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He went to the board and wanted to get the contract terminated, and the finance committee, which was the executive committee, in effect, called a meeting and asked me to come to it and asked him to come. I came to it and he wouldn't come. The committee voted to honor the contract, and in that period, when I was on the way out, and we already had my successor in place and so forth, in a moment of closeness I said to him, “Bill, I never could understand, you know, why you changed your mind and why you didn't go ahead with certain things.”

One of them was his retirement. It didn't carry with it--ultimately, if he had retired, it would have carried with it the CEO thing, but we had already talked about that--

What do you mean exactly--I'm sorry. Ultimately, if he retired, you would have become the CEO. Is that what you mean?

Yes. And when I said to him, “What was the problem?” he said, “I don't know what I would have done with myself if I couldn't come in this building” and say, “I'm the CEO.” Well, it was a very honest answer.

The way I was treated inside the company and the way I was treated outside the company it was as though I was CEO anyway. Because when GE wanted to buy the company, Fred [J.] Borch--I believe he was the chairman of G.E. at that time--he made the approach to me. I said: “You're talking to the wrong guy.”

He said: “Well, you're the CEO.”