I was comfortable at the Convention and Visitor's Bureau. We were at the
height of our influence. I was at the height of my influence in my
career there. No other city in the state came near to what we were
doing. In fact, we were running how-to sessions for Charlotte and
Asheville and Greensboro, and everybody else that wanted to do what we
were successfully doing. I told the executive vice president of the
Chamber one day that, "We really ought to charge for some of this. It's
wearing me out doing all these how-to's." He said, "No. This is kind of
a part of what you do. You share with the other communities around."
That was a good lesson for me to learn, too. We started an informal
organization, which now has become the North Carolina Association of
Convention and Visitor's Bureaus. I'm the founder of that organization
and served as its first president. I served as its president for
probably five or six years before we had any formal structure to it. I
didn't really want any formal structure, but we finally put some
structure to it. Well, I was at the height of my effectiveness and had
real high recognition around the Triad because of what Winston was
doing. I got a call from a man from the
Page 11Lane
Company, a Mr. Hampton Powell. Mr. Powell didn't tell me who he was. He
just was from the Lane Company. Well in Winston-Salem, from '69 to '77,
we didn't pay any attention to the Market because the Market was not
open to any of us. I was the head of the Convention and Visitor's
Bureau. We were providing all these rooms. Thousands of people were
staying in Winston-Salem, and I'd never been to the Market. When people
would call, it was always because something was wrong. We weren't doing
something that they thought we should do. [They had] some problem in a
hotel or something — some perceived slight or real slight that they had
gotten in Winston-Salem. So, here comes this call from this Hampton
Powell. I don't think I returned his call immediately. When I did return
his call, I never could talk to him. He was the president and chairman
of the board of the Lane Company. I came to have a great regard and high
respect for Mr. Powell, but on the day that he called me, I wasn't
impressed. He called me and said, "We want to talk to you. We have
this—," and he just started and I thought, "I don't know what this man's
talking about, and I don't know what he wants." As I got to know Mr.
Powell over the next long period of time, I still never figured out some
days what he wanted. Nobody else could either. He was one of those great
thinkers, but he was way ahead of what he was telling you. He called and
he said, "I would like for you to come over." I said, "Fine" and I went
over to see him. This is '76. He said, "The Market wants to improve its
image. We've got a real problem here. We've got some real problems, and
we don't know how to handle them. We know how to make furniture. We want
somebody that is from here, because we're not. We have these factories
all over and we come in here. We've got a mess. People are mad at us,
and we can't seem to get the landlords and people to do what we want
them to do. We want somebody and your name
Page 12keeps
coming up. Would you like to talk to us about it?' I said, "Yes, sir. I
would." Well, I don't think I talked to him anymore about that Market.
Then, by October, I came back over. That was the second time I was ever
at Market in my life. He offered me a job. He couldn't define the job.
He could say what the problems were. He didn't know how to solve them.
He didn't know what needed to be done. He said, "It's the same kind of
work you're doing. We've got all of these people coming in. They've got
to be taken care of. We have all these needs, and we can't take care of
this. We just want to sell furniture. We don't want to bother with all
this. We're really scared that this market's in trouble. We have this
organization — it was then the Furniture Factories Marketing Association
of the South, because we were the Southern Furniture Market. He said,
"We have this organization. It's been here, but we've run it as
officers. We've had an ad agency and a PR firm to help us out, but we
really need somebody full-time to look after this for us. We want you to
do it." He said, "You need to talk to three other people. We have a
committee." I really had not grasped what Mr. Powell wanted. Even today,
all of us call him Mr. Powell. He's dead now, but we all called him Mr.
Powell. He never was the kind of person that you got familiar with. He
was an older gentleman, by that time, and eccentric. We all called him
Mr. Powell. He said, "You need to talk to these others." I went up to
Martinsville, Virginia, and I had lunch with Richard Simmons, the
president of American Lawrenceville and Clyde Hooker, the president of
Hooker. It was a very cordial lunch. They were extremely nice folks.
Both were Chief Executive Officers of their companies, and both were
family companies. So, there's that kind of interest. "How's he kin to
the Bassets? How's he kin to—?" That fascinates me. They began to say
things like, "Well, you're going to talk to Bob Spilman at Bassett next
and his wife's
Page 13my cousin." I was kind of caught in
that loop of, well I've been here and I know how important these
relationships are, and I like this. I talked to those two gentlemen for
a couple of hours. It was very nice, extremely nice. The highest level
of good taste, good manners and good grammar, so I liked them. They
said, "You need to go see Bob Spilman." So, I had an appointment to see
Bob Spilman. I went into his office. I came to Market and came out to
the showroom and one of his associates met me and took me back to his
office. He said, "I've given him a cigar, so he'll be in a good mood." I
got into his office, and he started a very clipped style of interviewing
me, which was okay. He asked me a number of questions, and we got along
very well. We established that we were both Episcopalians. I suspect he
asked me some questions about my education. He asked me if I was
married, and I said, "No." He said, "Have you ever been married?" [I
said, "No."] He said, "Good. I like bachelors." He said, "I'd rather
have a bachelor work for me any day, rather than a married man. I can
send you anywhere in the world I want to, and there's nobody whining at
home." I don't think that style works today, but it worked for Bob
Spilman in those days. Then he said, "And you have the right accent.
You're going to be representing the Southern Furniture Market, and you
have the accent." So I thought, "Well, I'll try this. This is good." So,
I came to work in '77 on a loosely formatted mandate, which I have, over
the last twenty years, refined to their satisfaction. I talked to Bob
Spilman last week. He's now retired. I told him when he retired that he
had always set the standard for my performance, because I knew what he
expected. I knew if I pleased him, the rest of them would be a piece of
cake. So, I did. I used him as the benchmark of—. I always included him
in decisions and still seek his counsel. So, I came to work in '77. I
didn't know much about High Point. High Point, in that time, was
Page 14insulated from Winston-Salem because it was
insulated from everybody. The geography of the Triad then only included
Greensboro, Winston-Salem, and High Point. It didn't include Lexington
and Thomasville and all these other things that have come along since
and stretched the boundaries. We were the energy. There's historically
this little friction between Greensboro and High Point. You don't have
to scratch very deep to find some raw feelings about something. It's
because they're both in the same county. Here's Winston-Salem with this
slightly elevated elevation and attitude sitting over here on this
little hill. Greensboro doesn't like that. There's always been this
little friction. It's still there some. High Point and Winston got along
very well, but we just didn't come over here. We didn't know High Point.
Being in the industry that I was in, nobody ever invited us to Market.
We did work with the Chamber of Commerce people over here, so I knew it,
but I really didn't know the dynamics of the city. I decided to come in
'77. I left my job in Winston at the peak of my influence and came over
here. What I found was a community that understands how to identify
problems, understands how to solve them, and doesn't have what I
consider a real rough and tumble political style. I think Greensboro has
that. Winston did not have that. It does [have] some now. So, I liked
it. I had traveled in a circle, professionally, of top leaders. I had
traveled in a group of people who could get things done because they had
the resources and influence to get it done. I came right into a
situation where that existed here. The furniture industry owns this
event. It is for that group to deal with their buyers in a partnership
with the community of High Point. They have it here. So, you had pretty
much the same structure. All of a sudden you had this very well
educated, highly influential, cultured group of manufacturers dealing
with the same caliber of people in this community to get
Page 15everything done that it takes to get this project done. The
fit was very good. I was very comfortable. From '69 to '77, we learned
how to do everything we needed to do in Winston-Salem. I brought a lot
of that over. When you looked at the promotions that we've done — that
we discussed earlier — you see vestiges of my relationships with Old
Salem and Reynolda House and Blandwood and Museum of Early Southern
Decorative Arts. So, actually my career has not changed. I'm still doing
tourist promotion. It's just it's for the largest event in North
Carolina, and it's for the largest event of its type in the world. I
don't sell furniture, but my love of history teaches me about furniture.
I do marketing. I do administration. Part of my—. I have a double major
in political science and history, and it was in administration, public,
the public administration side. So, I got off to a very good start. But,
after about two weeks, I had some real misgivings. Mr. Powell called me
and said, "Rick, I want you to have breakfast with me. I'll be in High
Point, and I want you to have breakfast with me at four a.m. I'll meet
you on West Green Drive at a little restaurant called Carl's." He said,
"It's open twenty-four hours a day." He said, "Four o'clock." I must've
hesitated, and he said, "Is that too early?" Well, I have pretty good
instincts. I knew that that wasn't too early if that's when he wanted to
eat, so I met Mr. Powell at four a.m. All the way over here from Winston
I thought, "I have given up a good job for this?" He met me at the door
with the biggest, greasiest southern breakfast you've ever seen in your
life at four a.m. We reached an accommodation that we would meet in the
future at six o'clock. But Mr. Powell, that was a test. Mr. Powell was
very eccentric. He went to bed at seven o'clock at night, got up at
three in the morning, so his first appointment was at three. It was the
middle of the morning for him. It taught me that I would be tested by a
number of these manufacturers
Page 16as they would
probably test their own employees. Between Hampton Powell and Bob
Spilman, I have obviously passed the test. Spilman will test you too.
Spilman asked me to be in his office in Bassett one morning at seven
o'clock. [There was] horrific snow. I heard the forecast. I drove to
Martinsville and spent the night. I was there — didn't have to drive up
there. There was a lot of snow. I got to his office at seven o'clock in
the morning. Nobody was there. The building was open. Nobody was there.
They had closed all the factories. The building was closed. About eight
thirty he comes in, and I'm sitting there in the lobby waiting for him.
He said, "What are you doing here?" I said, "We had an appointment at
seven o'clock." He said, "I like that. I like that. Okay." So, we are
all tested.