, which was on Pepper Street, in order to have control over it because there was a bridge that went over a stream. Then he had two Duck Club houses, and then, of course, in the El Dorado Country Club they had one of the houses that was part of that country club. When they joined Indian Wells, they built a gorgeous home that is just beautiful. She, of course, kept that. She has sold most of the others. She sold the house in Burlingame and she sold the one behind them and the apartment was sold. She kept the Indian Wells, which she loved. She loves it down there. Then she lives in that beautiful apartment where you were today, and you met Roman? GS: We did. NF: He takes very good care of her. RS: Does he stay there all the time? NF: No, he has an apartment in the desert. Maybe now he stays at the house. I‟m not sure. That is where she found him—down in the desert and he had his own place. I‟m not sure on the details. He has been very faithful to her. RS: He seems like a great guy. NF: He is. He only ever leaves her alone for any period of time when he does the bike ride from here to L.A. for the AIDS fundraiser. He does that every year. RS: He‟s been with her almost since Ed died. 25 NF: Well, the first fellow that he had, Kevin, used to live across the street from me. He used to chauffeur on an on-call basis. When Ed was looking for someone, I thought, “Gee, this might just work.” Kevin was with him for quite a long time and it was great because he really took good care of him, too. Kevin would get very involved in, “What‟s this with the medications you‟re taking?” It all got very confusing. He is the one that went into the doctor with him and said, “I think he‟s taking too many. We‟ve got to figure all of this out.” He was very good that way and took very good care of them, but then he died. He had cancer. So then they found Roman and it‟s been a few years now. GS: You keep pretty good touch with a lot of Utah people. Is there kind of a family feeling? NF: Sort of. A lot of us women get together for lunches and things. Jim Curry has a few of us for a Christmas lunch with him and Barbara once a year, which is nice. I should do more. I feel so guilty. I should really do more of it, but I‟m too busy playing tennis. GS: You stopped rowing? NF: I stopped rowing. I did it for twelve years. I loved stationary seat rowing where you have eight rowers sitting two by two. I did it for twelve years and we had a fabulous team. The company had a boat which I hadn‟t even heard of. I was playing racquetball all the time and wanted to find somebody at the company to play racquetball with so we could drive to work. I started asking around. This one gal said, “Well, I‟ll come and try racquetball if you‟ll come and get in the boat and try the rowing.” Well, I had no idea. They stuck me in the boat and she never 26 ended up playing racquetball except once, but it was so great. Did you ever hear of the TriReme that they built? The English built this ancient, ancient TriReme and kept it in Greece. The first year they tried to make it work, they used all sliding-seat rowers from Great Britain. Well, it wouldn‟t move because they needed stationary seat rowers. So they heard about us, and about twenty-five of us went to Greece. I was by far the oldest woman there, and except for one the oldest of anybody there. They had 172 rowers sitting on three levels rowing totally synchronized. It was unbelievable. I have videos of it. RS: I remember reading about that. When was that? NF: It was 1988 that we went. GS: Ed must have been very supportive of all your outside activities. NF: He was great. I would say, “Okay, I‟m out of here. I‟ve got a boat race.” He would even come to some of the races. He was terrific that way. GS: That is terrific. What have we not asked you about Utah Construction that we should have? NF: I wish I knew more of this. You‟ve got to get to Jim Curry and people like that who know more of the detail. GS: Why don‟t we end now and we can be thinking about some things, if you wouldn‟t mind. If we have some other things we can come back and chat with you and get some other names. Does that sound alright? NF: Sure. GS: We very much appreciate it.