During this time, my father tried to contact me directly. I took my time calling him back, but when I did he told me he had a written proposal and would like me to listen to it. A day or so later, I sat down with him on the terrace one afternoon. He gave me the proposal in writing. He went through the provisions in detail, and I told him I would get back to him. As Will Rogers said, “Lettin’ the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier than put-tin’ it back in.”
The two keys that began to turn the lock in my mind included the title of president and a CEO status, which I had not had before, and an agreement to sell me the outdoor companies in ten years. The biggest sticking point was the time lapse before the sale. Why he picked ten years I’ll never know, but it was certainly too long for his heavy hand to continue to rest on the company. That’s probably why he picked it, and since he would remain the owner, there was a lot he could do. There was always a chance he could make my life miserable enough to force me to resign, rendering the agreement null and void.
There was another catch in the agreement, but it seemed so far-fetched I eventually let it pass. The agreement to sell the company to me in September 1988 had a provision that my father could sell Scranton but only if he did so by December 31, 1984. With only a few months to go, I remember that he never had sold anything unless he was forced into it, such as the FCC regulations requiring a sale in Roanoke, VA. Further, I felt there was no way the local competition could get their hands on that kind of cash; they had already borrowed heavily to build the boards to compete against me, and I had begun to overtake them.
I shared the entire agreement with one of my attorneys, a personal friend, whose advice was quite practical. There was nothing wrong with returning as long as I did it on my terms, he advised. I wanted five years, but compromised on splitting the difference and settling on seven. As my father had done when he negotiated the antique automobile, this time I got the benefit of the split. But in the end, my father, as the seller, still got 100 percent, while I got 20. Despite my CEO status, I knew he couldn’t resist keeping a heavy hand in the outdoor division. I was right.
THE RETURN The Ithaca Journal’s headline on October 22, 1984 read: younger pArk BACk in FAMiLy Business. The article, by staff writer Helen Mundell, read:
Roy H. Park, Sr. and his son, Roy H. Park, Jr., have patched up their quarrel, which was revealed publicly in late August in an article in Forbes magazine.
The younger Park, 46, has been named president and chief executive officer of Park Outdoor Advertising of New York, Inc., a newly formed corporation. He will also serve on the board of directors, along with his father, who will be chairman. Park Jr. said an agreement has been reached to allow him to purchase control of the newly formed company during the next several years.
Dave Feldman, who has been with Park companies for 15 years, will be treasurer of the new company and will also have an option to buy stock. Park Jr. resigned August 31 as vice president of Park Outdoor Advertising, in response to what he called “an apparent vote of no confidence” of his father, as stated in a profile in the September 10 issue of Forbes.
“The management authority afforded by this new position, as well as the opportunity for controlling ownership of the company, have provided the basis for my return,” the younger Park said. Park Sr., 73, said, “We’re happy to have Roy at the helm of the outdoor operation.”
Park Outdoor is a privately owned company, separate from Park Communications, Inc., which has stock that is publicly traded.40 Following my agreement to return were written comments from my employees such as: “Thank God you’re back!” “Wow, what a fighter!” “You certainly won one hell of a battle! We all must carry on now and give you the support you will need to make this company more successful.”
I also received a warm letter from my sister saying: Congratulations: I heard the news. I’m totally confident that you’re going to give them hell. You’re going to do a wonderful job. One real positive thing that came out of this whole mess is I know you have the loyalty of the people who work for you. Well, Mr. CEO, it ain’t going to be easy, but I know you have it in you to at least quadruple your earnings (especially without all the negative feedback): I’m 100 percent with you.
Roy, I’m really proud of you. Roy Senior ain’t an easy person to stand up to…but we’ve both done it in our own ways.
She signed it, “I love you,” and she attached a letter she had just received from a good friend, Bryant Mangum, suggesting I share it with Tetlow and my son. She said, “It’s a pretty perceptive, feeling and beautiful letter.” It read, in part: Today on the way home…I [bought] the September 10 issue of Forbes magazine….”My feelings about the article on your dad are not so simple…[along with] the tears that came into my eyes. The first tears obviously were for myself….
The second tears were for your father. They were like tears that I have shed for my own father, who has come in some ways—though by monetary standards, no—to the same place that your father has come.
Both have succeeded in dramatic ways; both have come to the top in the things that they have chosen to do….And yet neither of them, or so it seems to me, has come to the point that Jung describes as the development of a philosophy of life independent of society, which equates power over people with success. Perhaps both of them are cultural casualties, victims of the Depression, or of growing up on farms in the 1930s. But I do know that both of them are special people who somehow never learned that their children are separate from them and have a legitimate right to the pursuit of their own visions, and that those visions are real and honest.
People like you, and like me, and like Roy, have to deal with the irony of loving someone whose requirements are impossible and yet whom we love, precisely because they are our fathers and because we respect their eccentricities.
I’ve strayed from the Forbes article. Most people who read it will applaud what your father says about not treating a person differently because he is your son. But to me sons must be treated differently, precisely because they are sons; and daughters must be treated differently, precisely because they are daughters….And hopefully we will give them something that has less to do with dollar marks than with the human spirit that comes to them through us.
I’ve completely lost the Forbes article….But I’ve not lost the main thought that it has led me to: that we can not disinherit our fathers whether or not they disinherit us.
I don’t feel Pops intended to “disinherit” me, but as Johnnie shows in the next chapter, he was certainly diminishing the company he had agreed to sell me by some 33 percent when he cut a deal that worked to my distinct disadvantage—something that I could never have anticipated and that put me through hell.
