In Oct. 1957 the former Soviet Union launched the world’s first satellite.
I barely noticed
I was in high school at the time and the pressing affairs of adolescence kept me fully occupied. Little could I imagine the profound effect this far away event would have on my life.
The success of Sputnik alarmed many very serious Americans. The chilling thought of Russia pulling ahead of America in the race to first orbit started a long and heated discussion of American failure in math and science education.
A few years later it started the Educational Research Council (ERC), of America.
Two men headed the enterprise: Dr. George H. Baird and Leonidas Romanos. Dr. Baird brought in the money. L. Romanos managed the operation.
They were a year or so underway before I ever heard of them.
After high school I had a dismal series of bad jobs. I was fired from two, I quit all the others. My mother was not happy about this. She searched the classifieds every day for opportunities more suitable to my special talents.
One day she found an ad from some place called the Educational Research Council. They were looking to hire an artist. Mom said, “You can draw. Go apply”.
I applied. They hired me. So, it began.
I worked at ERC from the early 60’s through the middle 70’s; probably some 12 to 14 years. I didn’t keep records, but I think that’s about right. That’s too much time to recall it all. Even if I could, I wouldn’t.
Every large business has its share of tawdry behavior, personal embarrassments and scandal. I intend to ignore all of that to protect the guilty.
Although in some cases I will write of such things if they had an impact beyond the personal. There are three stories I consider worth telling:
1. The mission of the ERC.
2. The lessons I learned from the many extraordinary individuals with whom I worked.
3. The impact all this had on the rest of my life.
There were five, or so, people in the Art Department when I arrived. One of these was Eddy Rygalski. I didn’t know him then. He since has been my friend for more than half a century. I will rely on him to remember what I do not. None of us were particularly skilled at much of anything. We grew on the job. Our supervisor was a lady, Pat Whelan, not more than a few years older than us. She was a very pleasant lady who sometimes seemed to be in over her head.
Eddy has told me he was hired with almost no interview. So was I. Pat seemed uncomfortable with judging people. She probably hired whomever showed up.
Pat was, “good on the board”, as my friend Eddy noted. She was likely the only person in the Art Department for the first few years. When the workload increased, she was compelled to bring in more people. Now she was a manager as well as an artist. She liked doing the work more than she liked managing the work. As a result, she often asked me, and sometimes others, to keep track of seeing that certain assignments stayed on schedule.
This was an opportunity for me. I didn’t ask for it, but it gave me practical experience in how to get things done on time, and to purpose. It was the first of many such opportunities. I learned a lot from Pat. She moved on a few years later. I think her husband was transferred to Baltimore.
Our early work was accomplished with amateurism, primitive equipment, and little understanding of what we were about. The equipment got better, and so did our skills. Understanding varied.
For me, because I never went to college, it opened a whole new world of knowledge and ideas.
ERC was my University.
The mission of ERC was to fundamentally reconfigure the curriculum of America’s schools from kindergarten through 12th grade.
I suspect that the meaning of curriculum may not be clear to everyone.
In plain language, curriculum describes: 1. What is to be studied, and 2. How often it is studied. Modern usage has reduced the term to politically correct expressions of unproductive vagueness.
Dr. Baird and Leonidas Romanos, along with the many wealthy individuals and institutions that supported ERC, were convinced that American children were spending too much time on useless studies, and not nearly enough on what really matters. Since those days things have only gotten worse. Nonetheless ERC had the right idea.
Their first focus was on science and mathematical instruction. Later they added departments of Social Science, Psychology, Reading, Career Education, Humanities, and more. They sought and hired the most esteemed and influential educators they could. Most shared their point of view. Some didn’t. This led to many instructive arguments.I learned a lot from the intellectual battles I was privileged to overhear.
Sometime after Pat Whalen left, ERC moved from the Illuminating bldg. on Public Square to larger quarters in the Rockefeller bldg. at West 3rd and Superior Ave. Eventually, we occupied five floors, plus the Evaluation and Testing Dept. which filled the sixth floor. (The punch-card technology of that time required a lot of space as well as a temperature-controlled environment).
Our first publications were done on mimeograph machines, our next was done on multi-lithe printers. These were primarily 2-color printers, although at one point I thought of a way to get 4-color results out of them for one particular job; much to the annoyance of the printshop manager, John Sternad. (More about him later).
Sometime around the mid-60’s the printing demands exceeded the capabilities of the in-house printshop. After that, most of the printing was shipped out to large full-scale operations. This gave me direct experience with, and knowledge of mainstream printing processes and limitations. These were useful to me long after I left ERC for my adventures in advertising and marketing.
The day-to-day operations were:
1. Determine curricula parameters;
2. Write texts based on these curricula parameters;
3. Design textbooks with photos and art to amplify the text.
4. Print and distribute these books to more than thirty participating school districts;
5. Develop testing materials to ensure that students were learning what was intended;
6. Sell the final tested-and-true materials to the Nation’s premier educational publishers.
I designed and managed every book that came from these operations. I read all of them. It was an education few have ever been blessed to have.
I remain grateful.
To design and lay-out all the pages, of all these books, I had to work very closely with the extraordinarily well-informed academics that conceived and wrote them. I’m sure that even graduate studies could not have provided me with more than I learned from this everyday work.
Every department had a director, a staff, and consultants. All were outstanding; some were great. I had to grow older, and a little wiser before I could fully appreciate the magnitude of their work.
My contact with the directors, and consultants was infrequent. My work with the writers and editors was daily. It was through them that I learned the theories and strategies of all the departments, as well as the professional histories, personalities and temperament of the great ones.
The consultants tended to be introspective, scholarly and mild-mannered. The Directors were also scholarly, but they were not mild-mannered.
Every Director came from some pleasant redoubt in academia where for the larger part of their careers they were accustomed to unchallenged authority.
When they joined ERC, these Titans were unnaturally thrust together. Most of the time this was not a problem because they retained unchallenged authority in their own areas of expertise. The problems that did arise were generally over matters of budgets, deadlines, and testing results. These were items not much considered in academia.
Leonidas Romanos considered these matters very seriously.
He was not a man anyone looked forward to butting heads with. His mere presence was intimidating. I am quite sure that he could walk into a room of complete strangers and command instant respect. He was a tall man, and his purposeful bearing made him seem even taller. He brushed his longish white hair straight back in the military manner of the Romanian princes from whom he was undoubtedly descended. Augmenting this were thick, black horn rim glasses that gave him the eagle-like aspect of a predator.
He was always impeccably dressed in suits tailor-made in London, and with the rest of his wardrobe looking as though all of it surely came from the finest craftsmen to be found anywhere.
Moreover, he was charming. His European accent and quick wit projected intelligence and sophistication.
I was impressed. So was everyone else.
He kept his resolute eye on every turn and twist of the daily operation of ERC. Without his watchful presence this company of academics would have probably descended into the comfortable, unhurried ways of ivory towers everywhere. They would have generated thoughtful curriculum, excellent textbooks, and first-rate testing tools - eventually. They would not go over budget - unless they really had to. If testing results were not as expected, they would probably make corrective changes - even when they suspected that the fault was more likely in the test than in the materials tested.
They might have done that, but Romanos thought otherwise. He was quick to upbraid any Director that fell behind schedule, went over budget, or failed to produce test-provable results.
His command outpost was an unassuming office in the middle of the second floor of the east wing of the Rockefeller bldg. His door was open. He could often be seen puffing on his pipe, sorting through piles of papers, and sipping his tea.
Despite that, everyone knew who was in charge.
Real power requires no trappings.
Dr. Baird’s role was 180 degrees opposite. Dr. Baird occupied a spacious executive office with a great cathedral-like round window, complete with an adjoining office for his private secretary. I say, occupied, but he only occupied it occasionally. He was usually out: shaking hands; rubbing shoulders; and meeting with the rich and influential patrons who kept ERC in motion.
ERC never took a dime from any government source. It was a point of pride that reflected their commitment to the private sector, as well as their certainty that government was the cause of the educational problems, they were trying to fix.
Romanos was European by birth. Dr. Baird was about as American as they come. He was born on a ranch in Wyoming. He served in the military, where he acquired crack-shot status with the 1911 Colt 45 automatic pistol. He also had all the appropriate academic credentials, along with field experience. He started out as a gym teacher but moved quickly to become Principal for several different school systems. He seemed to have very old connections with wealth and influence.
I don’t know how these two men got together. I do know that if they hadn’t, my life would have turned out quite differently.
The alarm caused by Sputnik led to the beginning of ERC. This, in turn, brought to me an opportunity to learn about a profession, that I did not know existed.
In the early days, none of this was so clear. The art dept. was then regarded as little more than a sub-dept. of the printing dept. That was because no one there understood that books require thoughtful design. They didn’t even know what design meant. I imagine they thought design was a synonym for decoration.
Many still do.
The difference is this: design works to a purpose; decoration has only to look pretty – it doesn’t do any useful work, at all.
The only way to convince people of this is to demonstrate it with a project they care about. Then, they will see it in the resulting elegant economies of form, production time, and cost.
It took years for me to figure all this out. It took three, or four years just to recognize that this work I was doing had a name: graphic design.
I set out to do it as well as I could.
I read whatever I could find. I developed theories. I experimented. I pushed the known boundaries whenever possible. All of which, put me in direct conflict with the manager of the print shop, John Sternad.
John Sternad did not like challenges. He liked predictable routines that gave him plenty of time to pack his pipe properly, chat with associates, and gaze out over the orderly kingdom of his print shop.
I often designed things that required him to push the machinery a little further than he thought necessary. He pushed back. Sometimes I made mistakes. If I neglected any small part of the proper camera-ready process, he was quick to complain. Then he would tell as many people as he could that Shipley had screwed-up, again.
In those early days, I was not the only “designer”. On one occasion he came into the art dept. with a book fresh off the press. He declared it a winner, and wanted to know who he should congratulate. When I said it was mine, he said, “I take it all back”, and huffed off, back to his print shop.
Sternad, despite being annoying, was a real asset to my learning. He kept me on my toes. He forced me to understand printing production in detail that I would not have otherwise. Besides that, he was a character, full of opinions on everything from pipe tobacco to Zen koans. I like characters; they often have ideas I probably would not have encountered otherwise.
One of the more extreme characters I encountered at ERC was a bellicose ex-Marine named, Art Dell. I’m pretty sure he was also a recovering alcoholic.
During the years after Pat Whalen left, I managed the Art Dept. by myself. I did so without any title to the role. I think this troubled L. Romanos, and possibly others as well. I was in my early twenties and I imagine many of the senior staff thought I was just too young to be directing a department. Not that the dept. wasn’t running smoothly; it was. It just didn’t seem right to them. It didn’t look right.
So, they brought in Art Dell as Director of the Art department.
It went well, at first.
He was enthused about this new opportunity. He set about making us more “professional”. We learned some new techniques, some new terminology, and we all were required to join The Art Director’s Club of Cleveland (whatever that was). In truth, we did learn, and grow, under his peculiar, pugnacious, vision of leadership. The strangeness came later.
Our first clue was his demand that we all post above our desks a sign that read: “Really See! Really Observe! Really Remember!”. None of us had any idea what to make of this slogan. Mr. Dell did not explain.
Then he started taking longer and longer for lunch. When he returned, he wasn’t quite drunk, but he also wasn’t quite sober. At these times he was cranky and given to odd behavior. He had a picture of his children and ex-wife on his desk. One day he put a strip of black tape over his ex-wife’s face.
Later, he started reading his afternoon newspaper in a ritualistic sort of way. First, he would first clear his desk of everything except the newspaper. Then he would spread the paper out in two full sheets. After reading for a while he would turn the page with an exaggerated, almost ceremonial gesture. He would do this for the rest of the afternoon. Occasionally, he would make some comment on the news he was reading. At times, he would share with us a story of cunning wisdom. One of his favorites was a comment attributed to Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln, upon learning that his most successful General - Gen. Ulysses S. Grant - was also a notorious drunk, said:” Find out what he’s drinking and have a case of it sent to all my other Generals”. Mr. Dell usually finished these stories with a knowing chuckle.
On the afternoon of Nov. 22, 1963, the radio announced the assassination of President, John F. Kennedy. We were all shocked; some of the girls were in tears. Art Dell looked up from his newspaper and said, “About time somebody got the son-of-a-bitch”.
Silence followed.
Perhaps we shouldn’t have been so surprised. We all knew that Art’s regular watering hole was the Theatrical Bar & Grill. We also knew that the Theatrical was a well-known hangout for Cleveland Mafiosi. We also knew that the Mafia despised Kennedy. Why wouldn’t their pal, Art Dell, share their point of view?
As the days rolled by, Art Dell became more red-eyed and demanding. He would send some of us out to pick up his laundry, or a pint of wine, or any other inappropriate mission that came into his head. John Allen was his most frequent choice for these missions. John Allen was a dwarf, a hunchback, and a negro. If he had any bitterness about the poor hand he had been dealt, he never let it show. He never complained about anything, including Art Dell’s crazy demands. John Allen was one of the most decent people I have ever known. This disgraceful treatment of him rankled me more than all the other outrages Dell had inflicted.
The level of oppression was becoming unbearable.
I was Art’s right-hand guy. As such, I received none of the abuse he handed out to the others, but I was repulsed by it. I wasn’t sure of what to do. The last straw came in the form of a chart that Art had posted on the door of the Art Dept. We were required to record: 1. Our name; 2. When we left; 3. Where we went (including the bathroom) and; 4. When we returned.
After several days of this I signed-out for the office of L. Romanos.
A few minutes later Art Dell was summoned to the office of L. Romanos.
A few minutes after that Art Dell was fired.
He was furious.
He pulled me into a side office and threatened me with certain and bloody, violence that would surely come when I least expected it.
I believed him. Several years passed before I could walk past a dark alley without concern
Nothing came of his threats - at least, not yet.
Despite that, I am still uncomfortable about what I did.
Every schoolkid knows that tattling is wrong - very, very wrong. Yet, if I had not informed Romanos, who would have? I am not proud of what I did, but I am satisfied that I did what needed doing.
After Art Dell was fired, everyone breathed a sigh of relief.
I never told anyone about my role in his firing, until now.
Things returned to the previous level of sanity, and I returned to my untitled role of management.
I did increasingly more work with the growing Social Science Department.
Their rapid growth brought changes and new opportunities. Someone, Probably Dr. Raymond English, the Director of the Social Science Program brought in a Publishing consultant. His name was Ray Boultinghouse. His role was to bring professional efficiently to our heretofore make-it-up-as-you-go efforts.
He was not a designer. He left that to me, but he taught me particulars of the publishing industry that I would draw on for the rest of my graphics career. Things like: the careful planning of printing signatures to save money on paper costs; the value of creating standardized formats, to save time, and money with multiple publications – such as a series of textbooks; the special use of the various kinds of presses, and the savings that could be realized with long-term contracts. And much, much, more.
He flew in once a month from New York City to monitor progress. I would brief him on current operations, including problems, if any. He would then spend a few more hours with other folks in the Social Science Department. On what, I do not know.
I learned from Ray Boultinghouse the power of professional presentation; the power of style. He did not teach this to me. I learned it by watching him.
He dressed like a businessman in conventional suits, tasteful ties and Oxford Wingtips. He projected confidence, authority, and purpose - and, all this before he spoke a word. I appropriated his manner and dress as soon as I could without embarrassing myself.
This attention to style may seem trivial.
It is not.
The way you appear at first contact can affect all that follows. For most of my career I worked directly with business owners, CEO’s, senior marketing directors and other executives that had direct financial interest in the results of my work. They were used to dealing with creative types that dressed flamboyantly, talked about cutting-edge design, award winning graphics, and much else that bottom-line guys don’t care about. When I presented my ideas, I talked about how my thinking was designed to expand sales, and lower costs. It was very effective; it was language they understood.
I was just one businessman (who happened to be a designer) talking business to another businessman. First impressions matter.
Back to ERC.
I think that the work I did with the Social Science Program was the most rewarding work I have ever done. Later in life I designed far more impressive, large-budget projects for much bigger companies. I made more money on those projects; none brought the satisfaction I got from designing books. It wasn’t only the designing part, it was the learning part. It was the daily pleasure of working closely with first-rate, knowledgeable people on material that would enhance the education of so many, including me. It was work that had value beyond monetary gain.
My partner in most of this was the senior editor for the program, Tim Ferris. Tim Ferris was 20-some years older than me. He was expert in history, geography, and all the finer points of editing. He preferred the Chicago Style Manual. When in doubt, he would consult the, ” Manual”. Mr. Ferris did not need to consult the manual. It was done entirely to convince wayward writers that Mr. Ferris’s opinion of their punctuation was unchallengeable. He did this firmly, but politely.
The visual aspect of the layout he trusted to me. I spent a lot of time making sure that illustrations were on the same spread as the text they illustrated. As a reader, I was always annoyed by being forced to flip through pages to find the picture I had just read about. I don’t suppose the student readers noticed the courtesy; but I’m sure it made their study easier. Mr. Ferris agreed
We would set side-by-side for hours cutting galley proofs into double page spreads, inserting room for photos and artwork that would illustrate the text. We discussed the appropriateness of each and every one. The illustrations were gathered for our use from a wide variety of archives. We usually had six or seven options for each illustration to choose from. The writers would suggest which text would be best enhanced by visual support.
Ted and I made the final decisions.
You can only get so much text and so many pictures into X-number of pages. The number of pages was mandated by cost and time. It was a juggling act of judgement on every page. Sometimes, text had to be cut, other times, illustration. Every cut resulted in ripples of indignant resentment from the writers. One lady, who habitually wrote more than requested, reinserted her excised copy into her photo captions, some of which then ran to several paragraphs. Her ruse was discovered. The excised copy was excised again. Some huffing-and-puffing followed.
The last stage was to return to the Art Department with the layouts and produce camera-ready copy for printing. Producing camera-ready copy is precise, patient, work. It is necessary, but it is not joyful. The only pleasure in it is the pleasure of a job done well.
I was more interested in the designing than in the producing.
I did some design work, within the Council, for people outside the Council.
For several years I designed the Annual Report for the Cleveland Lutheran Schools. I worked directly with their Superintendent - Dr. Erwin J. Sagehorn. He was a grand old man. Even in casual conversation he was addressed as Dr. Sagehorn.
I’m not sure how this arrangement came about. The Lutheran Schools were part of the ERC’s Participating Schools. Perhaps L. Romanos offered my services. He liked my work. He may have suggested this joint-venture. In any case, it was a delight.
Dr. Sagehorn would bring the foreword he had written. He would typically start with a Biblical text, then weave that into the activities of Lutheran Schools last year, and the hopes for Lutheran Schools next year. He was a very good writer, learned wise, and creative. He would explain his thinking for a half hour, or more, until he was confident I had fully absorbed even the nuances of his treatise. That done, he would stand dramatically, spread his arms and say, “Go, and dream your dreams”.
How could I not respond with everything I had to this generous confidence in my dreaming. I could not let him down. I did not let him down.
This was a lesson useful to me in later life. Spirited humans, like spirited horses, run better when they run free. They will perform under restraint, but they are at their best when the restraints are removed. For such as these, you must loosen the reins, point them in the right direction, and give them their head. Your generous confidence will usually be rewarded with better results than you thought possible.
Beside the Lutheran Schools Annual Reports, I had some other projects at ERC that had little to do with textbooks.
One of these was an educational toy called, Patterns and Colors. It was the happy child of unfortunate events.
A young filmmaker, Christopher Speeth was hired to make a documentary of the Council, probably as a tool for fundraising. The grayer heads at ERC came to regret their choice of filmmaker. Those of us who were younger, thought it was a great decision. Christopher came to ERC straight from graduate work at Harvard University. He was spoken of as a creative genius - a long-haired, intellectual iconoclast of genius.
Mostly true. I liked him very much. We talked, often. His office was festooned with ribbons of celluloid, with more still being sliced into new patterns on his film editing machine. When not editing he could be seen hurtling down hallways in a wheelchair, camera in hand. There was considerable tisk-tisking about this behavior. When his film was finally screened for the assembled directors, their misgivings were confirmed.
Christopher’s film was a fast-cut film of nouveau sensibility; a style unknown, or perhaps despised, by most of the viewers. The soundtrack music was provided by Linda Ronstadt and the Stone Poneys. When the lights came on, the Directors rose, and walked silently out of the room. The film was never used. It was, however, included in the permanent film archives of the Museum of Modern Art, in New York City.
Christopher was unfazed. He was not fired. He immediately set to work on a new idea, a toy that would instruct through play. What a grand notion. I was intrigued. I am pretty sure he got approval for this by persuading Michael Constant, the Director of the ERC Humanities program to give his blessing for the effort. Mr. Constant was a friend of Leonidas Romanos - and a fellow Romanian. Mr. Constant wasn’t altogether comfortable with Christopher Speeth’s way of doing things, but he did like the idea of a toy that teaches.
Work commenced.
The result was Shape Shifters, a boxed set of 8”x13” cards with slits die-cut on each card. The slits allowed the cards to be combined in structures, both vertically, and horizontally. Playing with the cards in this way was intended to encouraged creativity, and the improvement of motor skills. Half of the cards were stiff, white cardboard. The remainder were clear plastic. Some others were 8” disks. All were silk-screened with colors, geometric patterns, and optical illusions. When combined in play, the various patterns produced new patterns. This was intended to acquaint children with the built-in possibilities of geometric assimilation; a sort of preparation for later study of Math & Geometry. The 8/13 proportion of the sides of the cards reflected the Golden Ratio of Classical Greece. I’m not sure what pedagogical effect was intended by this. No one did. Christopher never wrote a Teachers’ Guide.
Despite that, the Set was taken to Kindergartens in several of the Participating Schools. The kids loved it. The teachers weren’t sure what to make of it.
Mr. Constant was disappointed.
Christopher Speeth disappeared.
I don’t know if he was fired, or, just got bored and quit. Either way, Mr. Constant was not ready to quit. He asked me to re-design the Set. He wanted it less mysterious I thought it was terrific as it was. Nonetheless, I took his point.
I set out to dumb-down the toy. This caused me some anguish. I was happy for the opportunity, but I had great respect for Christopher, it didn’t feel right redoing his work. I kept as much of his original as I could while still responding to Mr. Constant’s request for clarity. When all was done, I wrote a Teacher’s Guide and personally took Guide & Set, out to the schools for testing. The revised work was called The Patterns and Colors Set. A boring, but less alarming title than Shape Shifters.
The results were better than before.
The kids still loved it, and the teachers were a little more comfortable. They now understood what the Set was about, and how to use it. No textbook publisher ever bought it. It was too expensive to produce, and it was too weird for the sort of marketing to which they were accustomed.
It did teach though – otherwise, it’s time was - not yet.
I learned much from the exercise.
Shortly after this project, I had a run-in with the Director of the Mathematics Program - George Cunningham. Mr. Cunningham was a large, loud, portly man of vulgar disposition. He was also good at his job. I rarely had cause to work with him. My friend, Eddy Rygalski did most of the day-to-day work for the mathematics texts; this because he was particularly skilled at technical illustration. I did the cover designs.
That’s what led to the problem. Mr. Cunningham thought the unfinished design I brought to him was, “close enough”. I did not agree.
We had words; hot words. I asked for another day to get it right. He refused, saying, “perfection impedes progress”. That was too much for me. It was an insult to the idealistic goals that had propelled me in everything I had designed. I lost my temper, and all vestige of good sense. I said, “You don’t need a designer, you need a paste-up artist”. So saying, I crumpled the layout into a ball, bounced it off his chest, and stormed off. When I got back to the Art Dept. there was a call for me to report to the office of L. Romanos. I was not surprised.
By the time I got to the office, Cunningham was already there. Romanos, was sitting back in his chair, smoking his pipe. We stood before him. He asked Mr. Cunningham to repeat his complaint. After that, he asked me if Mr. Cunningham had spoken truly. I nodded, yes.
There was a pause.
Then, Romanos looked directly at me and said: “Mr. Cunningham is older than you by many years. You should respect your elders. Mr. Cunningham is also Director of the ERC Mathematics Department. You should respect that even more.
Apologize to Mr. Cunningham”!
I apologized.
Romanos then asked Mr. Cunningham, “Are you satisfied with Mr. Shipley’s apology”? Cunningham sputtered a yes, then walked quickly out of the room.
When I started for the door, Romanos beckoned with his finger for me to return. He said, with all the gravitas of a great General imparting wisdom to a foolish, yet promising foot-soldier, “Sometimes a man is known by his enemies”.
With a smile and a small gesture of his hand he waved me back to work.
On the way back, I reflected on my humiliation, and Romano’s cryptic words.
I think Romanos wanted to tell me that he understood my unseemly outburst as a defense of principle, and, as such - though it was wrong - it was not without honor.
I reflected, also, that Romanos may have been right in denying me a managerial title because of my youth. In any case a new Art Department manager was appointed.
His name was Henry Briggs. He was liked by everyone, including me. When he came to ERC, he was only a few years away from retirement. I think he saw this new job as a pleasant way to coast into that anticipated retirement. He left most of the management to me; checking only from time-to-time, on progress, or problems. Although, not too interested in the daily work, he was interested in the Arts. We had many conversations about writers, painters, books, and symphonic music. He knew his stuff. I learned a lot from him.
His personal style seemed in contrast to his erudition, He had a New York accent, pencil-thin mustache, and the general look of a character in an old B/W movie of the 1930’s. Mr. Briggs had moved to Cleveland, years ago, because he wanted easy access to the Cleveland Museum of Art, and Severance Hall. He once gave me a complete set of Beethoven symphonies to spur my interest in serious music. Occasionally, he would give me books. One of these was the famous anatomy text and drawings of Andraes Vesalius (1542). Another was the first-edition of Moby Dick with woodcuts by Rockwell Kent. We had a sort of father/son relationship. When he left a few years later for retirement in Florida, I was sorry to see him go.
I replaced him. This time with official title.
I’m fairly sure Mr. Briggs recommended this action to L. Romanos.
The next several years were smooth, and uneventful.
Then Leonidas Romanos died.
Things started to fall apart. Individuals, even whole departments disappeared. I don’t know all of it. I think the curricula developed by the departments of Math, Science, and Social Science were sold to National textbook publishers - as planned - their work was done. Some other departments weren’t getting enough funding to survive. What else, I don’t know. The Art dept. and the printing Dept. were nearly the last to go. That was because certain final projects were required by contract, to be completed.
At each completion, I had to let people go. This was the most depressing task I have ever had. These people were my friends. They had done nothing wrong. Now they were out of work. A few months later, so was I.
After a little scrambling, I went on to a long career in marketing and advertising. But, that’s another story, for a different time.
ERC was finished. At the zenith of operations, they employed more than 300 people, and filled 6 floors of the Rockefeller Bldg. Some few remained, to deal with residuals and other legal/business closeout issues. Nothing else was left, except for the ghosts of past greatness.
It was the best job I have ever had.
Early days at ERC.
Later days at ERC.
Students playing/learning with the Patterns & Colors Set