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My personal opinion is that Bob's vision for the Group was not broad enough, and maybe too influenced by his personal -- and I guess, understandable ambition. The thing about the original sponsoring group that formed the larger Gropp was that these were men who had fulfilled whatever personal ambitions they had or objectives they had, and didn't need any machinery to propel them higher or anything of that sort, and therefore, that original group could function the way it did.
I repeat, I think Bob brought another dimension to it that -- I don't want to use the word “contaminated,” because that really isn't too realistic a word for it. Changed it, from what --
And while initially the Group functioned in a limited way, and with a limited number of people, the second stage was that it stagnated. I suppose one reason it stagnated was because Bob didn't devote as much time to it as he should have, because he needed the time to pursue his personal professional interests.
I thought that the Group was going to die, and then Ray and Jim Dumpson and myself, we weren't going to mourn about it. We weren't going to intervene and try to strengthan it. We were going to let it take its natural course, even if it meant death.
Well, apparently it was too good an idea to die -- in spite of the fact that we were prepared for it-- and there was a palace rebellion, I guess. Some of the younger people whom we had originally selected, including Dave Dinkens and Bruce Lleywellyn and others, took it over. I don't think there was any acrimony or major hostility, but it had performed its function for Bob, and I
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