What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters, compared to what lies within us.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes
As Sylvia Robinson said, “Some think it’s holding on that makes one strong; sometimes it’s letting go.” My son, Trip, and I went down to my basement office over the weekend and cleaned out my personal belongings. On Monday morning, I walked into my father’s office, handed him my letter of resignation and returned my credit cards and the keys to my car.
My letter of resignation, on which my mother was copied, simply said: This is to inform you that I am resigning from Park Outdoor Advertising effective today, August 31, 1984. The Forbes article expressing your true sentiments leaves me no choice.
I regret having left a productive eight-year career to join your company only to have you feel that my efforts over the past thirteen years have not been worthwhile.
I’m sure he was shocked as I left his office, and Dave Feldman gave me a ride home. I left the nondescript company car in the parking lot, figuring my replacement would have as tough a time finding it as I had.
I was still in shock myself. Why the public vote of no confidence when after seven years with J. Walter Thompson and Kincaid Advertising I was asked by my father to come home to straighten out the outdoor division he owned and restore it to profitability? And why after a couple of years, when that was done, did my father hire professional managers to run the company and move me into his broadcasting company? And after the outdoor division had slipped back into a loss situation, five years later, why was I asked to either take back its management or find another job? Was it because my father and I differed on which direction it should go? It was not easy to come to blows in the office and try to act like nothing had happened sitting around the dinner table at night.
I want to make it clear that his statement that I wouldn’t inherit the company had nothing to do with my resignation. I had always known taking over the company was not possible. Further, I had no formal operating experience with Park Communications. The outdoor company was never part of this public company. My resignation was in response to my father’s statement that I had “not proven myself,” and I could not continue to work in an environment where success is deemed failure and where commitment, hard work and loyalty are put down.
My issue was not “special treatment” but “fair treatment.” Every employee deserves to be treated with respect, from a clerk to the owner’s son. To refer to the success of our division as unproven was unfair.
This all happened quickly. I had to let my former employees know. Temporarily having no access to typing help, Johnnie Babcock, on his first computer, helped me draft the following memo that went out the next day: TO: All Park Outdoor Employees FROM: Roy H. Park, Jr. DATE: September 1, 1984 With deepest regret I inform you that on Friday, August 31, 1984, I resigned as vice president and general manager of Park Outdoor Advertising.
Exactly three years ago, my father asked me to take back an operation which had been badly mismanaged, was losing money, and was faced with a bleak future. Hard work and teamwork from people like you in the field restored the company to profitability, and indeed, this year we are headed for all record profits for Park Outdoor.
In the September issue of Forbes magazine, a prominent business publication just out on newsstands across the nation, my father conveyed the impression that I had failed to prove myself, and, at the least, was unworthy of succeeding him.
I have no connection with Park Communications, and our outdoor divisions were never a part of the public company. The issue certainly is not “special treatment,” but fair treatment. Every employee deserves to be treated with respect. To infer that our success with the outdoor divisions is a failure indicates a lack of confidence in all of us. It is hard work in an environment when commitment, hard work and loyalty go unappreciated.
To further compare our long tenure together with the terrible turnover experienced by another company, when we know that turnover among our key people has been virtually nonexistent in the last three years, is also unfair. We all know about the rampant turnover in the outdoor divisions before I returned.
My father’s nationally published vote of no confidence left me no choice but to resign. Based on our successful outdoor turnaround, he did not feel the need to tell me this personally. It is sad that he saw fit to do this, but I must admit my values and priorities are different from his, and they will remain unchanged.
I regret that this all occurred on such short notice. I was not made aware of the article until a flood of phone calls from friends nationwide came to me at the end of last week. These callers were all shocked and expressed both sympathy and support, proving once again that there is nothing more valuable in this world than trusted friends.
I count each of you among those good friends, and on my departure, thank you from the bottom of my heart for your tremendous efforts to help rebuild Park Outdoor to its present healthy position.
Good luck to each and every one of you.
I’d had little time to prepare for a new job search and realized that finding one was going to be a long process. It certainly wasn’t going to be in Ithaca.
I had some savings by then but realized they would soon run out until I remembered I still had some P&G stock that could be used as collateral on a loan. Frankly, I had forgotten that, and after scrambling through papers in the basement I located the shares.
I remember Dave Feldman telling me that my father asked Wright Thomas, his president and chief operating officer, on a couple of occasions to ask Feldman to talk to me, saying, “He will listen to you.” Dave assured him that I would not listen to him, regardless of our long-term relationship, and that the only person who might be able to change my mind was the person who caused the departure. My father also summoned Dave and another key employee, Fran Clines, for a meeting in his office to discuss the situation. He knew Fran since she had been the corporate receptionist before becoming human resources director for Park Outdoor, and he appealed to both of them to hold the fort and not jump ship, telling them he was working on negotiating my return.
Of course, I kept in touch with a few other employees, the most critical being my secretary, Angel. I remember meeting with her at her house while she was on maternity leave, since I needed her help in getting out resumes and job letters. While she worked, I was relegated to winding up the mechanical swing to keep her four-week-old infant occupied and quiet while she typed.
News from the office was shared with me by employees, so I had general knowledge of what was going on. Dave told me my father also asked him to tell me he was worried that people would quit and our national business would cancel if I waited too long to return. I did, in fact, have a number of my former employees call and ask if I could find a way to write reference letters for them. I told everyone who called to sit tight and hold on for the time being.
Calls also began coming in from media people with national agencies such as Leo Burnett, SSC&B, and Asch Advertising, and from buying services for R.J. Reynolds, Philip Morris, Lorillard, Seagram, and American Tobacco.
From someone who signed off as a native, caring Ithacan, a letter arrived saying, “Someday your dad is going to be sorry.” A letter written to my father from one of our local outdoor advertisers calling himself a concerned longtime customer said, “As a user of billboard advertising and frequent traveler to the Binghamton and Syracuse areas, I have been able to watch the dramatic improvements in the quality of the boards…[and] impressed and amazed that your company could obtain such outstanding locations to build such beautiful boards.”
One of the letters from my employees said, “You’ve attained something 350 million can’t buy—your sanity and peace of mind. Everything happens for the best, and we have a feeling of calm that you will be happier and more relaxed than you’ve ever been in your life.”
One bright spot was a new puppy my son had been wanting a long time that joined our family. During this period an eightweek-old female Rottweiler my mother purchased from a friend and breeder, Ted Fox, came through, and check Appendix I for more on why we named her Forbes.