The Magic Act

Another aspect of my social life which was pleasant was my membership in Club Tennis. The club was a new facility located just north of the Gamma Supplies site and consisted of indoor and outdoor tennis courts, an exercise room with Universal weight machines, saunas, whirlpools, swimming pool and sun rooms. Ordinarily we would not have been able to afford the membership, but several Gamma employees started a company membership drive which entitled all employees to a reduced corporate rate. Since I had always been physically active, the access to such an indoor facility was a blessing when it came to enduring the long cold Chicago winters.

It soon became routine for me to stop at Club Tennis on my way home to exercises and enjoy a sauna. When the weather turned cold Anita and I would play tennis on the indoor courts at least once a week, and we attended various social events which Club Tennis sponsored. Membership in Club Tennis was an excellent fringe benefit for all Gamma employees.

Shortly after we moved into our new home, we met our three neighbors. The elderly couple adjacent to us was quiet and lead a rather secluded life, Other than to say an occasional hello, we spoke very little with each other.

On the other hand, Jane and Bill Krane lived just down the road from us, and they were about our age. We soon became friends and would get together for dinner or just to have a drink and talk about the Williamsburg area. Bill was a native of the area and was quite knowledgeable about the local history and folklore. The Kranes also had know the previous owners of our house and knew a lot about the design and construction or our house, the surrounding plants and the landscaping. In fact, the previous owners had left with them a complete file of when each shrub, bush and tree had been purchased and where it had been planted.

The third neighbor was Zed Murphy, a local attorney. He, along with his wife and two kids lived in a restored farm house that was situated across the highway from us. Zed was also originally from the area, a successful lawyer in Williamsburg and was now a gentleman farmer. Zed, in addition to being a good neighbor, would become my personal attorney.

If one looked at my life at this point at Gamma Supplies, I had what I came to call a magician's life. A magician waves his left hand about to keep you distracted from what the right hand is doing. But it is the right hand that pulls the rabbit from the magician's hiding place to pull off the trick. That was my life. I had what appeared to be a good life and acceptance at Gamma Supplies. I had a nice house (although Gamma had no connection to that), I went to pro football games, I belonged to a tennis club, I was part of a management group, I went to dinner with the owner of the company and I was well paid. But while all the visible parts of my environment(the left hand) appeared great, my problems on the job were overwhelming. I had constant conflict with my immediate boss, open hostility by the workers in the lab, no authority to make any changes, no support from Darth and my only real role was to work on the phenolic resin for the Gamma Supplies' “Rapid Set” system and to build a technical base for the patent lawsuit defense. The latter two items had never even been mentioned to me until I began working for the company. So while things looked good from the outside, on the inside work environment(the right hand) things were very bad. This type of scenario became what I called the magic act or magician's life.


In early October, Darth came to me and said he was starting a committee to look into the quality control of Gamma's products, and that I, along with Bill James, George Landry, Jay Wells and Darth, would form the task force. I was to head the project and keep all records. I was pleased for two reasons. First, Gamma Supplies had a very high return rate of products because of poor quality, and this was an opportunity to implement some practices to correct that situation. Second, it gave me an opportunity to become familiar with the myriad of products which Gamma produced and sold. In one conversation, Carl Host had related to Tenneland personnel that Gamma Supplies had over five hundred products on its books. Also the quality control committee would also give me the opportunity to get to know some of the personal and work habits of the managers of the other areas.