The Day the Queen Came to College Park

[welch]

The Day the Queen Came to College Park

By George Solomon
Sunday, May 6, 2007; E02



How time flies. The six-day tour of Queen Elizabeth II to Richmond, Jamestown, the Kentucky Derby and Washington has rekindled memories of the British monarch's visit to College Park 50 years ago for a football game between underdog Maryland and North Carolina.

The headline on the first page of The Post's Sports section of Sunday, Oct. 17, 1957, read "Queen Sees Maryland Surprise Tar Heels, 21-7," with the late sportswriter Dave Brady writing: "Elizabeth II favored Maryland with her Queenly presence yesterday and Maryland reacted nobly with a king-sized upset of North Carolina."

Brady added, "On this historic day, 43,000 well-mannered fans saw doormat Maryland get the red carpet treatment from Her Majesty."

"I clearly remember the game," said Howie Dare, 72, a retired FBI agent living in Huntington Beach, Calif. "I dropped a punt in front of the Queen of England . . . not everyone can say that. I remember her motorcade circling the track, everyone stood up and she went to her seat in the stands."

Tom Gunderman, a guard and linebacker on that Maryland team, remembers playing nearly 60 minutes that day and that North Carolina's Coach, Jim Tatum, had guided the Terrapins to their only national football title (1953). "The Queen had a special seat and lots of security."

Gunderman, retired and living in St. Petersburg, Fla., said: "You know what I recall most about that day? We won." Dare added, "Tatum came to our locker room and said if we played that way every game, we'd never lose." The Terrapins finished the season 5-5.

Martie Zad, a Post sportswriter at the time and later the sports editor, said he met the Queen at a reception the night before the game with his late wife and Post colleague Katharine. "The Queen told me she was going to the game but didn't know much about football. I knew she was sitting with the president of the university [Wilson H. Elkins] and told her, 'If he stands, you stand.' I probably shouldn't have said that."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 00653.html

[And I remember it well. Washington's only great pizzeria, sitting on University Blvd in Lane Manor, always had a picture of Byrd Stadium during "The Queen's Game". Incidentally, Gunderman's OG partner, Rod Breedlove, later played LB for the Redskins.]

[Redskin in Canada]

Is there a position for resident historian?

Thanks.

[welch]

It's called getting old. Unfortunately, it doesn't pay the bills...

[Redskin in Canada]

It's called getting old. Unfortunately, it doesn't pay the bills...

Not that literature or sports literature in particular might pay anything but ...

Have you not considered writing a compilation of articles about your fondest memories as a Redskins fan?

[welch]

Have you not considered writing a compilation of articles about your fondest memories as a Redskins fan?

Funny you should mention it. I owe such a series to Boss. Did he put you up to this????

However, I find I'm working more and more...time gets shorter as you get older. You run harder because you have to keep up. I just read Lou Uchitelle's The Disposable American (especially starting with pages 26-30), who points to a change in the business-school aproach to motivating a work-force. It fits with something I've noticed.

Up through the early '90's, companies -- at least technical / engineering companies -- treated people as if keeping morale high would lead to better productivity. The trade magazines discussed "employee work circles", methods in which employees were "empowered" to see the end-product as something that directly mattered, and to which they (we) should contribute our creativity and energy. Encourage teams of employees, said the literature, and they'll get more work done. Skilled people are "human capital"; a smart company does not waste human capital.

Sometime in the mid-'90s, management policy seemed to change from encouragement to beating people. That is, people were made to understand that they had to work harder or be laid off...forget morale, loyalty, focus, team-work.

See Peter Drucker, The Practice of Management, from the early '50's, and compare it to his formulation in Management Challenges for the 21st Century (1999).

[Redskin in Canada]

I know what you mean. Somehow the dignity of the human person suffers in the current management process. If the entire value of a person is measured in terms of deadlines and number of reports, the whole of society is diminished one person at a time.

I have come to the conclusion that happiness is obtained through the search and acquisition of values. Knowledge, good judgment, ethics, compassion, strength, among others.

There is one thing in favour of some of us though: Experience and perspective. I am still in a position to beat routinely the recent graduates and postgraduates. But every year, I am put to the test. I will remain at the top of my game perhaps for the next five years. After that, there is no silver medal for second place in my occupation. I would be probably down and out.

There are other things I have wanted to do for a while, mainly read, write and give lectures. Perhaps writing my own fondest memories as a Redskin fan.

Naaaaahhh. I would never do as good a job as you undoubtedly will.

PS My wife finds it -astonishing- that we are having these exchanges over the THN site. For all the months that I have lived in NY every year over the last decade or so, we probably could run across one another on the street or one of our favourite restaurants in Manhattan and we would not even look at one another. Weird.

[Irn-Bru]

I just want to say that I'm enjoying this thread, even though there's not too much for me to contribute to it. I wish I could add that I am one of the young studs pushing RiC for a high-level job, but alas I can't even say that much about myself.

(This won't surprise you, RiC, but I largely agree with what you're saying about the process of obtaining happiness.)

[Fios]

I hate to play the role of corporate hack but I don't find the experience of working for what is a VERY large corporation to be all that soul-crushing. That isn't to say I have an all-consuming passion for my work or that I do not encounter frustrations. But, for the most part, I find the environment to be collegial and rewarding to the extent that I don't feel a pressing desire to leave.

[Redskin in Canada]

Sometime in the mid-'90s, management policy seemed to change from encouragement to beating people. That is, people were made to understand that they had to work harder or be laid off...forget morale, loyalty, focus, team-work.

This is -the- problem. I can survive this system. I can even thrive in it. But I hate every bit of it. Management philosophies come and go. Who can forget the famous movie speech by Gordon Gekko in "Wall Street":

The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed -- for lack of a better word -- is good.

Greed is right.

Greed works.

Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.

Greed, in all of its forms -- greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge -- has marked the upward surge of mankind.

And greed -- you mark my words -- will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA.

Thank you very much.

Many people found it scandalous, ... at first. Then it became part of the economic and financial "culture " for about a decade. Greed, not as a moving creative force, but as a Machiavellian tactic where the end justifies the means over and above all moral values. The pursuit of wealth -without- ethics and laws. ENRON may have been one of the last children of this motto but there were many.

The truly sad thing for some of us is that the "problem" outlined by Welch has permeated every big business, including professional sports and the NFL. When I read:

... , people were made to understand that they had to work harder or be laid off...forget morale, loyalty, focus, team-work.

I can see several NFL and MLB owners' names written all over them. The main problem today in professional team sports is:

How can anybody create a TEAM from a group of players that understands that ALL that it is important to one is HIS contract, HIS individual performance, HIS bonuses, HIS agent, and HIS advertisement agreements???

The duality of self-interest and collective achievement has moved way out of proportion in favour of the individual at the expense of the team. Obviously, this approach is fundamentally flawed. It does not bring success as a rule. Itr may bring momemtaneous joy but it is not lasting.

I have said before that whatever is left of a culture of LOYALTY from owners to players and players to owners, is being destroyed systematically by the "win now" mentality and "what have you done for me yesterday" attitude.

I do wonder whether we will truly see TEAMS with core players in the future or not. There will always be some winners and many losers. But will there be TRUE teams?

How obsolete and alien must the NFL world look to Art Monk now. It increasingly does to me. THAT is why, Welch, it is important that you bring these fondest memories to everybody's attention.

WE had Redskins TEAMS before. Let's tell those stories.

[1niksder]

IThere are other things I have wanted to do for a while, mainly read, write and give lectures. Perhaps writing my own fondest memories as a Redskin fan.

You could always blog, while Irn-Bru pushes forward on your behalf.

[Redskin in Canada]

You could always blog, while Irn-Bru pushes forward on your behalf.

Have you read Maurice Joly's book entitled: The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu?

It is a fictional debate about the virtues of two very radically different but effective political philosophies and values. It was written originally as a criticism against the Rule of Napoleon III in France but the dialogue is dynamic and highly applicable beyond its time. Jean Francois Revel, a famous French thinker, wrote an introduction to it not too long ago.

I am curious about writing something in the style of a fictional debate among famous characters with radically different philosophies about the duality between self-interest and collective benefit.

You may know Hillel's aphorism:

If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
But if I am only for myself, who am I?
If not now, when?

Ethics of the Fathers, 1:14

I have not found yet who the main characters to lead the fictional debate might be, or even if a fictional round table discussion format would be more suitable. It is still an early project and I have a few years before I can really apply myself to it.

But please do not become exasperated with me. I promise to write a blog before the start of the season. And it will -NOT- be entitled "My fondest memories as a Redskin Fan". That title and subject matter is already taken by somebody who can really do a much better job at it.

[UK Skins Fan]

I think this thread lost me shortly after Her Majesty arrived.

And no, I'm not referring to you, RiC.

[Redskin in Canada]

I think this thread lost me shortly after Her Majesty arrived.

And no, I'm not referring to you, RiC.

I always suspected there was a disloyal Republican right under the thin skin of the Union Jack in your avatar. By George!

Before all those elephant followers in the 50 States jump at the statement, please note that the word Republican has a different connotation in the countries under the rule of Her Majesty.

[1niksder]

I think this thread lost me shortly after Her Majesty arrived.

And no, I'm not referring to you, RiC.

I always suspected there was a disloyal Republican right under the thin skin of the Union Jack in your avatar. By George!

Disclaimers are no fun at all.

[welch]

I think this thread lost me shortly after Her Majesty arrived.

Well, sure. I hijacked a thread I had started.

*

I'm going out for a bit, so, quickly (if that's possible), and in no logical order:

- When I became a computer programmer in the early '80's, it seemed like a fine trade because I got to create things that had never existed. I was an 8080 assembly language programmer, which means we worked at the level of the CPU, instruction set, the boards, the peripheral chips. A little world over which I was master: I could reboot whenever things I'd created became too belligerant.

- Great feeling to creat, to have mastery, and to do something so esoteric that the business people couldn't understand us.

- In '97, I got talking to a young consultant from SalesTrak, a "customer relationship management" system, asking, "What do you hope for in this work?" He answered, "I'm hoping for stock options". That told me his head wasn't into the work, that I couldn't depend on him when crunch-time hit...and also that he was soon to be disappointed. The husband/wife owners of SaleTrak had already brought in a friend as CEO, and sold $60 million of the company, retaining the rest themselves. Incidentally, they had profits of $250,000 on revenues of $26 million...seemed to us from GE that a few people were mighty naive, until Baan software bought the company for $240 million and appointed the SalesTrak CEO as head of Baan. More such naive people than I had imagined...

- Earlier, a young programmer left our company to work for a division of Thompson Financial. He said that the most senior person had two years with the company, and that the staff spent their time looking for their next job -- in or out of Thompson -- as soon as they were hired. Like standing in a hurricane, he said.

- We all spend about 10 hours a day working in places like this, and I'm not counting travel.

- In July, '97, our division had a "re-structuring" in which they forced retirement packages on almost everyone over 52 with 25 years or more at the Company. Call it brain-drain. They encouraged a guy to retire who had designed the company's network and messaging system: the world's first commercially available global pack data network. Chris XYZ designed everything from the structure of the packets up to the software that drove the switching devices (GE/Honeywell DPS-6 minicomputers), and into the operating system interface.

- Chris was typical. In a year or so, we lost two guys who had come to GE after working as engineers on the Lunar Excusion Module (LEM)...that's the lunar lander they used in the Apollo missions.

- All, in their 50's, were replaced by people in their mid-20's making half their salary or even less. See Fred Brooks, Mythical Man-month, who "opens out the text", as the good old New England puritans used to say. As Brooks -- project manager for IBM's first general-purpose operating system -- explained, I learned that one highly skilled engineer is more than twice as productive as two low-skilled engineers.

- So: this is how we live. Life is rosy if you can expect to be 25 years old forever, never have a husband or wife, never have kids, never have responsibility for another human being.

- Is is appealing? How might we live? (OK, UK, that's a William Morris reference for you )

[And it doesn't talk about how to organize ourselves at work now, for the slice of productive life we have. I think the Joe Gibbs method from the '80's produces good results, as I think RiC was hinting. But later...]

[UK Skins Fan]

I think this thread lost me shortly after Her Majesty arrived.

And no, I'm not referring to you, RiC.

I always suspected there was a disloyal Republican right under the thin skin of the Union Jack in your avatar. By George!

Before all those elephant followers in the 50 States jump at the statement, please note that the word Republican has a different connotation in the countries under the rule of Her Majesty.

Republican, moi? Zut alors!

Actually, I'm usually quite ambivalent about the Monarchy, but when I see some of the buffoons who get elected as heads of state around the world, I do tend to think that we are no worse off over here for allowing selection by birthright instead.

What I meant was that this thread lost me very early on. I have come to reailse that I might have been reading the wrong books all my life, and certainly haven't been reading enough of them. Welch's William Morris reference had me reaching for Google, lest I confuse my William Morris's with my William Blakes! Just as well - I don't think those two would have seen eye to eye.

As for the topic of the thread (or the topic it has evolved into), it is undoubtedly the case that modern management is in a sorry state. The company I work for is the UK subsidiary of one of Europe's largest utility companies. They would argue strongly that their approach to management is an inclusive one, encouraging people to invest themselves in some struggle for a greater good, rather than simply monitoring returns on investment, net present values, EBIT, PBIT and EBITDA and the like. Unfortunately, even if I allow myself to believe the pronouncements of their intent, this supposed policy manifests itself merely as a never ending stream of initiatives, policy documents, procedures and workshops.

The point that is missed is that there are increasingly large numbers of people in society who are only motivated by the paycheques, the stock options, the company car and reserved parking space, or the property ladder. Then there are those who are only work for the payday, because having enough beer money for the weekend is all that matters.

There seems little space left for those who would seek to actually achieve something with their working day, and their working life.

Whether my employer likes it or not, their approach only encourages the first group of corporate climbers, whose best way to the top is to exhibit the appropriate behaviours, as determined by the policy documents and initiatives.

I don't despair, but I do feel utterly detached from the organisation. Time to move on? Probably. But I'm well paid, and cruising through the working week without being challenged in any way. That makes me no better than anybody else, doesn't it?

Anyway, I must get back to a thread about something closer to my intellectual level now. Perhaps there is a thread about shoes somewhere.

[Redskin in Canada]

Best thread I have ever been to in this board. How long before the pendulum swings back on the human side in society? When will organizations understand again the value of their -human- capital as opposed to the size of the payroll or just the bottom line?

I could write a similar story about great senior guys "encouraged to retire" before they had a chance to groom the two young, inexperienced kids who were put in his place to take over.

[And it doesn't talk about how to organize ourselves at work now, for the slice of productive life we have. I think the Joe Gibbs method from the '80's produces good results, as I think RiC was hinting. But later...]

Indeed.

I don't despair, but I do feel utterly detached from the organisation. Time to move on? Probably. But I'm well paid, and cruising through the working week without being challenged in any way. That makes me no better than anybody else, doesn't it?

I do not know your age. So, I can not predict the occurrence of -that- moment in time when we see our lives to the past, the present and the future and begin to ask some interesting questions.

IMHO the -key- is not the content of the actual questions and answers, it is the moment in -time- when they are posed and answered, and whether there is enough time left to act accordingly that matters.

[Irn-Bru]

Good lord, this thread is depressing.

Well, in a way. But I'm also young (and naive) enough that I'm seeing a lot of options on how I can get out of the 'groove' of my current job, which is in an office that meets many of the descriptions above. It pays well, but suffice it to say that I can't get beyond a superficial devotion to the 'project' of this workplace.

At any rate, I can't imagine living my life to make the bi-weekly paycheck. Like I said earlier, I've got a few potential changes coming (2 in particular that I'm pursuing). Check back with me in 5 years, and slap me around if I'm still in the same place.

[Redskin in Canada]

Good lord, this thread is depressing.

Tough questions are not comfortable. Depressing? I do not think so, perhaps even the opposite. Like all challenges, they represent -opportunities-.

If you are in the same position five years from now, and this happens as a result of a conscious and well thought out personal -choice-, there would be no reason whatsoever to slap anybody around. On the other hand, if you simply choose -not- to choose ...

[JansenFan]

I'm lucky to be in a company that, while we have had our dark periods, pay scale isn't the only factor behind peronnel decisions. We've got several people who have been with the company since it's inception, and my 10 years of service only places me in the top 10% of tenured employees. The kicker? Almost all of the people from my length of service and up are in the software development team. Most of our developers (meaning all but me and one other) are in Stratford, CT. Perhaps you'd like me to submit your resume, Welch? The were in Stamford and then Norwalk, which would have been much closer, but it's still not terribly far from NYC.

[UK Skins Fan]

Check back with me in 5 years, and slap me around if I'm still in the same place.

We have to wait 5 years? Damn.

[UK Skins Fan]

When will organizations understand again the value of their -human- capital as opposed to the size of the payroll or just the bottom line?

I have a hunch that things might have started to go wrong when terms like "human capital", and "human resources" first appeared. However well meaning the terms, they reduce the people in the organisation to accountancy definitions, and this misses the point entirely.

Then again, perhaps it was ever thus? People have always treated other people as a means to a pot of gold. We sleepwalk our way through our working lives, and increasingly large numbers of us seem to do so without ever waking up and taking a look around us. If we did, we probably wouldn't be able to change the world, but we can surely change our own worlds.

[welch]

A few quick, thoughtless, notes:

- Fios, is your workplace truly collegial, or is it a veneer? Yes, I can remember really good places, and that keeps me going...knowing that it is possible, since I've seen it. It changes when you move up to management. Like sharks.

- Odd thought...just a few months ago we were cheering on FFA (now IrnBru) as he finished college. Onward!

- JF, where is Stratford? Meanwhile, hold tight to a decent work community...

[JansenFan]

I'm not exactly sure. I only know that its like 30 minutes from Norwalk.

I can tell you in July as I'll likely have to head up there for a "customer summit."