Three Days - Three Men Part 3

Walton – The Walmart Museum is located in Sam Walton’s first store on the town square in Bentonville. While extremely informative and historically accurate, the museum is produced like Disneyland and clearly the product of Walmart’s Public Relations maestros. The museum has excellent displays and tells the story of Walmart and Sam Walton. Opinions on Walmart and Sam Walton’s leadership are controversial and vary widely.

My opinion is positive, and after viewing his story through the glowing corporate PR halo remain positive.

Samuel Walton was born in 1918 at Kingfisher, Oklahoma. His father farmed there for about five years after Sam’s birth. The father then relocated his family several times after taking a job as a mortgage broker and later as a fore closer on farms during the Great Depression. In the eighth grade Sam became the youngest Eagle Scout in Missouri history. The family eventually settled at Columbia, Missouri where Sam graduated high school.

He attended the University of Missouri on a ROTC scholarship supplemented by waiting tables in a dormitory dining hall. He graduated in 1940 with a degree in Economics. Sam was very popular in college and upon graduation, his class elected him permanent president of their class.

After graduation he went to work for J C Penney stores as a management trainee in Des Moines. In contemplation of Army induction in 1942, he took a temporary job at a DuPont munitions plant near Tulsa. When he entered the Army, he was assigned to the Intelligence Corps where he supervised security units at aircraft plants and prisoner of war camps, stateside. Sam married Helen Robson in 1943. They would have four children, one girl and three boys. Sam Walton was discharged from the Army in 1945 with the rank of Captain.

Walton started his first store in Newport, Arkansas. The Ben Franklin five and dime was a franchise store. Sam was an excellent business manager and great merchandiser. The store was well stocked always having what his customers wanted at the best price. When his short-term lease came due for renewal, his obvious success encouraged his landlord to ask for an exorbitant rent increase. After some negotiation, the landlord purchased the business lock, stock, and barrel.

Pocketing a quick profit, Sam purchased the Ben Franklin franchise for Bentonville, Arkansas. This was the first of sixteen Ben Franklin stores he would own. The second Ben Franklin was opened in 1952. In 1953 he purchased his first airplane. The plane would be a critical, tool, giving him the ability to be in his stores more often.  Sam also used the plane to scout out future store locations.

During this early business expansion period Sam proved to be an excellent manager. He was adept in hiring skilled store managers and headquarters staff, allowing him to spend time in his stores motivating and listening to the concerns of two important groups: his Customers and his Employees. Walton required daily sales reports from each of his stores detailing sales volumes and the items sold. These attributes would prove to be key elements of his phenomenal success.

Walton’s first discount store was opened at Rogers, Arkansas in 1962. At the suggestion of the store manager, Bob Bogle, the store was named Walmart. By 1967 Walmart had twenty-four stores and annual sales of almost thirteen million dollars.

The catalyst enabling this country boy to become the world’s largest retailer was a class conducted for prospective customers by IBM. At these classes, International Business Machines demonstrated the capabilities of their data processing equipment for retail sales management. Sam Walton immediately recognized the value and the potential computers and technology would have on retailing and distribution management.

On his return from IBM school, he hired five programmers away from IBM to implement a data processing system and strategy. Walmart would become the leader in adopting technology. In addition to the main frame computer, Walmart was the first retailer to use point of sale systems (faster and more accurate checkout) and satellite communications linking voice, data and video. Sam Walton understood future success depended on data and logistics.

Growth Timeline - Walmart was listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1972 when they had fifty-one stores and sales of seventy-eight million dollars. By 1980 they reached the sales of one billion dollars, two hundred and seventy-eight stores, and twenty-one thousand employees (Walmart refers to employees as associates.) Sam Walton died in 1992. At the time of his death, Walmart had one thousand, nine hundred and twenty-eight stores, and three hundred and seventy-one thousand employees. Shortly thereafter, in 1993 Walmart had their first one-billion-dollar sales week.

This past fiscal year (2018) Sam Walton’s little store reported annual sales of five hundred billion dollars, over eleven thousand, seven hundred stores operating in twenty-eight countries (over six thousand in the United States), over one million two hundred thousand employees, and serving over two hundred and seventy million customers each week. Walmart also has a vibrant if not dominant online presence.

Walmart’s PR emphasized that Mr. Sam, as he was known, prided himself or raising the standard of living for customers while lowering their cost of living; EDLP (Everyday low prices – Always.)  

Walmart’s success brought enormous wealth to the Walton family. They have accepted social responsibility and been generous in sharing their wealth. Walmart and the Walton Family established large foundations that support public and charitable activities. Walmart also is a leader in corporate disaster relief, mobilizing their resources quickly for the cause of public safety.

Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art exists because of the dedication and generosity of Helen and Sam Walton’s daughter, Alice.  Alice Walton, the richest woman in the world and the richest Texan, interest in American Art was cultivated by Ruth Carter Stevenson. Mrs. Stevenson was the driving force of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art where Alice Walton served as a member of the Board of Trustees for eleven years.

As Alice’s interest in American art developed she began acquiring the work of American masters. Logically she with the assistance of the Walmart Foundation and her family foundation constructed the beautiful and fabulous facility in Bentonville where it is stocked with Alice Walton’s collection. The building is spectacular!

Crystal Bridges is set in the woods and designed to be restful. When I arrived on Saturday morning it was anything but restful. The museum was packed - overcrowded - and loud! Admission is sponsored by Walmart, though admission to special exhibits carries an admission charge. I made my way through the galleries too quickly, as I could hardly hear myself think.

There were important pieces by Thomas Cole, Albert Bierstadt, Martin Johnson Heade, John Mix Stanley, Thomas Moran, Fredric Remington, Frederic Edwin Church, William Trost Richards, William Merritt Chase, Winslow Homer, John Singer Sergeant, and more.  I was not able to study or enjoy the art. Really Too Bad!

I escaped to a special exhibit: The Beyond Georgia O’Keefe & Contemporary Art. Admission was ten dollars though I was comped because of my Veteran’s status and thanked by the ticket seller for my service. The O’Keefe exhibit foremost was quiet, so I enjoyed it.

Gathered were important O’Keefe pieces from primarily galleries in the United States. O’Keefe’s use of the effect of light and her ability to work between reality and abstraction is truly a work of art (brilliance). There were about thirty of her works on display along with selected pieces from other artists the curator believed expanded on O’Keefe’s inspiration.  

The O’Keefe exhibition signature piece was “The Beyond.” Truly unique, “The Beyond” was captivating. O’Keefe painted it after she had lost her primary vision and using only her remaining peripheral vision.

Two years was a long time to wait to get to Crystal Bridges, and I would love to return but will have to understand how to assure a far calmer day. It could be a long time.

Three Days - Three Men Part 2

Rogers – The Will Rogers Museum at Claremore, tells the story not of the most famous but the most beloved man of his time.

William Penn Adair Rogers was born at Oologah, Oklahoma in 1879 to a prominent Cherokee family in Indian Territory. Oologah and Claremore are located in Rogers County, named for his father, Clem Rogers a rancher and local leader. Clem Rogers was a proponent for Oklahoma Statehood and in 1907 would be the oldest delegate to the Oklahoma Constitutional Convention before Oklahoma’s annexation as our forty-sixth state.

Variety was the essence of Will Rogers’ life story. He attended Indian boarding school in Missouri and later attended the Kemper Military Academy. While at Kemper he read the New York Times every day. Though a good student he dropped out of school in the tenth grade returning home to become a ranch hand.

When he was twenty-two, with a friend he left the Rogers ranch to start his own ranch in Argentina. The enterprise failed and not wanting to return home Will set out for South Africa to break horses for the British Army during the Boer War. Fortuitously the war ended shortly after his arrival. He quickly took a job with a circus / wild west show as a trick rider and roper. He named his act The Cherokee Kid. From South Africa his wanderlust took him to Australia.

In 1905 he landed in New York City and became a Vaudeville performer doing rope tricks, telling jokes, and talking about current events. Rogers was engaging with a dry sense of humor. Will possessed an everyman persona, was extremely engaging, He was a natural entertainer.

Will married Betty Burke in 1908 in Claremore. Rather than settling down in Oklahoma, the couple returned to Broadway where in 1915 he gained notoriety as a headliner in the Ziegfeld Follies. He starred and performed for Florenz Ziegfeld for seven years. In 1918 Samuel Goldwyn recruited him to act in silent films. Will Rogers quickly became a big star. America loved him. In many of his films he played himself. Amazingly the movie star performed in seventy-one films (fifty silent and twenty-one talkies.)

Knowing a winner when they saw one the New York Times first enticed Will to write a column for them. Rogers stories and commentary on current events were carried in four hundred newspapers and read by forty million people (in 1930 America’s population was one hundred and twenty-three million.) Will also became a radio personality with his own radio program from 1929 – 1935.

Rogers died in a plane crash with noted aviator, Wiley Post in 1935 at the age of fifty-five. During his life he excelled at many occupations: Indian Cowboy, Ziegfeld Follies, Newspaperman, Radio Pundit, Movie Star, and Philosopher.

The Claremore museum built shortly after his death was funded in part by citizens of Oklahoma in honor of their most favorite son. Near his grave is the statue, “Riding into the Sunset”, of Rogers astride his horse Soapsuds. The sculptor was Electra Waggoner Biggs. Electra’s other castings of “Riding into the Sunset” are at the Will Rogers Coliseum in Fort Worth and Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas.

The Museum is physically too big for what is on display - but not for the man who is memorialized. Beyond the display cases and the repetitious plethora of painted portraits the story is best told through the filmstrips and Will’s movies being shown in the main theatre, galleries, and nooks.

My biggest treat while there was meeting one of the costumed docents, Andy Hogan. Andy is pretty close to Will Rogers doppelganger. He was dressed like Rogers hat to boots. He talked like Rogers and he did rope tricks. Foremost Andy was a Will Rogers encyclopedia. It was like talking Jewish geography for a couple old guys from Cowboy Country. Obviously, we talked about Rogers, we talked about the Gilcrease, we talked Fort Worth, we talked Waggoner Ranch, we talked Big 12 Football. No matter what the subject Andy knew about it!

Rogers was the right man at the right time. America needed him through the Great Depression. While he dabbled on the edge of politics; “I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat!” he was an Everyman. When twenty percent of Americans were unemployed, he made them laugh when they needed hope, reassurance, and laughter.

The two quotes, I liked best from this homespun philosopher were: “Tomorrow is a better day.” and “My forefathers didn’t come over on the Mayflower, but they met the boat.”

Will Rogers most famous quotation was, “I never met a man I didn’t like.” I came away from his memorial thinking, every man who saw or heard Rogers, liked him!

Three Days – Three Men Part 1

(July 19, 2018) Tulsa, Oklahoma

(July 20, 2018) Claremore, Oklahoma

(July 21, 2018) Bentonville, Arkansas

Two years ago, I promised myself to visit Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas. Never seemingly able to find a time, yet determined, I finally soloed to Northwest Arkansas by way of Oklahoma’s Green Country between the Osage Hills and the Ozarks.

In addition to Crystal Bridges, I planned to see the Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art in Tulsa, the Will Rogers Memorial Museum in Claremore, the Walmart Museum in Bentonville, and a quick stop at Pea Ridge Civil War Battlefield east of Bentonville. I expected to see great art but came away more fascinated by the stories of three quite different exceptional men.

Gilcrease - I always thought of Thomas Gilcrease as just another what Texans called BOM (Big Oil Money). Gilcrease was a lot more than BOM! William Thomas Gilcrease was born in 1890 at Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana to an Irish immigrant father and a mother of Creek Indian ancestry and a member of the Osage Tribe. Soon after Thomas’ birth the Gilcrease family moved to the Creek Reservation where his father operated a cotton gin in nearby Mounds, Oklahoma.

Thomas being one-eighth Indian was enrolled as a member of the Osage Tribe. A result of the 1887 Dawes Allotment Act, in 1899 young Thomas was allotted one hundred sixty acres of land about 20 miles south of Tulsa. In 1905 the Glenn Pool oil formation was discovered, and Tom Gilcrease became a millionaire at age eighteen. Gilcrease had little formal education, however he proved to be a brilliant oilman. Unlike so many other native Americans he was not swindled out of his riches. Gilcrease would become one of the wealthiest men in Tulsa, then known as the “Oil Capitol of the World.”

Gilcrease business acumen and financial magic did not carry over to his family life. His two marriages failed, and both ended relatively quickly in divorce. Notably his second marriage was to the first Oklahoman to become Miss America (1926). Gilcrease Oil first maintained their principal office in San Antonio and later located in Tulsa. Gilcrease often traveled to Europe for business and pleasure. During his travels he became interested in art and was inspired to learn more about it and began collecting. His fortune provided him with an abundance of economic firepower and once he got the acquisition itch, he scratched intensely.

American art and American history were his dominant interests. His collection consists of painting and sculptures by primarily nineteenth and twentieth century American artists, an extensive collection of native American artists, thousands of native American artifacts including beautiful pottery, and Americana including many historical documents. In sum his collection includes nearly five hundred thousand pieces. The museum houses one of the two known hand-written copies of the Declaration of Independence. This alone is priceless.  The other resides in our National Archives in Washington, D. C. (see movie “National Treasure”.)

What distinguishes Gilcrease from other prominent collectors was his intense study of his collection. More than art appreciation, real understanding. Many people of wealth have large collections but few shared Gilcrease’s level of attachment and appreciation. The other aspect of Gilcrease that impressed me was his sponsorship of native American artists. His generosity allowed them to develop and guaranteed them a market for their works until they became established.

Mr. Gilcrease donated his entire collection and the museum real estate to the City of Tulsa. The Gilcrease Institute is operated by the University of Tulsa. In the early 1950s when the price of oil became severely low Gilcrease Oil experienced severe cash flow problems. In order to meet his financial obligation Gilcrease considered selling some of his treasured art. Fort Worth City Father, Amon Carter, offered Gilcrease over two million dollars for significant parts of the collection. Gilcrease though refused, telling Carter selling would be like deciding which of his children to part with.

The City of Tulsa came to his rescue, not wanting to lose the presence of significant and unique art in their community. To help Gilcrease get through his rough spot, the City passed a bond issue to pay the Gilcrease debt. A public bond issue to bail out a private business? Politically unbelievable! Gilcrease repaid the City from museum operations.

During my visit, on display were photographs by Blake Little of Gay Rodeo, still photographs from ’The Big Trail” (1930), John Wayne’s first credited motion picture role, several large galleries of masterworks from the Gilcrease collection, and a wide assortment of selections from the large native American collection. 

My favorite works were the John James Audubon painting of “Wild Turkey”, the massive and spectacular “Grand Canyon” by William Robinson Leigh, and the Abraham Lincoln death mask and castings of the Rail Splitter’s colossal hands. Among the native American artists, I particularly liked Woodrow Wilson Crumbo. The native American exhibits provided new curiosity and fuel for study of both the Taos Eight and Oklahoma’s Kiowa Five artists.