David and Helga at a recent retirement party. (Photo by Jeff Yardis.)Yesterday (Tuesday, April 22, 2008) we received our Spring 2008 “Houghton Milieu,” the alumni magazine; otherwise known as the “Mildew.” —Named that by Messenger editor L. David Wheeler, Houghton College 1991, otherwise known as “the Hasidic Jew;” although I prefer the nickname he was given at Houghton: “Ledley.”
Inside was a giant treatment about the retirement of David Findley ‘68 from Travelers Insurance in Conn., where he became a senior vice-president.
It’s David all right — he made good apparently; although our memory of him was that he was a complete jerk.
My perception is you have to be a jerk to be a successful manager, although it looks like his beloved Helga mellowed him some. (We sure hope so.)
I have OCR scanned the entire article, since I think it’s pretty fair.
But I’ve changed a few things to red and footnoted them.
Here we go:
Sometimes nice guys do come out on top (-1). Take for instance, the case of David Findley ‘68. At the end of December, Findley retired from his position as senior vice president and chief operations and information officer for St. Paul Travelers Insurance. At the end of his career, he led a part of the organization consisting of 4,900 employees in more than 130 locations with an annual budget of $402 million and revenues of $24 billion, servicing 1.2 million customers. Those who worked for and with him — from the mailroom to the board room — enjoyed and respected Findley so much that they gave him five separate retirement parties.
“I never realized that people felt that way until I left the company,” Findley says, “and then all the accolades kept coming.” He said that all of them mentioned the same things: “My Christian character, and how I treated people — people could see the difference in the way I looked at life and the way I looked at issues, trials and challenges.”
Don’t get the wrong idea — Findley is not taking the credit for this. Instead, he used his retirement parties, including the one with the Travelers most senior executives, to send a message. After presenting him with “all this stuff — of life,” he says they asked him to say a few words. His message? “All that I’ve achieved in the business world, I have to give back to my Lord and God, because He has blessed me beyond measure.”
Those blessings started “at my mother’s knee,” Findley says, recalling his Christian upbringing. He went to a Wesleyan church in Ottawa and heard of Houghton through the denomination. He applied, but recalls that his SAT scores were too low. He credits former registrar, the late Wesley Nussey, for opening the door. Nussey arranged for Findley to matriculate at the college while taking English and American History from Lindol Hutton ‘57 at Houghton Academy.
He “wasn’t the smartest guy in the college — by a long shot,” Findley admits, so it was a good thing that Ken Nielsen (-2), vice president emeritus for finance, gave him a job in the kitchen (in the basement of Gaoyadeo), where Findley “fell in love with this woman, Helga Jensen (-3) ‘68, who made sure that I went to the library every night.” Findley also remembers “falling in love with history,” for which he credits Kay (Walberger ‘43) Lindley (-4), professor emerita of history: “She was a fantastic teacher,” Findley says, “The sun just rose and set on her.”
He also enjoyed English professor Jim Barcus ‘59 and professor emeritus of business administration Arnold Cook ‘43 and the late Ed Willett ‘39. “We just had so much fun,” says Findley. One time a campus business club called the Young Administrators Organization (YAO) had a guest speaker from the Travelers come down from Buffalo. “When I transferred to New York City with Travelers, the first person I met was that same man! He could not believe it! It’s a small world.”
But we’re getting ahead of the story. After graduating from Houghton, Findley considered several offers, then accepted a position with the Travelers because of their management training program. After completing that course, he returned to Houghton to marry Helga and bring her back with him to begin their married life in Ottawa. After two years, she convinced Findley to ask for a transfer back to her hometown — New York City — where they stayed for two years before he was promoted to company headquarters in Hartford, Conn. Along the way he earned his master’s degree from Pace University.
During his years in Hartford, Findley grew to appreciate the liberial arts education he had received at Houghton. Often, he recalls, people would ask him where he had gone to college, expecting him to name a “brand name” college or university known for its business school. He would enjoy the opportunity to tell them about Houghton.
He made it a point when reviewing resumés — “and over the course of 40 years I’ve looked at a lot of resumés,” he notes — to look for somebody who had a well-rounded education and outside interests. “Then I know that they can speak and write and do the kinds of things that a liberial arts education (-5) prepares you to do,” he says. On the other hand, he said, were the candidates “who did nothing but study accounting” and didn’t get involved in outside activities. “Those I tended to fly over,” he says, “because I saw so many of them.”
What difference did studying liberial arts at a Christian college make? “The obvious thing is that, from a Christian standpoint, ethics was very important back when it wasn’t,” Findley says. Perhaps less obvious, but certainly no less important — especially to Findley — is that “we treat people right, because that came out of our teaching — we were to treat people fairly. I’m not sure that we get enough of that.”
“I see too many people in the business world that, frankly, are bullies (-6).” It bothers him greatly that many organizations tolerate them, even look up to them. “I don’t think they become the best leaders at all,” he says, “These people roll over other people.”
That certainly wasn’t Findley’s way. Consider this excerpt from his official Travelers biography: “His endearing leadership style, coupled with intensive ongoing coaching and mentoring, has allowed him to develop a highly respected leadership team and ensured its continuity by extending key opportunities to the company’s next generation of leaders.”
As Findley pointed out at his retirement, the Lord has blessed his willingness to be different. “Over and over and over again, He has blessed me,” he says, “with a career that has been very rewarding financially and from an ego standpoint and from a level of achievement. You cannot count them [the blessings] up.”
In retirement, Findley intends to pursue his interest in HAM radio (call sign KB1WR) and ride his new BMW motorcycle in the Appalachians. He will continue to teach Bible studies and Sunday school — he “loves the Gospels and the letters of Paul” — at the Valley Community Baptist Church in Avon, Conn., where he and his wife are founding members and he has served as elder and chairman.
“At the end of my career, looking back on it, I could never have predicted it,” Findley says, “I was fortunate. I don’t look back and say that happens to everybody, but when I look back on it, I have to say to myself, there’s only one person that I can give the honor and glory to.”
David W. Findley in 1966.
—RE: (-1) “Nice guys do come out on top.” This has to be the most amazing thing we’ve ever read.
Findley was on the dish-crew at the Gaoyadeo Dining-hall; and no one could stand him.
There were three manned positions on the dish-crew, the people shoving dishes through the dishwasher for cleaning. They were: “hot-end,” “spray,” and “donut.”
“Hot-end” was a long metal chute from the dishwasher exit to another room where dishes were put away. Findley would try to get the loaded racks of dishes down the chute and onto the floor. —The girls in the adjacent room, where dishes were put away, hated when Findley worked “hot-end” because they had to stop his angry slings.
“Spray” was a small sink at the head of the dishwasher, where the operator would spray off a loaded rack of dishes before shoving them into the dishwasher. That person used a shower-head on a flexible metal hose.
Give Findley a flexible shower-head, and he sprayed all-and-sundry. His greatest joy was spraying through the wall-mounted ventilation-fans to the outside, to soak innocent passersby.
The “Donut” was a large rubber insert over a 10-inch hole through the large stainless-steel dishwasher feeder-tray. The donut-hole was over a garbage-can. Waiters (or waitresses) would deliver the stacked plates with all the garbage heaped on the top plate.
The donut operator then smashed the plates into the donut to empty the garbage.
Two girls were beside the donut man to insert dishes into racks for dishwashing. For speed, the girls would grab the dishes as the garbage was emptied.
What Findley would try to do is smash the hands of the girls on the donut.
The girls hated working with Findley — who they preferred was me, because I took care to not smash their hands.
During my tenure I suggested to those girls my birthday was coming; and they should celebrate my birthday.
They all jumped enthusiastically on board; and Findley was madder than a hornet. He stalked off in a jealous huff.
“Well, you could have a birthday-party too, David — if you were anywheres near civil!” they said.
It’s also worth noting that Findley would have nothing to do with cleaning up the dish-room at all.
That was left to Ken McGeorge and me. McGeorge went on to become a hospital CEO in Nova Scotia.
—RE: (-2) “Ken Nielsen (‘NEEL-son’).”
At that time “Ken Nielsen” was the head of the Gaoyadeo Dining-hall; not the college Business-Manager he eventually became. In fact, in 1961, before Houghton, he was the director of Sandy Hill Boys Camp — his wife was the head of the Girls Camp — and thereby reversed the utter madness of the Delaware Valley Christian School crowd, which made such a mess in 1960.
Before that he was head of “Youthtime;” a Christian youth ministry in Buffalo.
“Nielsen” hired me; the idea being I would be horsemanship director at Sandy Hill in the summer of ‘63.
But my father put paid to that: it was more important that I “make money” than save souls.
So Nielsen’s best-laid plans came to nought; I went to work for Mahz-N-Wawdzz instead.
But I thereby became part of the hallowed Gaoyadeo kitchen-crew. And like me, Findley probably started as a “cart-boy;” one who collected glasses and silverware on a wheeled cart for delivery to the dish-room.
As a “cart-boy,” I (and Findley) often ended up subbing for regular dish-crew people — in my case mostly for Paul Mouw ‘64, who headed the college yearbook. (We also often subbed for David Moore ‘64, who preferred “hot-end;” and seemed to loathe working at all.)
So that by my junior year I was regular dish-crew; and Findley was my senior year.
—RE: (-3) “Helga Jensen ‘68”
Findley was extremely hot for Helga, supposedly because she had big boobs. He would take her out and return with blast-marks all over his crotch.
His courting Helga seemed a joke; whatever she saw in him, we don’t know — potential, I guess.
Lo-and-behold romance flowered, and Helga married David.
Congratulations, David. Ya got what ya thought ya wanted; which as far as we ever knew was big boobs.
Looking at Helga now we see a doting grandmother. We think she mellowed David; and perhaps made him a better person. (We sure hope so — and this article makes him sound much better than the jerk we knew.)
—RE: (-4) “Kay (Walberger ‘43) Lindley.”
Well, Dr. Lindley was the mother-of-all-mothers; a kindly and saintly person who pleasantly accommodated all in her classes.
But unlike David, she wasn’t the professor that inspired my change from a Physics-major into a History-major.
That would be Dr. Richard L. Troutman, ‘53, a wiry little guy who was on the outs because he was a Democrat in a hotbed of Republicanism. He also had a habit of breaking college rules. He allowed his wife to wear jewelry, for heaven sake. When his ‘57 Belair-six gave out, he got a black ‘58 Impala two-door hardtop with a tri-carb 348 and duals.
Down the hill he’d come, roaring and backfiring.
Lindley started in ‘64; mostly because Troutman was on-the-outs, and could never be History-Department head.
With Lindley, Troutman eventually left, but after I graduated in 1966.
His house had also burned out; and the good Houghton-burghers furtively declared it was a sign from the Lord.
—RE: (-5) “Liberial arts education.”
“Liberial” is now how my loudmouthed macho brother-from-Boston noisily insists “liberal” is spelled. (More recently it’s “liberila.”) He was trained as an engineer, and noisily insists engineers are far-superior to liberal-arts graduates.
Houghton was tilted toward liberal-arts — I myself was a History-major; a liberal-arts student — and Findley saying liberal-arts students were better prepared to deal with the working world is nice.
But I think it’s more than just the ability to write and/or speak; i.e. communicate.
To me the main benefit of a liberal-arts education is to learn time-management — able to process a massive pant-load of seemingly useless drivel for later regurgitation into an “exam” — dread. (Like the name of Napolean’s horse: “It’s in the book, class. Page 213.”)
I once was instructed to purvey a massive “annotated bibliography” to Troutman; 89 bazilyun books I was supposed to read.
I was the onliest one to turn it in; took Troutman over a year to grade it. (I got an “A.”)
But I didn’t actually read the books. All I did was skim.
Others did nothing at all; except complain the assignment was impossible.
What I did was skim maybe five books per week, and thereby was able to turn in the annotated bibliography on time.
Troutman was speechless — I was paraded as an example to all the complainers.
—An extreme example of extreme time-management. Planning out the work required to produce the HUGE annotated bibliography on time.
This later worked its way to the mighty Mezz: producing my hated “Night Spots” file for the weekly “Steppin’ Out” magazine, by doing so much per day a week in advance.
—RE: (-6) “Bullies.”
The David Findley we knew was the ultimate bully.
He used to torture poor Allen F. Repko ‘66 (the “F” stood for “folderol”), because Repko, the ultimate innocent straight-arrow, was just learning the joys of necking from his girlfriend Donna Lee Berry ‘68.
Repko was surprised and terrified by the heated passion that arose in him, so Findley, supposedly experienced in the ways of love, jumped all over him.
He’d horn in, sit with Donna Lee, and make fun of poor Repko.
Another sterling example of “bullying” was Findley’s treatment of poor Blanche.
Blanche was a 60-ish woman who worked in the Gaoyadeo kitchen; who supposedly had strong body-odor.
“Turn on the fans!” Findley would yell, if Blanche dared walk into the dish-room.
He’d hold his nose and run outdoors. “I need air (pant-pant)!” he’d yell.
Suppose a “Blanche” worked at Travelers? Had Helga straightened him out — made him more tolerant? —If so, thank you Helga. You’re a saint. Ya made the world better.
“Houghton College,” in western New York, is from where I graduated with a BA in 1966. I’ve never regretted it. Houghton is a religious college, although I’m not religious — and surely an abhorred graduate. I went there as an alternative to attending a more religious school my father attended, that wasn’t a college — then.
The “Messenger” (“mighty Mezz”) is the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired over two years ago. Best job I ever had. —Upon seeing a photograph of Messenger editor L. David Wheeler, my ever-tolerant sister in south Floridy, who is slightly younger than me, suggested he looked like “a Hasidic Jew.”
An “OCR scanner” is an Optical Character Recognition scanner. It scans text and creates a computer text-file of the copy scanned.
The “Gaoyadeo (‘Gay-oh-DEE-oh’) Dining-hall” was the original dining-hall at Houghton College. The Gaoyadeo building has since been torn down, but it was once a dormitory, and as wood rather rickety (and a fire-hazard). —Gaoyadeo was an indian word.
“Sandy Hill” is the religious boys camp in northeastern Maryland I worked at 1959-‘61. In 1960 the senior-staff at Sandy Hill was from Delaware Valley Christian School near Philadelphia, and they made a mess. They were into secret debauchery and sin. The camp became a stinkpot, and needed serious cleaning up.
“Mahz-N-Wawdzz” (Myers & Watters [“meyers and waters”]) is the Philadelphia-based painting contractor I worked at during every summer I was at college. They painted high steel; e.g. water-towers and in oil-refineries. —Pronounced that way because that was how my Greek supervisor pronounced it.
RE: “He allowed his wife to wear jewelry, for heaven sake.......” —As a Wesleyen Methodist college, Houghton was against the wearing of jewelry.
A “tri-carb 348” is a 348 cubic-inch V8 engine with three two-barrel carburetors; a factory hot-rod. —Chevrolet “Impala.”
The “Steppin’ Out” magazine was a Thursday-only production of the Messenger newspaper. “Night Spots” was a listing of area night-clubs, and what live music they had, if any. It was a free ad, but a struggle. I was forever pulling teeth. I would overwrite the previous week’s file on my home computer — saved a lotta cranking. I hated doing it, but it was rewarding in print. The Steppin’ Out editor seemed satisfied with what I turned in, although I always felt I wasn’t giving it justice.
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