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Frank StantonFrank Stanton
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So during the period from the spring to the fall I made frequent trips because I was concerned about the completion of the job. And I took more responsibility than perhaps a chairman should have taken, in part because of my interest and because I had brought an Eastern person into the picture in Knoll to do the interiors. Wurster, I think, might have liked to have done everything. But they worked well together.

But the thing I did, and had to promise the Ford Foundation hierarchy I would handle responsibly, was that I had taken money from the operating funds for the capital building of the plant. Because the money that we were given, and I think it was -- my recollection is we were given six million dollars for a five-year term -- and we were to raise money to help operate, and there was nothing in that budget except a modest amount to modify one of these damned country clubs here in the East. So here I'd scooped up all the money and put it into plant and facilities. So my neck was way out, and I wanted to be sure that we had a successful venture.

The first board meeting with the fellows was right after they all arrived, and we sat around in a circle in this big conference room. And I think none of us knew quite what they were there for, because they kept saying: What are we to do? And we kept saying: That's up to you. You work out your own program and your own interest. We don't want to give you a structure or a curriculum. We want this thing to evolve.

After the second such board meeting with the fellows, I remember one of them coming up to me and saying he thought that he should be considered a person to stay on for a second year, because otherwise there would be no -- the second group would start out the same way the first group did --





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