Sharing our Links to the Past
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Born: 1 Jan 1928 (living) Father: #M6b Victor ROCINE Married: (1) Louise DEL GATTI on 21 Sep 1946. They had three sons. Louise died Sep 1972. Md. (2) Frances LIPMAN on 16 Oct 1977 Autobiography of Rex Rocine Early recollections are playing in the dirt with some cars on the "Ranch," a place in Northwestern Washington state where my parents manufactured Food Blend. I also remember the house, coal-oil lanterns/lamps, going to the outhouse and one day when they brought in a piece of log about 18 inches thick and from a tree maybe 3-4 feet in diameter. That’s how they brought in the wood to fire the boiler, by dragging it on the ground with a team of horses, and cutting it up into normal wood-size pieces after. At this time, I had to be maybe two and one-half years old, the year being 1931. I also remember walking around that farm, walking around the barn, playing in an old Model T in the yard, and staying a few days, though maybe not consecutively, at the Witmer’s, (Anna who was a teacher in Marysville, WA and her sister Viola.) The next thing I remember is moving in to our new home on Baird Street in Portland, Oregon, which was November 7, 1931. I remember seeing the "big" truck that had that big "hump" over the cab as the movers brought furniture into the house. I must not have been outside much that winter, for I remember playing with my Lincoln Log set a lot that winter, and I think that year I got an Erector set for Christmas. I also remember my Father, or some man shot a pheasant out of our window with his 12 gauge shot gun, but also, somebody discharged that gun into the wall in the kitchen. I’m sure it was by accident, but that big hole in the plaster wall sat for at least a couple years. So much for some of my early recollections. Early on, my Father had a fellow build a barn on the lower northeast corner of our property, a barn perhaps 20 X 40 feet, with a "hay-mau" or second floor where hay was stored. We usually had at least three goats and sometimes as many as five. By at least the time I was five years old I learned to milk the goats and was responsible for feeding and taking care of them. Maybe my Father kept a close eye on me, and certainly as he was teaching me, he was with me, but most of what I remember, I was alone. He had built a milking stand where we’d lead a goat up to, close their head in the stanchion and feed them a bowl of oats, which kept them occupied while I milked each goat. Then I’d bring down a mixture of alfalfa and oat hay into the area in front of them, which they could eat. When spring came, I had to take a chain and pipe and "stake them out" in a neighboring field where they could eat till I came home from school. That was much of what my day consisted of when I was between five and maybe eight years old. Our property consisted of a little over an acre, which was fenced in and had two stone columns holding an iron gate at the front of the property. About 1933 they tore off the stucco outside of the house and replaced it with "shakes", a wooden shingle-like material, but with vertical groves, which were nailed on with layers, or courses about 15-18 inches apart, (whereas normal shingles are maybe six or eight inch layers or courses). The work was done by Eric Eastberg and maybe a Bud Anderson, two Swedish carpenters, who also put on a new composition roof and put plywood in all of the attics of the house. This entire project took all summer and I had a ball working my way higher up the walls on their scaffolds, and then up on the roof. The point here, over time they worked higher and higher, and I became less scared, so that by the time they were working on the roof, I was all over the place with them and had lost any fear of height. Somewhere about that same time, though obviously a little later, my Father had a brick mason along with these fellows, build a "vault" for his books and the Food Blend. It was an addition to the back of the garage which was fire proof and also hidden from view when inside the garage. (A layer of corrugated metal covered the back of the garage wall, and the center panel could be removed to access the two heavy metal doors covering the entrance to the "vault.") Also about the same time a neighborhood man dug by hand, a well for water that was something like 58 feet deep. What a job that was. I remember he had to be pulled up out of there all muddy, and everything around was muddy. The dirt had to be hauled out and dumped at the end of the road, and some was terrible clay that nothing grew on for years. Hopefully by now you realize, at the height of the depression, when unemployment must have been 35 %, here was my Father spending a lot of money, first for a new house, (it was five years old when they bought it), then to recover the outside, put on a new roof, build a "vault" addition on the back of the garage, build a barn, dig a well, fence the property in, and finally, not mentioned yet, landscape the entire property. I think it is important for the reader to realize the atmosphere I grew up in. One thing is, my Father tried to live privately, self-sufficiently. He had his own water, milk for his children, grew his own hay, (though we also bought oat grain and alfalfa), we had a sizeable garden every year, had an orchard with pears, apples, cherries, plums, figs, filberts, English walnuts, and later loganberries. We had all the comforts one could want in a home, including they bought a new car in 1932, 1938, 1939 and I believe 1940. This home, which they paid around $4500 cash for in 1931, was offered for sale in about 1941 for $20,000. During this period, I went to school about one-half mile walk from our house, in a four room school house. I started in January, and in those days you had 1A and 1B classes for the first grade, and the same classification for the rest of the grades. The "A’s" started in September and the "B’s" started in January. The first and second grades were in one room, third and fourth in another, etc. By the time I got into the seventh grade, we attended another school in Multnomah, a mile away. That school was on the "platoon" system, which meant you had a home room where you had some subjects, and moved to other rooms for other subjects, with "periods" for each subject. That school had a Kindergarten plus first through eighth grades. While most kids rode the bus to school, I frequently walked, for I don’t know what reason, except it shows I was very physical, even at that age. I certainly was physical, but from perhaps fifth grade on, I was not much for sports. Many kids, boys especially, played basketball during the lunch hour. The few times I played, I was very bad. I couldn’t get the idea of coordination, I think, and many times when later playing football, I never knew which way to run if I got hold of the ball, which was very seldom. When we played softball, I always struck out. Then one day in perhaps the fourth grade, I hit a ball and it went way-y-y out in right field. And from that time on, while I seldom hit the ball, when I did, it really went high, and far, but usually in right field, which I learned later, meant I was always swinging late. In school, I was average, I would say, in all ways. I was not socially outcast or "in" socially. I always went right home from school, when some kids hung around and played ball. As I remember, throughout the four room school, I went to school, did what I was supposed to do, and went home. When it was time to milk and feed the goats, I did that. I haven’t mentioned my brother so far, and should, because I’m sure some of my early learning came from the atmosphere at home. My brother DeVon was seven years older than I. As such, he went to school when I was under six. We ate together. He seldom was around me except after supper when we’d play a little. I always wanted to wrestle with him until my Mother would break it up. On occasion, he would get mad and pound his head, and my Mother would intercede. He did poorly in school, and probably throughout elementary school he was sometimes passed by age more then ability. When he went to high school, Mother put him in a vocational school that was for children that weren’t so capable. He still had a difficult time. I don’t remember much more about him then the fact he was slower-thinking, and we didn’t play well together because we just didn’t have a lot in common - - he was the older brother, but not very smart. I learned in time to be more watchful of him than anything else. He must have been about 20 years old when and if he finished high school. By the time I was eight or ten two new things happened in my life, which probably had a profound effect on my future. One was, I received a much-wanted guitar for Christmas, and I started taking music lessons which continued for the next four or five years. The second was I wanted a bike in the worst way one summer. I made a deal with my Mother, that if she’d get me the bike, I’d get a paper route and pay it off. She agreed, and for I don’t know what reason, that escapade lasted about three weeks. But I got my bike, which I taught myself how to ride. I didn’t ride it to school, but I did ride around before and after school, and it must have enabled me to ride over to a friend’s house about a mile and a half away. The guitar lessons continued, as said previously, until high school. Saturdays meant taking the bus, or occasionally riding with my friend’s father downtown for my music lesson, then, after maybe a few months, staying around for "orchestra" practice when classes of different instruments and similar ability played songs together. As time passed, I bought a better guitar, and in high school, the best guitar available at the time, an Epiphone, the kind used in those days in the big bands. What I learned in music was discipline. Not only the "practice, practice, practice", but the "work, work, work," till you get it right. And getting it right wasn’t for my Mother, or a teacher, it was for me. So the guitar taught me a big lesson, carried on throughout my life: do it right, not for somebody else, but for myself. The guitar also meant enjoyment, for my friend, who played banjo, and myself, would play together often. As time went on, when we were in the eighth grade, or so, we had a Lum and Abner act - - a kind of "hayseed" act, where we’d sing, talk, and play some songs. We did this maybe three or four times, though we played together a lot, to be able to do the act. The exposure to my friend’s family probably also influenced my life. His father was an x-ray technician. They had a small farm - - raised cows, some chickens, he did his own plowing with a home-made tractor, and lived what to me, at least, was an ideal life. My friend had two brothers, one older, and one younger. They seemed like a real nice family and I spent a good deal of time there, some playing music together, and a little helping them. I looked up to his older brother, who when I was in high school went into the Naval Air Corp. That was it! An officer in the Navy, and later into the University of Oregon. When I was in the eighth grade, my senior year in elementary school I was elected, or asked to be editor of the class paper. My grades were so good, I still received high grades after missing probably two-thirds of the class. Another classmate was Business Manager. Together we were excused from class frequently to go to the local merchants and obtain ads for the class paper, (actually it was like the class book, or magazine, for it contained our pictures, comments, hopes for the future, and two-thirds of it was devoted to ads the two of us obtained). After obtaining ads, we made the mimeograph stencils for the pages, which the school secretary would then print. I was then involved in assembling the finished product. The entire effort was a real fun experience. Perhaps when I was about 14, I had my second experience with a paper route. I had a new bike and I obtained a paper route in Multnomah during the summer. It was a fairly good size route, and perhaps two miles long, plus at least a mile from home. I started good, but as time passed, I spent a fair amount of time playing with a couple girls along the route, so much so, that sometimes I wouldn’t finish the route till after dark. In addition, I didn’t report cancellations, so as a result I had to pay for papers taking space in our garage. Obviously, it wasn’t long until that escapade was also over. One thing did happen, however, during that episode in my life. Near the end of my time with that route I was in my first year in high school. I was out in the weather in rain and cold, and it seemed as I was just starting high school, which of course was a completely new experience, when I became quite sickly. In addition, I couldn’t "find myself" in school. As a result, I missed a lot of school, sometimes playing hookie. Suddenly I came to the realization that if I didn’t change, I would not pass that semester. I woke up to reality and turned around, probably also giving up the paper route. Sometime during high school, probably about the second year I entered into my third experience as a paperboy. This time I took over my friend’s older brother’s route, the largest by far in the area, a route that probably was about seven miles long. By now I had learned enough about paper routes that I knew you had to deliver your papers on time, collect regularly, (which I hadn’t done well before), and simply do it. That worked quite well, probably because I was trying to follow in my idol’s footsteps. In any event, I kept that paper route for at least three months, maybe more. Frequently on a Sunday, the papers were so large and heavy I’d get my Mother to drive me around. So far, I haven’t mentioned anything about high school. In Portland at the time, there was a high school named Benson Polytechnic High School. It was a vocational school, and had a very high reputation. Because of my high grades, especially in the seventh and eighth grades, I knew I could get in. It was also a boys school, which didn’t mean a thing to me at the time, but as I look back, it probably had a little detrimental effect, for I was beginning to seek the company of girls and I couldn’t make their acquaintance in school. In any event, I worked hard in school and applied myself, and except for the one incident mentioned earlier, received fairly good grades. Generally, in high school I was sociable with a few boys who I respected, and was what you’d probably call "a good student." Sometime around my 16th birthday I taught myself to drive, took my Mother’s car over to my friends house the first time out on the highway, misjudged the turn into their driveway and wound up off the road. After getting his father to pull me out, I found my way home and didn’t have anymore trouble of that nature. In Oregon, you can get your driver’s license at age 16, which is what I did. Next came a series of cars I bought. Having another friend who was a little older, who bought a Model A which together we sanded down and repainted, I looked for and bought a Model A. The problem was, it had no brakes, and a cracked distributor cap. To make a long story short, I had it about three weeks, and because I worked at a service station at the time, I tightened the brakes, finally, with the help of a neighbor found the cracked distributor cap which we replaced, then sold it for about what I paid for it. This brings me to car number three, a 1927 Plymouth. By this time I was playing in a dance band, and practiced at least twice a week, clear across town. Well, I drove this Plymouth all the way over there and back. If you got this car up to 35 or 40 miles per hour, it sounded like a locomotive going down the tracks. I gave it a real lousy brush paint job, and somehow realized the bearings were gone, so sold it for a few dollars more then I paid. A couple weeks later the fellow who purchased it came back and said he was driving it someplace and it froze up. It didn’t surprise me, but I told the fellow he bought it as is, and that’s that. The summer of my 16th year I bought my next car, a snappy 1932 Model B coupe with a stick shift cut short so you could shift faster, and with a V-8 engine, (with a radio). Wow, was I proud to drive around with that car. It also had a pair of "pipes," special sounding mufflers, which was really the "cats meow." To pay my Mother back for the car, I took a job in the shipyards that summer as a Boilermaker’s Helper. Everything was fine until one afternoon as I was driving home from work, I pulled up in front of this girl’s house and was trying to get her attention, so I "reved up" the engine a few times to make those special pipes roar. She didn’t show, so I headed on home, but on the way, I suddenly heard a tell-tale clicking I knew was trouble, having had a similar experience with another friend. I pulled to the side of the road, and either left the car there, or had my Mother come and towed me. In any event, I knew where I could do the work of putting a new engine in, which I did, and sold that, too. I’d had my share of cars by then. Somewhere around this time, possibly a little earlier, through a friendship with the fellow who had the Model A, I became interested in ice skating. It also provided the possibility to meet girls, so became a very important part of that phase in my life. I usually went ice skating Friday and Saturday night and Sunday afternoon, and maybe occasionally at night during the week or maybe even after school. It was also a time when I was working after school and Saturdays at the service station, so I had my own money to do with, whatever I wanted. It was a busy time. Working, trying to get some socializing with girls, ice skating, taking some music lessons or playing in a dance band - -they all kind of blended together as a busy time, a fun time, a learning time, a time I was fast maturing. Most of the things mentioned are stated because I feel they are some of the main things that influenced my life. Obviously there are many smaller experiences that could have influenced it more. For example, my Father died when I was about 15. At the time he played a minor role in influencing my life. As a matter of fact, he was talking with my Mother about moving to Bend, Oregon, and I don’t think she had any intention of going along. Another minor incident happened that awakened me to the fact that a boy I had been going around with was doing things that could lead to imprisonment if we got caught. I quickly let him go his way and I went mine. My Mother and I had some fairly strained relations because she wanted me to be good, and I wanted to be free. Perhaps the next step helped me be free, but judge for yourself its effect in the long run. By my seventeenth birthday, World War II was in full swing. There was a strong mood in the country that every man had to help his country win the war. There were stories of heroism, stories of beating and killing American servicemen. I knew a few people in the service. By the summer of 1945, I realized that I only needed two courses to graduate, and if I took them in summer school, I could go into the service and still graduate with my class in January, 1946. I didn’t want to join the Army, because I didn’t relish crawling around in the dirt. I wanted to get into the Air Corp, but knew I had a little astigmatism that would keep me out of it. So I reasoned I’d join the Navy and serve in the submarines. However, they wouldn’t take me because of two varicose veins on the back of my legs. So I enlisted in the regular Navy! Now, I don’t know how I met this crossroads with my Mother, because she surely had to give her permission. And so one day in October 1945, I found myself on board a train, my first train ride, and to that great place in southern California, San Diego, and the Naval Training Station. The usual fears surrounded me as I went through Boot Camp. Shortly before "graduation," I came down with scarlet fever and was in sick bay for upwards of a week, thinking I wouldn’t get out with my company, but I did. I was home for Christmas and had a great time, returning afterward for assignment. Because I had taken a course called "Technical Aviation" in high school, I was looking forward to being assigned to an aircraft carrier. But what was I assigned to? A 159 foot gun boat for the amphibious forces, an LCS, (Landing Craft Supporter). What a let down. Because I was a seaman, I was assigned to the mess hall. That wasn’t far from the kitchen, and I guess I hung around the cooks, but suddenly I found myself as one of the cooks. As time passed, there were a varying number of cooks, sometimes three besides me, sometimes only one besides me. Toward the end of my time I was the "lead" cook, but didn’t even have a rating! I made up the menu, went ashore to get supplies, and served my shifts as cook. In looking back, I see a trend, that showed when I was in school I applied myself and rose to the top third or maybe even fifth of my peer group. The same thing happened in the Navy. But one other thing happened in the Navy. Much of the time in the Navy was spent in either San Diego or Long Beach harbors. I could easily get shore leave nearly every night. Therefore, I took the opportunity to become familiar with the area, and in the process met a few girls, one of which later became my wife. We dated very regular, and a few times I didn’t get back aboard ship till roll call at 0800, (8:00 AM). When it came time for me to be released/discharged from Bremerton, Washington, we had it all planned that she would meet me in Portland, meet my Mother, then we would take the bus to her home in Rochester, New York. She told me all along how her father was a lawyer and they were fairly well-off, financially, so I felt real good about the possibility of marrying at or above my level in life. Well, it wasn’t until we were in New York state that she leveled with me that her father wasn’t a lawyer, both her father and mother worked in the tailor shop, and maybe we were going to have a little rough going. Still deeply in love, or infatuated, whatever term you prefer, we got married. Life turned out to be much different than I envisioned. I had every intent of attending M. I. T. and becoming an Aeronautical Engineer. My wife, however, had different notions. She said I could go to school locally, and she’d have her parents try to get me into the tailor shops under the GI Bill, which would give me an allowance while "learning." As time passed, she discouraged me totally from attending any school, though finally I did take a correspondence course in Drafting. As you would expect, things were tight. Two years after we were married our first son Victor was born, August 5, 1948. Realizing the tailor shops held no future for me, I did a few different things until I wound up in a wholesale distributor of toys and housewares. Here, I soon became warehouse manager and started to make more money, though worked some very long hours. While working at the warehouse, my boss, the President and I had many a shouting match. We didn’t get into a fight, just shouting, and one would win one round and the other would win the other. This irritated me, and when my Mother offered to give me a job if we’d move to Portland, we jumped at the chance. We bought a car, a trailer to move some of our belongings , and took off for parts unknown. By that time, our second son Kevin was born, January 16, 1952, and he became very irritable on the trip because of a cold, so the trip wasn’t what you’d call pleasant. Once in Portland, I started right to work tending my Mother’s place, the manufacture of the Food Blend, but also, doing a lot of research to see just how beneficial this Food Blend was. I spent many an hour in the medical library, reading about milk, the difference between goat’s milk and cow’s milk, what the contents of whey were good for, etc. I also went to the Oregon State College and talked to a professor, as well as talked to a couple dairy product manufacturers, and became convinced the product was not at all beneficial. It was not harmful, just not beneficial. Well, that, plus the more informal atmosphere in Portland convinced us to move when my old boss wanted me back at more money than before. After our return to Rochester in May, 1953, we may have felt more like settling down and doing something with our lives. Things at work were much better then before. My boss and I seemed to have a gentlemen’s agreement, one that was never mentioned, but neither one of us ever raised our voice at each other again. It seemed when either of us got to that point, whichever person it was, just stopped. Or, maybe we both had new respect for the other. In any event, we started looking for a house. At that time, many new housing developments were being built, and we finally settled on a house being built for us in Webster in a development containing maybe 100 homes, with our place right next to a wooded area. Life now focused on settling into our home and our family. In 1956 we bought our first new car, a Ford. It was somewhere around this time we took a family vacation to Lake George, stayed in a motel, swam, saw some sights and life was good. Perhaps this is a good time to bring religion into the picture, because my wife wanted to raise the boys Catholic. I had no objections, and as a matter of fact, I thought the Catholic religion was pretty good because it was quite strict. One needs to realize that I may have had a strong moral up-bringing, but not a strong religious up-bringing. My Father came from a Mormon family, but from what I know, his Mother didn’t join the Mormon church until he was over 20 years old. As for my Mother, she came from a strong Lutheran religious background, but they both became members of the Theosophical Society, which teaches a Hindu-based religion. As a boy, my Mother took me to the Knights of the Round Table on Sundays, where most of the adults belonged to the Theosophical Society. And I learned very little about a sense of religion there. We were married in the Catholic Church, and I believe I had to attend "religious instruction" before we were married. So it was quite natural for our children to be raised Catholic. As time passed, however, my wife wanted the boys to go to church, but we were to drop them off. They were attending religious instruction at least one day a week as part of their schooling. But when we were to drop them off, but not attend ourselves, I rebelled. If the children had to go to church, we’d better too. Well, the outcome of that was the children didn’t go to church, except the high holy days when we went. So we were, like so many American families, part-time Catholics. I mention this, because to me it is a fairly significant point. I was willing to be a good father and Catholic, providing we did this as a family. As time passed, however and I learned more about the Catholic religion, I liked it less and less. I disliked it most because you are not taught to think. You learn things and repeat them by rote. At the time, much of the service was in Latin and I had no idea what was being said, and I’m sure my wife didn’t either. So I reasoned, that wasn’t a very good religion. Our third son, Bryan was born March 17, 1958. By that time, our life was much more stable. Both our older boys were in school, we had a decent car, new home, and I was earning an above average income. Then my boss expanded his business by opening a branch in Buffalo. On occasion, when our regular truck driver had to go someplace else, I’d take a load of merchandise to Buffalo. After a little more time, we began to sell things at too low a mark-up, then we began to close-out toys at the end of the season, and I realized these actions meant he was in a money crunch. About that same time, the Manager of the Buffalo Branch quit or was fired. Since I had a good "assistant," who could run the warehouse well when I wasn’t there, I suggested to my boss that I might go on the road selling in the Buffalo area. Selling in the Buffalo area turned out to be a major turning point in my life. Initially it was a learning experience, but it was also a lot of work because my wife wouldn’t let me stay over night, so I had to drive the 75 to 90 miles back and forth each day. I’d get up at 6:00 AM and sometimes wouldn’t return home again till between 1:00 and 3:00 in the morning. After a few months of this, and seeing the business was still going down-hill, I decided to look for another job. Shortly I spotted an ad for a Mutual of Omaha salesman, and I thought this would be the thing, because I could really learn how to sell. Mutual of Omaha sent their new hires to a national sales school in Pittsburgh for one week. They made you feel real good, and taught you a "canned" sales pitch which I was able to give with no errors and earned a special dollar bill as recognition. Another fellow from my agency accompanied me and we became somewhat friendly. After return from the school, however, this great feeling was over, for now you had to go to work. I had a great manager who got me started well. The first year or two I was always in the top third of the office in production, but I wasn’t earning enough money to meet my draw. What was the natural thing for management to do? Yep, remove the draw. Now, I was really on my own. I did fairly well, but found myself working very long hours, and I reasoned that if I kept this up, I’d kill myself, because I wasn’t eating properly, wasn’t getting the sleep I should, etc. Don’t get me wrong, I was leading the office at least a couple years in life insurance sales, but I wasn’t doing that well in health insurance sales which was their bread and butter. After five years in the insurance business, I reasoned it was time to get another job. There is one thing I need to add here about the insurance business. We had a boss that was 80 years old, but a wonderful man. He was a great inspirational leader of his men as well as a very honest person. One of the great things I learned in the insurance business was how to treat people, and the importance of honesty and integrity. Another thing, we had a monthly meeting at the Rochester Club, the best private club in Rochester. We had many a meeting at the Country Club he belonged to. I went to at least two Leaders Conventions at posh resorts, so I was learning how the "other half" lives. As I looked at different jobs, I noticed an ad by an employment agency, stopped in and the woman owner sent me out on an interview and I got a job as Sales Administration Supervisor for Toledo Kitchen Machines, a Division of Toledo Scale. This was just the kind of job I wanted at the time. I was next in-line to the Sales Manager, headed a small department of six people and was the key inside person for a 25 person sales force. The Division Manager, who had been Sales Manager didn’t agree with my ways of working, however. I would stay sometimes until 7 or 8:00 in the evening, and come in at 7:00 AM. He said you should be able to do your job in 40 hours. In a year or two he placed me in the back end of the building working in service and I knew it was time to move on. This time I went back to this lady employment agency and she sent me out on an interview to the Friden Training Center where I got my next job as a sales training instructor. My initial "work" at Friden was to sit through eight or ten weeks of seminars so I would learn their products, (data processing equipment). One of these seminars was the five week seminar or course for newly hired salesmen. I eventually became supervisor of the three or four instructors for that program. Work at Friden was challenging and enjoyable. Instructors were professionals. The product line was quite large and complex, but also on the front line of technology. In a short period of time I was teaching the entire five weeks of that one course, and sometimes filled in on other courses. Before long I was put in charge of curriculum development, to change some of the courses as well as bring new product classes into the fold. One day an ex-Priest and another fellow, both of whom were new hires as instructors came through one of my classes, and the other fellow didn’t like the way the classes were run. He didn’t have any experience as a teacher, but the ex-Priest had been a principal of a large Catholic school in Chicago as well as a junior College in Arizona. Together they just kept picking away at the instructional techniques, which I assume had been in use for years, and I certainly didn’t know any different. This kept up as they both became instructors. The other fellow would pal around with the new sales trainees and as a result had their ear. The man in charge of this entire operation was an Assistant Vice President, and a very difficult man to work for. He did, however develop people, for at least six or eight training directors at other companies had worked for him. Suddenly one day he called all of us into the office and said the ex-Priest would be the new Director of Training. I was shocked. It seemed to me that somebody else with more experience should receive that job, but as I was leaving that night I thought it might be a good idea to stop in and offer my services. This move on my part started a close friendship between the three of us. Obviously, I was very close to my boss, so had his close ear. But the other fellow still had some radical ideas, which we began to implement. Then suddenly, the ex-Priest announced he had taken a position with Bausch & Lomb and I was put in charge. That didn’t last long for at every move the other fellow was cutting me off, or going behind my back and bad-mouthing me. Before long somebody else was put in charge and I was put in charge of administration. Unbeknownst to me at the time, Friden was not doing that well in the market, and hadn’t made any profit for several years, and a move was under foot to make a giant leap into real computers, instead of the billing-type machines previously made. To assist the training end of this leap, another instructor and myself were sent to the headquarters in San Leandro, California, for a couple weeks to learn the new product, and supposedly develop training to support it. Somebody else, however, had other ideas. When I returned, I received my termination papers, and within a couple weeks, the entire Rochester operation involving maybe as many as 1500 people was disbanded. The ex-Priest had left his position at Bausch & Lomb, and I knew they had just received their approval from the F. D. A. to market the Soflens Contact Lens, so the next day, a Saturday, I went in to interview with his boss and was hired to start Monday morning. Thus began the greatest learning experience of my life. My boss was the Vice President of Marketing, and was young, had developed the marketing plan for the Soflens, as his MBA thesis. He also had hired his professor, who was a recognized authority in the Business College of the University of Rochester, to advise him during the roll out of the product and initial building of the sales force. This exposed me to the latest in hiring and selection techniques, as well as training and management development techniques. As part of my own development, I took a graduate course and wrote a term paper on the success of management development techniques which gave me a lot of exposure to the entire field, both the latest techniques as well as who the leaders were. The approach used in training at Bausch & Lomb, which had been set up before I came, was different than I had been exposed to before. Their approach was to bring in the expert, people from within the company who were experts in their field, like physicists, PhD’s, etc., who weren’t necessarily the best instructors, but knew their subjects. My experience up to that point was to make the instructor knowledgeable, and then let him put that knowledge into palatable form for the learner. Our job as trainers was to make that salesman smarter about the area of contact lenses than the doctor who they would be teaching. Now, don’t get the wrong idea. We weren’t saying we knew more than the doctor who had years of experience. What I am saying is that our salesmen knew more about the narrow field of fitting contact lenses, and specifically the Soflens, then the doctor. Obviously, once our salesman transferred this knowledge to the doctor, they were the real experts. When the marketing plan had been put together at Bausch & Lomb, it was planned to roll out the product across the nation and hire the entire sales force of 75 people before appointing managers in the field. Therefore, once the sales force was hired, my job was then to design a program to put potential managers through, while using some of the latest methods of assessment to determine who would make the best managers. To do this, again we turned to the professor at the University of Rochester. Once the managers were appointed, my job was to train these managers in field sales management so all would go about their jobs in a similar way. Doing all this exposed me to many of the latest training and assessment tools and techniques, and the field of "experiential learning." Some of this was obtained through exposure and advice from a Harvard graduate who was a consultant to my boss and myself. The entire experience described above took place over about a two-year period of time. Due to the success of the effort in Soflens, my boss had said my place was as Manager of Corporate Training for Bausch & Lomb. He interceded, and a fairly new Vice President of Human Relations appointed me to the position over an incumbent, who shortly took a position in another division. Now, with the advice of my Harvard friend, we proceeded to start a similar program within the entire company. My initial effort was to assess the expertise of all levels of management. After visiting every major installation in the country, and interviewing something like 60 or 80 managers of all levels, we put together a plan, presented it to the top Executives, who said, simply, "We aren’t about to start up a Bausch and Lomb University." Shortly after that the Vice President was let go, for reasons I’m sure were other than this presentation, and when reporting to his temporary replacement, a Senior Vice President who had been around for a long time, I too was let go. Now, with some great experience and an excellent name behind me, I sought a new job. Aided by my now friend, the Harvard consultant, he advised me during my job search which took me through perhaps 40 or 50 interviews before I obtained my next job at Sherwood Medical in St. Louis, Missouri. But before we go into that story, let me catch up with my personal life. While at Friden, my oldest son, Victor started college. That was another experience, taking him around for his acceptance interviews, then for his entrance, and home-coming week, etc. What was also scary was he selected Kent State, and was there when the shootings occurred in 1967 or 68. Once through all of that, however, and after his graduation, we helped him into the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee for his Masters. While there, and after his younger brother, Kevin, was enrolled at the University of New York at Cortland, my wife passed away suddenly from a heart attack in September, 1972. This left me alone at home with my youngest boy, Bryan, while all this "good stuff" was going on at Bausch and Lomb. While mourning the passing of my wife, I knew I couldn’t live alone, and dated several women. This in itself was quite an experience, because I found most single women were single or divorced for good reason - - there was something wrong with them. They were either expecting something from a man that no man would provide, or, they didn’t trust any man, or, in some cases they probably would rather "play the field," something I certainly didn’t want. Anyway, after driving my youngest boy to Syracuse University, I drove on to St. Louis and a new life. Sherwood Medical was a Division of the Brunswick Corporation. As such, they were somewhat independent, but Brunswick had a kind of heavy, or influential, Personnel operation. As a result their Training Director ran seminars or classes for all their Divisions and over time we worked fairly close together. Initially, I tried to assess the management expertise of Sherwood, but I found out after, it’s something impossible to do from outside a company. What I found in a few weeks after arriving at Sherwood, was a management that was very backward and lived by the "old-boy" network. I was brought in under the Director of Sales who was over the sales forces of all four divisions. This was obviously a correct move. However, after a few months they re-organized and I was put into their Human Resources Department, reporting to the Vice President of Industrial Relations. My job was to first train the sales forces, and then move throughout the rest of the organizations. Perhaps it might be well to explain a little about Sherwood, and the climate there. First of all, Sherwood was what you might classify as a "stodgy" old company that had moved from a very large distributor of medical products to a major manufacturer of medical products. Some of the sales managers had risen up through the ranks via the "old boy network." Some had come from the outside, but they were in the minority, and in most cases in the less important product lines. They had had a training manager at some time in the past, but I have no idea how good or bad he was. In short, they were an old company with some new people, and all trying to head in a new direction. Their V. P. of Industrial Relations had been a "wonder boy" at Brunswick, and he and I seemed to get along alright. While I was progressing quite well in Sherwood, in 1977 I met Frances, who became my second wife on October, 16, 1977. We hit it off very well together for various reasons. We had great respect for each other. She had an immediate family, which while she already had a family, she never had children of her own, for she had never been married. In addition, we were both making good money, so we could afford to take good vacations, buy good cars, eat out a great deal, and we both were relatively conservative. On holidays, we would drive up to the boys and/or get together with my first wife’s mother, who always tried to keep our family together. Another thing Fran did, was serve as a good sounding board for me, something that had been lacking in my life before. Through the experiences I had before, I had learned some things about life, which when coupled with Frances’ experiences and good judgment, helped us both attain a happier life together. After ten years at Sherwood, my job was terminated, for reasons not worth going into here, but once again I found myself out on the street at age 57. Again I went through the same job-search methods used so successfully before as outlined from reading and my friend from Harvard. I interviewed for several positions I was very well qualified for, but was never hired for. Finally in frustration I took a job as Manager of a motel for an expanding chain, but after three years, they went into bankruptcy, and awhile later I was let go because they didn’t like the way I talked to one of their headquarters people. After that, I took various jobs, basically to bring in some money, slowly progressing to part time jobs until at the age of 72 I retired completely. Perhaps now is a good time to reflect back on some things learned through life, something, my oldest boy, Victor, might call the Rocine legacy. That is something he interviewed me once for, and distributed a tape to his brothers. But that was something he directed, and he wanted, whereas this is something entirely under my control, so hopefully it is a little bit more reflective of my own thinking on what’s important in life. As I reflected on my life several years ago, on raising three boys, I said one of the most important things in raising children is to teach them responsibility, discipline, and give them love. I may not have given them love, for I looked to their Mother to do that, just as I look to Frances to do that today. The love I give them is to teach them right from wrong so they’ll live a decent life. I believe, that while I did not raise my boys with a religion, the fact that two of them follow a religion very closely today may be as a result, of how they were raised. Recently, while thinking about what am I most proud of in terms of my boys, it was the fact all three have graduated from college, and two have Masters Degrees. This must say I have a strong belief in the importance of education, which while I did not obtain it formally, I believe I did obtain it as I rose through life and jobs. I know now, that anytime I approach a new thing, be it a job, a project, or buying a car or house, I research it thoroughly first. It’s a lesson I’ve learned, in life. I believe one of the lessons I learned early on from my parents, good or bad, was to work hard for a living. I also learned from my parents, to work for someone else. This may not have been said up to this point, but was a very strong lesson learned early in life. I never wanted to be like my Father. While today, I may feel a little differently, all my life I never wanted to be on my own. I wanted to work for someone else. I wanted a normal job where you go to work and come home after. I also learned to work hard. In fact, hard, physical work is what probably kept me alive after a life of eating the wrong food, a lot of fat, and a lack of exercise. I always believed that hard physical labor was good for a person. From my Mother I learned honesty, and never to tell a lie. That was probably why I wasn’t the best salesman. I always had to be honest. If somebody asked me if "this" was the best product on the market, if there was any doubt in my mind, I wouldn’t say yes. Having been in or associated with selling, most, if not all of my life, I did learn to stretch the truth, or not tell the whole story, but never lie, or willingly be dishonest. What is the Rocine legacy? I may not have it right, for, as I told my youngest son once, when he asked what he should have learned. I replied, "It’s not what I wanted you to learn that’s important, but what you learned that’s important." So I again say, what’s the Rocine legacy? To me, it’s honesty, hard work, responsibility, discipline, and love, love of your family, for they are what counts. The Rocine legacy? It’s what lives on after me. It’s not what I say, but what my children learned from me. What they pass on to their children. What’s the Rocine legacy? It’s also what Frances passes on to my children, and they pass on to their children. That’s the Rocine legacy? I rest my case. For origin of the Lundquist and Rocine names, see The Lundquist Family Home | Biographical
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