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I assume so. I can't remember who. I have a vague memory of inviting somebody, and his saying, “Well, yes. I sure would consider it.” And then he asked me, “And when do you meet?” And it turned down that was the same day he had a meeting. So I learned after that to start by saying, “I want to invite you on the board, but before I invite you, let me tell you that we meet every third Thursday at ten o'clock in the morning. What do you do on ten o'clock on the third Thursday--and now can we discuss it?”
How did you identify people to invite?
Oh, you went around the board, and asked them who did they think of as being possible candidates, and you tried to get somebody who had some geographical identity that was valuable. We got Rudy Peterson, who was then the head of the Bank of America--this was twenty-five years ago, I would think--so that we would have a friend on the West Coast. We got Gaylord Freeman in Chicago for somewhat the same reason, and then Jim Bere afterwards for somewhat the same reason.
When you had a governmental or, let's say, an external issue, where you needed to weigh in with pressure--let's say, during the campaign against the postal hikes--would you use your board that way?
No. They weren't much good for you in that. You had to do that yourself. And Dave Brumbaugh made a career of it. As a matter of fact, he made such a career of it that he was finally
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