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Excerpt from Oral History Interview with Stan Gryskiewicz, January 15, 1999. Interview S-0017. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) See Entire Interview >>

David Campbell's departure from the Center for Creative Leadership

Gryskiewicz discusses David Campbell's departure from the Center for Creative Leadership. In describing the time leading up to Campbell's departure as "dark days" for the organization, Gryskiewicz describes how salaries had been slashed and how several people had been laid off. According to Gryskiewicz, some of the resultant issues had to do with Campbell's ineffective budgeting.

Citing this Excerpt

Oral History Interview with Stan Gryskiewicz, January 15, 1999. Interview S-0017. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Full Text of the Excerpt

Can I ask this? I want to ask about all the senior fellow work but could we take a few minutes and go back and visit a few issues in these years from basically during the 80's? And let me check with you about a few things because I think your perspective will be real interesting. And then we'll pick up again with your senior fellow work. Your perspectives on the John Red to Ken Clark transition in '81 and in particular, the reorganization that accompanies that because David Campbell departs for Colorado and DeVries becomes, having been groomed a little bit, becomes I guess effectively the right hand man at the organization.
STAN GRYSKIEWICZ:
Right, yeah. Let's see. That was Campbell was doing a lot of shooting and in the dark and talent junkie and investing some money and some people would say throwing money away. And it got to the point where we had to downsize. We all took salary cuts.
JOSEPH MOSNIER:
Oh, right. This is late 70's, I guess.
STAN GRYSKIEWICZ:
I think it was. Early 80's, maybe 80. Somewhere in there. He called a meeting again and we all fit into the auditorium and was the most nervous I've ever seen David. And where all other times he would speak to us without notes or with notes. But he actually read his presentation to us which was that we were all—senior management was taking a 15% salary cut and the rest of us were taking at 10% salary cut and four people would go. And when you have a small group, four people, that was dark days around here.
JOSEPH MOSNIER:
Had that been forced on—I mean what....
STAN GRYSKIEWICZ:
I'm not privy to all that. I think it was a forced thing. You've got to pay for some of your [unclear] . I've used that phrase before about Ken Clark described David as being forthright?
JOSEPH MOSNIER:
I don't recall at this moment, but yeah.
STAN GRYSKIEWICZ:
He referred to David as being forthright, a fourth right.
JOSEPH MOSNIER:
Oh, yeah, that's right, I do recall.
STAN GRYSKIEWICZ:
And David did some wonderful things here but some of his decisions cost the organization money. So when you're shooting like David did in all these different directions all different things, some of that finally came home to roost. And I think the board finally socked it to him. I mean he made a decision about going to Europe without checking with the board. Hired my old dissertation adviser to be director of CCL Europe. That guy quit his guy at the university and then the board said, "Hey, we don't approve of this."
JOSEPH MOSNIER:
Oh, my.
STAN GRYSKIEWICZ:
Boy, that was a painful time. Then negotiating with Nick Georgiades who said, "Look, I've quit my job. I had a professorship here." And he said, "Oh, you can find another job." Well, you know, the Europeans just don't operate that way. So there was a suit that took place and they finally got around to negotiating. It was hard to negotiate. There was some money paid and that was a hard reality David had to face up to by making another one of his decisions. After a while, the board started saying, "Wait a minute. What's going on here?" So that's when Ken Clark left chairman of the board and became president of the Center. So that's part of what happened at that point.