This is a living history interview with Leo Benatar, class of 1951, conducted by Marilyn Summers on January the 25th, the year 2002. We are at his home in Atlanta, Georgia. The subject of the interview is life in general and his experiences at Georgia Tech. Shall I call you Leo or Mr. Benatar? Which would you prefer? Well, I hope you call me Leo. Okay, if I have your permission. Let's begin at the beginning. So I want you to tell me, first of all, where you were born and when, and then let's talk a little bit about your family background. So tell me where you began. I was lucky enough to be born in Atlanta, Georgia in February 21, 1930. So I'm 71, it'll be 72 in about 30 days. What were your mother and dad doing in Atlanta, Georgia in 1930? My mother and father immigrated from the island of Rhodes. they weren't married at that time but they knew each other they were single and they lived across the street from each other both of them were born on the island of Rhodes which is in the Mediterranean right well it's it's it's just west of Turkey but it primarily had been part of the Greek province at that time, before that. But when they were there, they were under Turkish rule until 1905, and then they were under Italian rule from 1905 to 1919 when they came to this country. Consequently, they were Italian citizens when they came to the United States. So they immigrated as a town. Right, yeah, and the reason they came here was because there was just no opportunity for them on the island. Well, it was small and at that time Jewish people lived in a certain part of the city and there really wasn't many job opportunities for them. So my mother's brother had come to the United States and the reason he came to Atlanta was when he got to Ellis Island the inspector there asked him where he was from and what the climate was and he said, well, you should go to Atlanta. And so he put him on the train, they put him on the train, sent him to Atlanta, Georgia. So he settled in Atlanta, Georgia, you know, just... So it just happened to him. Just absolutely, you know, no rationale, no reason to pick Atlanta. And so he started making a living here repairing shoes and sent for his mother and his sister. Who was your mother? It was my mother, and my father, who was, his father had died when he was seven, and so he was working as best he could, so he decided to work his way over on the same ship. In fact, I've got some of the manifests of the ship that they came over on. I'm trying to, well, I just got it from Ellis Island. They have, they've built these historical data, and I'm trying to get more data on this, because I've got the manifest, and I've got his name in there. Oh, that's wonderful. It's incredible. Document. Amen. And so he came over, they both came over in 1919. How did his family and how did your grandparents happen to be on the Isle of Rhodes? I guess... Do you know how many generations it goes back? No. You don't even know. No. That's still research to be done. Well, I don't think we're ever going to find out. I do know that the great, great, great ancestors came from Spain during the Spanish Inquisition. They left Spain, and best I can determine, based on my name, we think they ended up in Morocco first, because Ben is son, and Attar is Aramaic, not Arabic, Aramaic for pharmacist Aramaic. you know the Old Testament when it was first done was done in Aramaic it wasn't done in Hebrew and so a tar is a pharmacist or spice dealer so so we think that one of my ancestors was was the traders right during that you know during the during the trading thing and so somehow they ended up on the island of Rhodes and then subsequently my parents came here it was a great, great thing because my dad was a super patriot, you know, he thought this was the greatest country in the world. Well it gave him an opportunity he wasn't going to have. That's exactly right. So he came here in 1919, they both did, not married though. Right, got married in 1923. Oh, so they came and settled him. Well he had to earn enough money because my uncle said if he didn't have enough money he couldn't marry my mother. A little motivation there. Well you know he had already committed her to someone else. Your uncle had? Yeah. Which of course would have been a custom. Well, it was a custom. But my uncle said, look, if you really love, he told my mother if you loved him, then I'll give him a little time to see if he can make a living and support you. And he did, and so they got married. And then someone you interviewed earlier, my brother Vic was born in 1925, and I was born in 1930. But the only reason they even were in Atlanta was because your uncle got sent to Atlanta This is just, it could have been anywhere USA, and it just happened to be Atlanta. Unfortunately, I could have been a Yankee or something else, but I'm just very, very lucky. Well, they say something through the gates of God. That's right. What profession did your father take up? Yeah, no, he started cooking hamburgers, making hamburgers at Five Points, and made $2 a week. He told me this story so many times, and I had it verified by some other people, and he sent a dollar of it to his mother, who still lived in Rhodes, who was supporting two younger brothers. Imagine, 50% of his wage. Yeah, and so then in a few years, he and one other person opened a little delicatessen on Peachtree, right at Peachtree in Linden, right across from the Crawford Long Hospital. Okay, I can picture it. And they started a little business, and it grew, and they made a living there. It wasn't anything fantastic, but my dad made a living there and eventually bought out his partner and owned it himself. What was the name of it? Vicks, V-I-C-K-S. The reason was not because of my brother. My dad's partner was named Victor. Oh, how interesting. As is our man behind the scenes here. An uncommon name, and we're surrounded by it just now. It's where Mix and the Pleasant Peasant are now. Right. It's where the location is the Pleasant Peasant. The floor is the original floor that was put in there and the ceiling and everything in there. Not the food or the tables, but the rest of it is still there. I know it well. That's kind of nifty. So your dad was part of Atlanta's Midtown history. Right. That's exactly right. He opened it in 1923 and stayed at a 68. Oh, he did very well then, that's a long duration. Well, you know, he made a living there and he did all right. And he kept your mama. That's right. And then he got Victor and then he got Leo. That's right. And what could have been better than that? So where were you raised? What area did you live in? Actually, we moved a few times. I was born on 10th Street, born at home, by the way. In those days, they had a midwife come and deliver the baby. Then my dad bought a house, it wasn't trendy at that time, right north of Highland in Virginia, on Northview. We lived there for a few years, but the Depression got pretty tough, and my dad couldn't afford the payment, So we moved to the south side of town on Washington Street where we rented an apartment for about five or six years. The economy picked up, then we moved back. And I lived most of the time right off of Highland Avenue. So when it came time to go to school, what elementary school would you have gone to? I went to Samuel Inman, which is now middle school. And then I went to Formalt, which is near the stadium, Atlanta, the old, well, Turner Field, Turner Field. The old stadium. Yeah, and then I went to Bass Junior High and then Boy's High. You can tell where you live by how you moved. Right, that's exactly right. Then I went to Boy's High. What kind of a student were you? Not as good as my brother. Is that what you heard all your life? All my life. I'd have the teachers always say, if you'll do as good as your brother, we'll be happy with you. And you made a point of not doing that because everyone expected it. But I did all right. Did you not like school? Oh, I enjoyed it. I loved it. I loved it. No, I did okay in school. I have a feeling you were interested in everything. And school was just part of it, right? Well, I enjoyed sports. I have a feeling that you're not any different today than you were when you were a little boy. Whatever was around caught your attention. Right. And you enjoyed it. I enjoyed sports, but I did okay. I did well in school. I graduated in high school two and a half years, and I graduated seventh out of a class of 150. You were a really good student. I was a good student, but my brother was always perceived to be better, so I always had something to look up to. That's a heck of a thing to grow up under. No kidding. No, no, no. He's a great person. He and I get along very, very well, and he set some high standards, and that's good. What are your memories of growing up in Atlanta at that time, in that place? Going to Bath, for instance, what was it like you would go through Little Five Points to get there? Was it Little Five Points then? Yes, it was Little Five Points. You still called it that? Was it as eclectic as it is now? No, no, no. It was a very middle class neighborhood. You know, the thing about Atlanta in those days, the population was about 200,000 in the 40s. Actually, we were no bigger than Birmingham or Chattanooga, and all three of those cities were the same size. And Atlanta grew primarily because of the airport, and those cities really didn't take the challenge because there was a lot of thought about Birmingham was better located for airports, but they didn't want that. And Bill Hartsfield, he had this vision of having a great airport here, and this was really what made Atlanta different. But basically, in those days, you know, we never locked the door to our house. I know you've heard other people tell you this, and a lot of people say, sure, sure. I never had a key to my house. The truth of it was you didn't have it. I never had a key for the house. I'd come home, the door was open. This is pretty. It was probably just a general respect for each other and for property. People just didn't think of doing things that would harm someone else. It just wasn't part of the mores of the society. Did you have opportunities to have little jobs and things and work at all during that period of time? I said my dad did okay, and we certainly long ways from being well off, because I worked, if I didn't work at his, we made a transition, he did at that place from a delicatessen to a restaurant, is that area became less residential and more industrial, or commercial, I should say. so it became a restaurant and I worked in the kitchen I worked busing and did all those things in addition to that I had other jobs and one of the things that I was very very fortunate when I went I'm jumping ahead but I went to Georgia Tech I had to work all four years I was at Tech and if it wasn't for George Griffin and Fred Ajax I probably would have never made it through Georgia Go back before you ever got there. You were already working jobs. Right. What would a young man do at that point in time, 14 years old? What could have been from jobs? Well, basically... Who wanted you to do what? Well, basically, the one thing that most young kids at that time used to do, we had magazines at Liberty Magazine, Saturday Evening Post, and we would sell those, and we would take subscriptions to those. You were a magazine salesman. Absolutely. You go from door to door, and we sold magazines, and then I did, there's another thing I did as a kid, and this was associated with Georgia Tech. During the 40s, the late 30s and early 40s, we would sell the little pins that women wore and men wore when they went to the ball games. So we would stand outside the stadium, and we would try to convince the men to buy them. Because in those days when they went to the football games, they would dress up. And so we would try, we would try, we made these little pins, we made them ourselves, we would buy them. You'd need them. Well what you'd do is you'd buy the name of the school, and then you'd take some ribbon and you'd make them up. But this was, I mean, this was neat. You had to think ahead about doing something, I think, and get your supplies put together. And we'd go to Athens. The night before a football game we'd go around the hotels because people came in the night before and they'd stay at the Biltmore. Because football was a really big deal. Absolutely. And then we'd go to New Orleans for the bowl games, we'd go to Miami. So these were like loyalty pins that you were selling? Yeah, they were pins that just had the name of the school and then the pennants, I mean the little flags. And then we'd sell pennants. And you know, if you really were lucky and you hustled and you really worked, you could make $75 to $80 at a game, net. Wow, which was big money in those days. You're talking about a 14 or 15-year-old. Our problem was the season didn't last long enough for us. We would love for it to last longer. Six games or eight games didn't last enough. And we did this at high school games also, boys high and tech high. I've never heard that before. You wouldn't have had to save any of those, would you? because they'd be treasures to have. You know, I don't think we've got... I know some friends of mine have some, but I never kept any less than I... Those would be treasures. I guess I wasn't sentimental enough. I tried to sell as many as I could. We had to have a... They called it a peddler's license, charged $2. So you had to go down to the police station and buy a peddler's license and co-host... And you had to compete with all the other kids. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, you know, they have them, and the concessions were run by the schools. now but in those days it's just an independent that's exactly right which they around the varsity and it'd be it would just ring the stadium I used to and of course I loved it because at halftime I'd get some they would give you you know the tickets they would take tear them and give them half and then you could they had the way you could pass them out in other words you could go out of the stadium and come back in with the half-ticket. So somebody would give me a ticket, and I'd go in and watch the second half of the ball game. So I'd watch, because you weren't selling colors, you know. By that time, everybody had what they needed. Well, they were in the stadium. And so you couldn't go in there. So you could get in and see the second half. And so we'd see the game, and then we'd run out just before the game was over, and really push whoever the winning team's pennants were. There was a whole psychology to this. Well, it was fun, and you know, it was an opportunity to make some money. Do you realize what a different time that was? Because no, you wouldn't let your grandchildren go to anything like that today. But your mother never even thought twice about giving you that personal freedom. We're talking about when I started doing that when I was about 10 years old. Just imagine. Until the time I was about 15, 16. That couldn't happen to me. No, no, you're right. past era. What else would you have done as a fourteen, fifteen-year-old living in that area in the Virginia Highlands? Were there any movie theaters around there? The closest movie theater was up near Highland Apostolion called the Highland Theater, and then there was the Plaza Theater was up there. And they had a bowling alley. Occasionally we'd go up there, but it had to be a lot older to go, because that was quite a ways to go. they didn't have a streetcar and we could ride up on the streetcar they were they were on the weekends because I'd go to my dad's restaurant which was on Peachtree and the Fox was up the street then I could walk down to the Paramount or the at that time they had the Lowe's the Paramount the Lowe's Grand which is where Gone with the Winds premiere was and the tower the tower you mean There was the Paramount, the Roxy, and the Lowe's, and then the Rialto, which is where Georgia State has it. I'm talking about Midtown, right near where your dad's deli was. There was a tower subsequently, it was called a wall, I can't remember the name of it, but They had, that was primarily more play oriented than movie house. So you had a pretty happy coming up time, it was a good place to grow up. We didn't know we had problems, we just enjoyed life, and you know, and we would do things and- It's interesting, you didn't know you had problems, so therefore you didn't have problems. That's right, that's right. Were you raised to believe you were going to go on to college though, once you got through high school? Well, during the time I was at Boys High was a good academic school and did prepare for college. But, you know, my dad, as I indicated, didn't have a college education. He had to drop out of high school on the island to support his mother and two brothers. And so he just had this ambition that my brother and I were going to go to college. And my brother was lucky enough to go into the, it was in 1941, just as the war started. So he volunteered to join the Navy and went into the V-12 program and they sent him to Georgia Tech. So he went through Tech compliments of the Navy. Did he go to Boy's High? Yes. Okay, so you were both there at the same time? No, he was five years ahead of me. So when you went to Boy's High did you have to listen to that again? In ******. Now in a couple instances there, it was the other side is that my brother had a few problems with a couple of classes that they told me, they said, I hope you're going to do better than him. So it was, you know, it was fun. Did you play sports at Boys High? I was a manager of the baseball team, and I went out for the football team and found out that I was too small. After I got hit about five, six times, you know, the coach liked me because I was bull-legged, but when he found out that I couldn't take the hits and couldn't stand up to those big guys, he decided that I ought to do something else. Was being bull-legged an advantage as an athlete? As a runner it is because he gives you a little bit better balance. And so I played basketball down at the YMCA and played at, well in high school I played around in various leagues around the city. Boys High was the kind of school that really created a fraternity among the guys that went there. I always, there's a lot of devotion to it, a lot of loyalty to it. It was a great academic school, great school, great spirit, great, as I said, it just, They really did it well. They were very demanding, and they helped bring you through. They were like tech, except tech, it was up to you to do it. There, they really helped you, and they worked with you. The teachers were just first class. I was just very, very lucky to go to Boys House. How did you get there? I walked or rode a bike. That's a pretty good walk. It was about a mile and a half. But you remember those times as very happy times. Great times. So when the time came that you graduated from Boyd's High, it would have been the end of the 40s. Right. The war was already down, down, over, your brother had come back, and Leo was going to go to high school, to college. Was there ever any question where you were going to go? Where were you thinking of? Well, basically, strangely enough, I wanted to be a lawyer, and I wanted to go to Duke. How expensive could that have been? $800 a year. And your dad said? Well, you know, I knew enough to know by then, there was just no way. I talked to him about it and he said, you know, I don't know how we can do it. And so I looked at other alternatives. I applied for a scholarship to Annapolis and my brother had been in the Navy and I loved the Navy. So I applied and I was accepted by, Senator Talmadge recommended me, and I was accepted and took the exams. But then I found out that you're going to have to stay in the service, as I recall, it was four years after I graduated. So that's eight years. So that meant that I was going to be about 25 or 26 when I really went out into the real world. And I said to myself, I'm going to be an old man before I really get out to make a living. And so I decided not to accept that. And then I started talking to some people, and I looked at Georgia Tech again and felt it. This is all from the eye of a senior in high school? Right. They went back and literally looked at it again and said, can I make my way here? And so I decided I would, so I applied to Georgia Tech. The only school I applied to was accepted. And in those days, we didn't have the SATs and these other types. But they did give you a test once they had accepted you, which was strange. An academic test? Yes, yes, it was a test. And we had it in the old gym. We took the test at the old gym, which is now where the Waterloo Building is. And I can remember this very, very vividly, sitting in there, taking this test. And afterwards, and I thought I'd done pretty well. Afterwards, I got a call from one of the people in the administration. And I'm not sure where they were from or what area they were, but I do know they worked for George Griffin. And this fellow called me up and asked me, or he sent a little note in my box. asked me to stop by and so I stopped by and he said how are you doing and I said I think I'm doing pretty good he said really he said you're not having trouble I said no I said why he said well your test scores weren't too good and I said and I said I thought I'd done well he said well you know he's you better check with me in six weeks he's I just want to make sure you're still here and so I really got that was that was very you know very right very it was really sort of nerve-racking and so I said well yeah and and and I was doing very well in school and a little bit a little bit a little bit more tension and But I did do okay. Okay, so you enroll at Tech and you're just a general student for the first couple of years. Right. You were well prepared, because Boys High did a good job as far as math classes and That's right. Chemistry and those things. You were pretty comfortable. Right. Not *****. Nope. Just comfortable. Right. It's a lot harder to be a commuting student and keep up with homework and study and all that because you have to go out into the world and deal with the distractions right so how did you discipline yourself to go home and study and do what you had to do well the other thing you miss and people don't think about it is that you missed a relationship with the other students because uh you know there's no one you can talk to there's no one you can confer with no one you can exchange ideas with so what i did was i spent a lot of time in the library and so i could see other students there and talk to them and see what, you know, how they looked at things. Okay, and we hadn't made the move. No, we were still in the Carnegie, and I'd go downstairs, and it was like a little dungeon. And you know, I'd meet with the, I'd see people. So you did have a chance then to have some social activity or interaction? Well, yeah, it was, yeah, right. And so I'd. Were any of your buddies there from Boys High? A lot of them, yes. So there were passing acquaintances? Yeah, Georgia Tech accepted a number of students from Boys High, and Boys High was a great theater school. Right. Big percentage of them went to college. What about faculty? What was your experience with faculty, were they happy to see you? Well you know, the first thing, I guess the first real experience I had with any one of major importance in the school was, I guess it was probably the first, second, or third week I was there, I was in the robbery, which is right, it used to be right across the street from the textile building. Between admin and? Right, right behind the, in the basement of the administration building. And I was having a donut, and George Griffin comes through, and we were ratcaps religiously at that time, and he saw my name on it, and he walked up to me, he said, boy, because he called everyone boy he said are you he said you came to Vic Benatar I said yes sir my brother he said be in my office in 30 minutes he didn't tell me where it was he didn't ask if I had a class he just said be in my office in 30 minutes my heart was palpitating and so I went there and I'm standing outside of his office. He's chewing somebody out ferociously on the telephone, and I'm saying, my God, what's happening here? So he hung up the phone. He looked at me. He said, boy, he said, let me tell you something. And he ****** that face. He said, if you give me half the trouble your brother did, you're out of here. He was captain of the V-12 program, and my brother was in the V-12 program, and he was a very bright guy, but he was mischievous, and he would miss curfews and do all kinds of pranks and and you know he was always in the doghouse with george griffin but george griffin liked him and and so but he would really he pushed yeah he pushed because george griffin was captain naval captain at the time he pushed him right to the to the limit the good news was what came out of it positively he knew about the family situation and so he asked me he said how you doing? I said, well, I know I've got enough money for this year, but I'm not sure for the rest of the time. So he says, okay. He says, he called Fred Ajax. Fred Ajax was in charge of placement at that time for graduating seniors. So he says, get this boy a job. So he made the decision. So they, they helped me. I would get early, you know, sometimes I have early jobs or sometimes late jobs in the afternoon. If I had afternoon jobs, that meant I had to have morning classes, so they would get me an early time card to register. So they really, really facilitated you going through. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Really, tremendous help. Tremendous help. That's amazing that you could actually control when you could register. Oh, no, listen. They always had a few, you know, in those days they didn't do it by computer as they do now. Well, you were lucky Vic had gone before you then, because that was really- Oh, it was great. It may have been negative attention, but at least there was a spot. No, no, it was just- That's great. So you were always busy then. You always had jobs to do. Worked most of the time I was at school. And did you have future interactions with him? He'd keep tabs on you? Yes, I'd see him every once in a while, and he'd ask me how I was doing. Yes, they'd want to know how I was doing, why I wasn't doing better. And then when I was a senior and ready to graduate, of course, Ajax and I became good friends. And he told me, he said, look, he said, you don't have to go to all the interviews. he said, I know your situation, I'll recommend you to certain companies and we'll help you find a job when you graduate. What great people. Yeah, no, no, no, tremendous. I don't want you to tell me about Ajax, I know very little about him. To be honest with you, if you listen to the world story, he was not beloved because he was responsible for so many people going to the front. We got a whole bunch of them to join some kind of a voluntary thing so they wouldn't be drafted and then they ended up taking all him into the service. So a lot of people have told me negative things about him. But it sounds like he was a very kind man. He was tough. He was very strong-minded. In my, the way I looked at him was he was like an actor. He put on this big show of things, But he really was behind, once you get behind that facade, he was a kind, caring person. You know, he did this, he helped a lot of people out. You weren't the only one. No, no, no. He helped a lot of people out. But he put on this facade of being very tough, and you do it my way or the highway stuff. And he'd get in these meetings with the seniors, and he would threaten them and, you know, do all this stuff. But I tell you what, he did the best job, because I recruited for two of the companies I was with afterwards at colleges. And I saw the heads of placement at those colleges. And Ajax attracted some of the best companies, and he had some of the best relationships with the top people. And Tech got the best opportunities from that point of view because of him. But he was tough. he was a very very tough guy very strong-minded you you know he got mad as **** at me because he he helped me get jobs I got a number of offers and and I decided to take the one at Lockheed which he hadn't recommended right and he really got upset and then when I in fact when I came back as a veteran because I I went back to graduate school once I got out of the Navy, after I'd graduated. He was still holding it against you, wasn't he? He told me, he said, well, he says, you know, you made one mistake, he said, I want to see when the second one will occur. So that was his type of personality. That's right. That's right. You know, you don't cross him. You didn't cross Fred Ajax very, very many times. How about George Griffin? You got to know him fairly well, too. Got to know him, you know, gruff exterior, do anything in the world, do anything in the world for you do anything in the world for you and you knew that yeah yeah well everybody knew it he knew it too and so he put up this front you know so he could uh just make sure that what what you're asking what you needed was really uh uh what was necessary but but both of them as i said if it wasn't for those two when you talk about personal contacts of course i had a lot of contacts in the industrial engineering school where I went, and I came very close to Fred Gross-Close and some of the other professors over there, but George Griffin and Fred Ajax, and you know, as you said, Ajax had mixed reviews on him, but not in my mind. You respected him. Yes. How did you choose industrial engineering when it came time to start making choices? How did you fall into that? It was pretty easy because I knew that I loved math. Well, all the time I was going to high school. A lawyer who loves math. I know, but I love the analytical things. I love to analyze things and break them down and do the formulas and things like that. So I loved math, but I didn't really want to be just an engineer that designed things. I knew I didn't want to design things so I looked through the curriculum and saw this industrial engineering where you go into plants and you help them do it better and I just thought that was neat that's the way I read that right and the way I read it was probably wrong but to me it was you looked at manufacturing facilities and operations and you your job was to help them make them better and I thought that was neat to do. Now, when you actually got into the classes, did you enjoy them? Right, I did. So you knew you were in the right thing. I knew I was in the right thing. You weren't supposed to be a lawyer. Obviously not, obviously not. Meanwhile, Tech was rolling right along. Van Leer was the president. Right. Still very military, probably, but there was the prospect of women coming, that political, it didn't happen in your time, but it was there, it was laying out there. So we knew we were in times of change. A lot of building was going on. The new library opened while you were still there, did it not? Yes, yes. What kind of a wonderland did that appear to be? You know, it was just unbelievable. We were going from this little Carnegie Library to this huge building, and it was just unimaginable. And it was great. It was a fantastic. It's still a huge building. I mean, you look at it, it still is a very imposing structure. And then they had built a textile engineering building, and the industrial engineering group moved into their building. The architecture was upstairs, and the architectural building we have now wasn't in existence. But those were the two main buildings that were built during that period of time. Where were IE classes held? Well, as I said, by the time I was starting to take industrial engineering courses, then we were in the, that's when we were in that French textile building. So we were in the first floor and in the basement. Okay. Old stuff. Really old building. I can imagine the library must have looked like, you know, some kind of futuristic thing. Right. The fact that it was so very modern. By this time you were pretty well established on the campus. Right. You got involved in quite a few things, didn't you? Some. Maybe for a commuting student? Yeah. I got, well I tried out, I was in a few organizations. I tried out for the tennis team and I just didn't have the time. Our tennis coach was Shorty Bortel who was the physics professor. Sure. And I just have to think through what else. I didn't do a lot of other activities at school. I got involved with some social science. They're starting to develop some social science programs over there. So from an interactive point of view, I really didn't get that much involved. I was in the ROTC. Yeah, ROTC. And was it the Navy ROTC or the Army? No, it was the Army, but I was in the Naval Reserves because they paid me twenty dollars a meeting. That's a good reason. That's a pretty good reason. So I went once a month, too. So I was in the Army ROTC and the Naval Reserves. That wasn't a conflict of interest? No. They didn't care? Well, they didn't know about it. Oh, they didn't know about it. I've never heard of that before, being in two branches of service at the same time. Well, I . . . How clever of you. So you could do, they didn't conflict, you could do both of them. No, that's right. But you were there, let's see, we were, the Korean conflict was beginning to develop by the time we get to the end of your time at Tech. Right. How did you finish up at Tech? Did you do well in the long run? You got out in four years, which is not a sort of . Right, it worked. It doesn't happen anymore. As you said, I graduated in four years. I graduated in the upper third of the class. Had you considered ever going into the co-op program as a means of . . . You know, I really didn't. You didn't? And I'm just not sure why. Well, I know one of the reasons, because I did look at it, and you've refreshed my memory that you asked about it and the industrial engineering school didn't have that many co-ops they most of them came in the mechanical and electrical and some of the other areas right they just they just really wasn't that active at that time in the in the school I did some so you know I was working during the time I was going with all the working and studying and commuting and everything else did you Did you have any social life at all, Will? You did! Managed to have some fun. In fact, I played some basketball down at the YMCA, and I coached the girls basketball team down there. Well, now that's not a bad job. No, that's right. That was a lot of fun. Oh, right. So down on Lucky Street? Right. Okay. What else? Well, you know, of course, being an Atlanta native, you know, I knew a lot of the people around town, so I knew a lot of you talking about the, we'd go down to Athens and see some people every once in a while, but being a native, and I had my friends that I'd grown up with, and so, you know, it wasn't as if I was someone that lived in another town that was going to school here and had to make new friends. I had my friends that I'd grown up with. And a number of them, some of them went to college, but a number of them didn't go to college. They were still around. Right. When the time actually came for your graduation, you were the second son to graduate from Georgia Tech. Right. Your father had to be so pleased. Yep, he was. I'm sure for him it was like his life goal was realized, and having both you boys. Right. He knew he didn't have to worry about your future. Right. How much did you have to worry about your future? Was the military waiting for you to Well, you know, I mentioned I was in the Naval Reserves, and in 1950, our unit out in Norcross was called active duty. And so I told them I was a senior in college, so they said, okay, we'll give you a deferment until you graduate. And when I graduated, I hadn't heard from them, and I took this job with Lockheed. Lockheed told me they were going to get me a deferment. And they lied, didn't they? Well, they didn't lie. They just, it didn't work. It didn't do it. And so after I'd been there about three months. Oh, just that long. Barely in the door. I got, you know, a call from the Navy saying, we're ready for you to go to active duty. They knew when I'd graduated. And so I said, well, I'm working at Lockheed. And Lockheed said, oh, don't worry. We'll take care of this. You won't have to go to active duty. and they contacted me I guess in September because I started working at Lockheed the day after I graduated. No time off for you? Well you know I needed the money. So you were just getting into the rhythm and ****o you're gonna be gone. Right and so but I was so they couldn't so I don't know whether it's because I didn't didn't go in the 50s or whether Lockheed couldn't do it, but the bottom line was I was called to active duty. Well, I went into boot camp. I went as an enlisted man. No, because see, I was in the Naval Reserve. Well, I was in the Naval Reserve, so I applied for, they asked me, they said, they said, look, why don't you go ahead and apply for Officers Candidate School? Well, I went to boot camp, and before you can go to Officer's Candidate School, you have to be on a base for three months. I was there two months, and they transferred me to California, to the Seabee School, because I'd been in engineering, so they put me out there, and they interviewed me again out there and recommended me for Officer's Candidate School, and by then I'd graduated from Seabee School, so I was sent to the Admiral's staff down in Jacksonville, And by the time I got orders to go to the Officer's Candidate School, I'd been in the Navy a year, which meant I had a year to go, and I'd have to extend it for another three years. So I turned it down, and I never will forget, I went into the lieutenant's office and said, no, I'm going to turn this down. and he said let me explain this to you Benatar he said this wasn't an invitation this was an order he said you've been ordered to go to Newport Rhode Island he said we did they didn't say we would like to have you come up and we hope you'll accept and he said you've got 30 days to be up there and I said I don't want to do this so he said well you've got to write and explain why and so I just wrote and told them that you know that I'd been in the service by then it was about 14 or 15 months and and I said you know I want to I want to pursue the career that I had started at Georgia from Georgia Tech and and so about a week before I was to go I got a letter saying they resented the orders And so I served out my two years in the Navy. Great experience. You know, would have been nice to be an officer, sure. But I'll tell you one thing. I was with a lot of good people, a lot of people that I really enjoyed being with. And I had some great assignments. As I said, I was on the Admiral's staff, and it was just an outstanding group of people. And it was fun. So it was a good experience. It really was. I think that a lot of people today, if they heard this, they would probably get upset. My wife gets upset, but I think everybody ought to serve in the armed services. I hope it's during peacetime, but it's a great maturing process. It really is a great, great experience. You came out of it better than when you went out. Absolutely right. I enjoyed it. There were a lot of things I wish I didn't have to do, but from an overall point of view it was it was very good for me. So when I got out I knew that I didn't want to go back to Lockheed. Fred Ajax was right. Isn't that interesting? You got some perspective. And so did you come back? You came back and told them. Came back, well yes I did and what I did is I looked for a job. I found one at Atlanta Paper Company as an industrial engineer and making less money than I did at Lockheed two years before that. But I saw the opportunity to move. I said, if I can't make it here, I can't make it anywhere. So, and then I went to graduate school at night while I worked in the daytime, and that's when I saw Fred Ajax, and he would, he says, I told you should have never gone to Lockheed. How did you make the decision to go to graduate school? Did you just see that something that was going to help you? Right. I just felt that I wanted to learn more about industrial engineering. I wanted to be a better executive and I thought this would help me too. Did the company pay for you to go? No, no, no. Well basically I paid for it but you know I was a veteran so I got a subsidy. It wasn't like the GI Bill during the Second World War. They paid you so much a month for the amount of classes you took. And so it covered about 50-60% of the cost. And how was going back to school? It was great, but it was tough working, you know, and then taking two or three classes, two classes at a time. It was difficult. It's a very, very challenging thing to do to yourself. Right. And then, you know, about a year later I got married. How did you meet your wife? On a blind date. Really? Right. Somebody knew her and somebody knew you? No, no. What happened was that a friend of mine that I'd grown up with that went into the Navy with, he was in the Naval Reserves. We were, you know, I'm not saying we were poor, but this was just an opportunity to make some money. And so he went to Southern Tech after he got out of the Navy, and he met this young girl that was going to University of Georgia from Chattanooga. They got engaged, and he had never been up Chattanooga to meet her parents, but they became engaged. So he asked me to go up with him to meet her parents. So he said, I'll get you a date. And I said, And at the time I was going with a young girl here, and I'd been going with her for about a year and a half, and I'm not saying we were going to get married, but we were enjoying each other's company. And so I said, Vic, his name was Vic also, and I said, you know, I don't want to go up there and blind date. He said, please. He said, you've got to help me. He said, I've helped you a lot. You've got to do this for me. He was calling it a chip. Right, that's exactly right. So we drove up on a Saturday afternoon and met her parents. And then we were going out that night and went to pick up Louise. And as soon as I met her, I was with her. The next day, I told Vic, we drove back the next day. I told him, I said, that's the girl I'm going to marry. Oh, come on. I swear to God, I knew I was going to marry her. I knew it. You had one of those love at first sight things. Yes, I just knew that she was perfect for me. Did she reciprocate? No, she was a little slower. She didn't say you were the man of her dreams. Well, she never has told me that yet, but I don't think so. I think she might have been she didn't find out that we were the kids. So she wasn't even geographically desirable. She was up in Chattanooga. That's right. That's exactly right. Did you kind of come back and tell a girl you've been seeing for a long time, you weren't going to see her anymore? Well, what happened is that for a short period of time, I was dating both of them, and then I just quit dating the girl here. And you were flying to Chattanooga? Yeah, on weekends, and it was tough. And finally, after a few years, I said, look, I'm not going to come up here anymore. It's time we got married. She said that was the worst proposal she'd ever heard in her life. She said it was an insult. She was right. It wasn't very romantic. I know, I know. I'm turning right. You're not very romantic. That's right. Oh, yes, you had a subtle touch. But she agreed. She did. But you got married in Chattanooga. Got married in Chattanooga. So you did go up there a few more times. That's right. and where did you settle in atlanta i mean where oh uh at little five points so you stayed in the home territory well you were working by this time at atlanta paper right and wasn't making much money still and were you going to school yet yes she knew you were going she was going i was going to school well not only that then you know she told her friends up there she said well she said i'm going to marry to this guy's engineer graduated from tech working said i'm going to i'm going to be able to quit my job. And about a month before she came down, before we got married, I said, Louisa, why don't you come on down and see if you can find a job down in Atlanta. There goes another bubble burst. Right. So she got a job. And most of our friends were living around East Rock Springs on those apartments over there. And we just couldn't afford them. So we found an apartment apartment at Little Five Points. It was about $25 a month. Well, it wasn't a very nice apartment, let me tell you. We had a couple of shootings in there, and the neighbors, they would get in arguments. And she was probably wondering what on earth she was doing down here in this terrible city. And she'd have to catch the bus to go to work every morning, because we only had one car. By then, right after we got married, I had the opportunity to become the night superintendent at the Atlanta Paper Company. It would then become me packaging, because we were acquired by the Meat Corporation. In fact, it was about two or three months after we got married. And so I worked at night, and she worked in the daytime. Not too many arguments, you don't see each other worry about it. Well, in the beginning, bless her heart, she would get up when I would get home about two or three in the morning and fix me something to eat. And after she became pregnant, that really didn't, that didn't last any much longer. And then her challenge was, you know, we had the first child, and how to keep the baby quiet while I slept during the day, and then things like that. It's those kinds of struggles that bring people close and make you tight, though. You look back at them and you laugh about them, you know. You're right. Boy, do we put up with this stuff, you know, but that's really what it's all about. And meanwhile, you were finishing up at school. How long did it take you? Well, I didn't get my degree. What happened was, this is probably not of interest to most people, but the professor that was helping with, at that time you had to write a thesis, and the professor that was helping with that, who had a grant to do this type of study, left and went out to St. Louis University in Washington, Washington and St. Louis. Right. And I couldn't get another professor to support the thesis. So I was trying to do it by mail. That didn't work. Working in the daytime, going to school at night. I mean, by then I was working at night, going to school in the daytime. And so finally I just dropped it. But you completed all your classes for it. I had more than enough classes for the thesis, and now I have more than enough classes if they didn't require a thesis, because I was still taking courses, because I was enjoying the courses. And I was learning a lot about a number of things, about the new industrial engineering concepts. It was so much different than when I'd gone to school. All of which served you well. Absolutely. Very well. Absolutely. So you started climbing the ladder, as we say, in business talk, and you stayed with Atlanta Paper Company slash Meade to when? How many years? I stayed there 28 years. And basically what I'd done while I was going to school, I started taking courses in the management school in finance and marketing and things like that, because I felt like I needed to broaden my base and I took some courses at Georgia State even during that period of time and made the Dean's List there, it was incredible. So then I moved, I was superintendent of the plant as I said, then I became the plant manager, after three years I moved back to the daytime where the normal people worked and they put me in charge of all of the planning and scheduling and purchasing, and then they put me in the marketing area. So you were getting a touch of money. Right. I was getting a broad base of the business, and then I moved to Europe. So just like that. Well, what happened was that Meade decided they wanted to expand into Europe, and they needed someone over there that understood the operations and knew a little bit about marketing and sales. So they asked me if I'd go over there and build some plants and and start trying to sell concepts to the Europeans on multiple packaging, which is what me did at the time. We were the largest producer of the six packs and and items like that. And they didn't have that over there? No, no. It was it was all returnable bottles and there's all single bottle sales. So I went to Europe and we lived over there for about three and a half years. Now your trip to Europe was not alone, by this time you had a family, so tell me about that. Well basically, you're right, we had three children, they were all young, I think, Morris is my son, and then Ann and Ruth, Morris was, he was I think ten, nine or six, he was ten years old and then Ann was was eight and Ruth was five so very young children and and we went to Europe and we lived in first first six months we lived in Holland yes because if we were building the plan in Holland and we started looking for schools because they went over there during the summer and there was an international we lived in Breda which is in the middle of the of the country and we looked at schools in the Hague but that was quite a drive away it was about an hour each way and and then they were going to an international school and I thought since we were going to be living in Europe let's let the kids go to a European school right so that's exactly right so we moved to Antwerp Belgium which is right across the border from Holland and my plant was right at the southern part of Holland so it meant I had to drive about about 35 40 minutes every day each way but that was you know that wasn't a big price to pay so we put them in a French school in Antwerp they did fantastic took the first two months they put them in this immersion school where they just learned French, because it was a French school, it was Lise d'Henvers, and they probably learned very quickly too. They learned, they're just as you would imagine, they're very, very quick absorbers of information. Yeah, children really learn languages very well. Right. And so they became fluent in French just very quickly. Amazingly enough, they did extremely well in school they went from the you know the inch and foot to the metric system they handle all that conversion they handle language conversion and the interesting thing is they would think in French and and you know and talk and then they could convert most Americans think in English convert to the language they learn how to think in the language and convert back and being young absolutely they would sit and talk about us in French sometime. My wife, my wife could speak a little French and and of course I was working in Belgium and Holland and it was all Flemish or Dutch and so I was I was I was really lost and they were all taking advantage of me in a significant way. It was a tough on my wife because here she was thrust into a new country and you know in those days there weren't as many Americans living outside, you know, as there are today. Today there are a lot of Americans that live over there, and companies have policies that we didn't have. That was the beginning of it all. This is in 1965. So looking for a social situation could be challenging, other than doing the cultural things that were there. Was it an advantage to the cultural things? I mean, were you able to travel and see the great places? It really was a great, great experience from that point of view. We went to Germany, we went all around the Dutch and the Belgian countryside, we went down to France, went into Paris, we took our youngest daughter for her birthday and we were in Paris, you know, and it was just a tremendous experience. One, I have to tell you one experience that happen to show you how dumb I am one Easter holiday the kids were out of school because in those there they take long holidays during Easter and so I told Louise I said let's go to Rome and you know might not be many people there Easter Rome connect you know we got we got we got we got to Rome and that day at the Vatican. There was a half a million people in the Vatican that Sunday, and here we are. That's right. So we didn't get to see everything we wanted to, but we had a great, great time. And you know, but one of the things that it did for us, it did for me from a professional point of view, and it did for my wife Louise and the kids, was they saw different cultures, and they understood, you know, why they thought differently than we do. Doesn't mean who's right or wrong. It's just there's a different perspective. And it really made them better people, in my judgment, because it made them more tolerant, more understanding of how other people think. I had a tough time with that in the beginning because I was trying to set up this plant, and at that time the Dutch had certain rules. You didn't want to do it. And, you know, I said, this is the way we need to get it done, and their philosophy was totally different. And finally, I had to start appreciating why they came to the conclusions they did. So it was a great, great experience for me, but it was a fantastic, while they was trying because they had been taken away from all their friends, my wife took a culture where she knew no one, she had built a life here, and you know, and I worked. I was working seven days a week trying to build these plants. She really was on her own, and it was very, very stressful for her in the beginning. She cried a lot, I shouldn't say that too much. But it's a natural thing to do. It was tough. It was tough. She was really paying her dues. By the time you left there, she was just getting used to it. She loved it. In fact, when we were getting ready to come back, she said, why don't we stay a little longer? And that's exactly what happened. Well, we grow when we're put into other environments, and that's a great experience. We can't buy that. it. Time is the only thing that gives it to you. You're right. I will tell you one thing that happened that really was another lesson. You know, we'd been away from our friends for a number of years and had an exciting time, things that they hadn't experienced, because these people hadn't traveled much. America didn't travel, you know, that much. Some of them may have never even left Atlanta. Right. And so, you know, we were excited, And someone would say, well, tell me about your experience in Europe. And we'd start telling them, all of a sudden their eyes would glaze over. And then they'd want to hear about it. And finally, so after about, it takes a little while for it to sink in. They don't really want to hear about it. So what you do is say, it was great. And they're relieved. And you know, you're sitting there enjoying what you remembered. And that's it. But boy, I'll tell you. They couldn't even relate to what you had experienced. And, you know, and when you tried to, you said the relations, relating experience, but also, you know, I guess sometimes, and I'm not saying anything about our friends, because I think it's most people, they're really, they're superficial in this. They want to know a little bit about it, but don't feed me too much. Yeah, it's like, how are you today? But I don't want your medical record. That's right. That's exactly right. Except this is on a, you were not there as a vacation. It was your lifestyle. That's right. They would treat it as if you had been on vacation. Right. So you had, not only did you have culture shock going there, you had culture shock when you came back. We came back and we were so disappointed because we were so excited to tell them about the things that happened to us, the places we saw. You know, really? Oh, okay. Let's see now, when are we going to go to the football game or something? I think that, I can understand how that could happen. Right. And it's like, eh, so what? So coming back, you came back because the company transferred you back after three years. And you came back to be what? Well, for the short period of time, I was vice president of international, and then they made me president of the company. But which meant you could stay right here in Atlanta? Right, not travel. By then, we had operations, and I'd help set them up in Japan and Australia and South Africa and Italy and South America. We were all over the world, and we had a significant international business, which I'd grown to appreciate. we grew the domestic business so we grew the company pretty significantly and that was in 1972 and 72 and yeah I was very lucky and in 80 the company then I was president for about nine years and the company asked me to go to Dayton to head up about 50% me corporation. I was going to be a group vice president responsible for about one and a half billion dollars of the revenues of the company. And I asked the CEO, I said, what's the chances of me being CEO? He said, we've already picked the next CEO and he's your age, so, you know, it's not likely. One of the things that happened to I mean, when I was in Europe, was I was by myself, and, you know, I had to make decisions, and even though it was small at the beginning, and we grew it, it was a great experience to be the manager and really be the mini-CEO. It was the autonomy that appealed to you. And I enjoyed that, and irrespective of the size, it was just fun, you know, putting all the pieces together. So, when I was told that I wasn't going to get a chance, not in the beginning, but get an opportunity to be CEO, I told them that I was going to look for something else, even though I'd been there 28 years. That was a courageous thing for you to do. Probably dumb. No, courageous. Well, for you to even know that it wasn't going to be fun anymore. Yeah. thing. You were looking for what was going to challenge you. Yeah. And it was, and so. So you left? So no, what happened, yes, I did. What happened was that I was on the board of a little company in North Carolina called InGraph had just gone public, just gone public, doing about 20 million dollars. And here I was going to run one and a half billion dollars. And they were looking for CEO because he was he this one guy built the company from nothing and he took it public but but he was he wanted to retire and that the company wasn't making any money and so he asked me would I take the job and I told him yes and came back told my wife and she says you have lost your mind at 51 years old you have taken leave of your senses. You've got a job. It takes you around the world. You're treated. You know, I took my wife to China in the early 70s, and we were treated like royalties, because I'd set up some operations over there and set up some joint venture. And so, you know, the thought of going to be in Charlotte, a little company, 20 million dollars. It sounded like a come down to her, huh? I bet it just looked like a challenge to you. Well, I thought that this CEO, public company, that I thought we could grow and make into something. I really did. So you had faith in it. Yeah. And so we kept a house here, but we bought a condominium there. And I spent, you know, my wife spent most of her time up there, but we were lucky. WE ASSEMBLED SOME GOOD PEOPLE BECAUSE THE PEOPLE THERE REALLY COULDN'T DO, THE PEOPLE WE HAD JUST COULDN'T RUN THE COMPANY. AND WE GREW THE COMPANY FROM 1981 TO 1992. WE GREW THE REVENUES ABOUT 30% A YEAR AND THE EARNINGS ABOUT 32% A YEAR ALSO. SO WE BECAME, AND WHAT WE DID IS WE JUST BECAME HIGHLY FOCUSED IN CERTAIN AREAS. And we became a leader in a number of areas. All the vending machines that you see out there today, all the graphics, we did that. We took, like a good example is Coca-Cola, where they used to have just wood grain up there. And we made it graphics where there were pictorials and made them more appealing. Made you thirsty just to look at them. Well, that was the idea. That was the idea. And then we went into the label business, which we weren't in. AND WE BECAME THE LARGEST PRODUCER OF LABELS FOR THE PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY, FOR THE PERSONAL CARE, FOR COSMETICS, AND WE HAD PLANTS ALL OVER THE COUNTRY. SO WE BUILT IT UP TO ABOUT A 300 MILLION DOLLAR COMPANY. AND THEN SUNOKO, WHAT I DID, I SHOULD TELL YOU THAT WE MOVED THE HEADQUARTERS TO ATLANTA IN 1982. SO WE WERE A PUBLIC COMPANY. WELL, WE HAD AN OPERATION IN Charlotte and I wanted to I wanted to build operations all over the country and I felt like if we stayed in Charlotte that would be our focal point and I want us to be national in concept so so we we moved the headquarters here we brought a few people down and not many and we set up the headquarters here and we became one of the larger not one of the better known public companies in the city of Atlanta and as I said grew and Sunoco products in Hartsville South Carolina about a two and a half billion dollar company made an offer to acquire us and so I felt like it was good for the shareholders and so I went with them became right 92 I became executive vice president and on the board of Sunoco and tried to help them grow Sunoco in 96. I just felt it was time to move on. I contributed what I thought I needed to and I just saw that they asked me to be the president but I didn't want to move to Hartsville and I just saw that they needed to bring some younger people in and I needed to give some people some opportunities. I was 65 so I retired from Sunoco and then AT Kearney the management consulting firm asked me to help them out and I do that on a part-time basis but also have my own consulting firm called Benatar & Associates where I do consulting but primarily mergers and acquisitions I help companies sell companies or buy other companies so we've done about a billion dollars and no no it's it's all over the country. I did one and I helped the company in California. Do you hire people on contract basis then when a job comes up or do you have associates or are you? I'm the associate and the Benatar. I'll use people from time to time. I'll use attorneys or accountants, but what happens? Whoever you feel like associating with. Well, you know, let me tell you, what I've learned is that uh people i don't solicit business people call me they've heard i've done this and then and that's exactly right and so they call me and when i've tried to bring someone else in they would always say well uh you know is leo know about this has he been involved and i found out that we were duplicating uh what was happening and so uh you know i i'll limit the amount of things that I do, but I just do them myself. And that pretty much keeps you pretty busy, just taking the consulting job. Right. Even more. And you serve on boards. Yes, I'm on five public boards, and Mohawk Industries is one of them in Dalton, Georgia. Just going to meetings can keep you on the road. Yeah. Well, it's, you know, it keeps, right now I'm a little busier than I want to be. But is it still fun? That's, that's the problem is I enjoy it, and I enjoy it when I go in and I enjoy the challenges, but when you add them all up, I say, you know, I ought to slow down a little bit, and I probably will. I just took on the chairmanship of another company here in Atlanta that's an exciting company that I think maybe I can... What I try to do is just add some insights, add some direction, and add a different perspective. I don't want to run the company. Well, I can see from the point of view of a company why they want to put you on as a consultant, because you've had the experience. Yeah. You proved you can grow it, so of course they want you, but comes a time when you've got to get your priorities. That's right. And that's when we think about being on a golf course instead of being in a board meeting. You got it. So you've got something to shoot for. Learn how to say no. No. Or less of yes. Yes. You're right. You're right. I've got a lot of shortcomings, and probably one of the, you know, ones that I need to improve is saying, you know, let me put this in perspective of my schedule here, and you know. Just so you don't overexpense. No. You're right. You're right. Tell me about the children. What is Morris doing now? He is a marketing director at Riverwood International here in town. He lived in Europe, he lived in England for about three, three and a half years, had his family over there and, you know, loved it, enjoyed it. And Riverwood went through an LBO, so they had to bring him back because they were selling some of their operations to pay for the acquisition by the LBO firm. He has two children, and unfortunately, let me say in total, let me talk about total, we have nine grandchildren, and all of them live in Atlanta now. You're lucky to be. You're right. Isn't that one? Well, it's even more, you know, it's more interesting than that in that my son and youngest daughter live on the same street, and my other daughter lives about a mile away. Isn't that great? And it's even more than that. Well, not only that, it's even more, and I keep saying it's compounding because the three oldest are all within two or three months of each other. I have three that are 13, three that are 11, and two of them were born a day apart, and then two that are six, and then one that's two. Somebody's very good at planning. Right, well, they said, my friends used to tell me, they said Leo would get his people together. They said, okay, now there's the time, let's get it going here. Very good. So Morris lives here in town with his three children, a girl and a boy, Leah and Steven, and then my daughter Ann, she has three children, and Edward, Sarah, and Lee, and then my daughter For Ruth, who's the youngest, she has four children. It's Russell, Leo, and Michael, and Emily. So I have – Both boys and girls. Right. And then I have a Leo, a Lee, and a Leia, so – So you're properly caring for them. You're right. You're right. Into the future. But, you know, the interesting thing is – And they range in age from 2 to 13? Yeah. And they get along famously. What a wonderful book. And we take them on a trip every year. We take them somewhere together. Do we have any future rambling wrecks in there? Well, you know, I hope so. You know, the biggest disappointment was my son was going to Georgia Tech. He was? He was enrolled, going to go, and he went up to North Carolina. I had taken him up to Carolina and Virginia and Vanderbilt. In fact, Vanderbilt had offered him a scholarship in engineering. And I told him if he was going to engineering school, he was going to Georgia Tech. And so, you know, he had a roommate, had a room set up, and about, I guess, a few weeks before school started, he went with a friend of his to North Carolina, and he came back and said, Dad, I've got to go to Carolina. And so he applied, and they accepted him immediately. He was a bright guy, had a great SAT score, and so he was accepted and graduated Phi Beta Kappa there and went to University of Virginia and got an MBA there. In fact, he was the youngest MBA student at University of Virginia. Well, we'll forgive him. I know. I know. It's not too shabby of a record there. Well, I know, you know, but he loves, they all love Georgia Tech. It doesn't matter. They're a royal fan. That's right. My daughter, Ann, went to Vanderbilt because she wanted to continue her French, and she majored in French business, and then she subsequently went to work for SunTrust, a trust company. She was a loan officer, and she headed up all of the training and things like this, and after she had the second child, she left the job. In fact, I'm going to digress just for a second. When they had their first child, each one of them, they were all, as I said, within a couple of months of each other. The girls all worked, my two daughters and daughter-in-law, and my wife took care of the three children two or three days every week. Oh, really? They would bring them over to the house at five in the morning, and she took care of them. That was a spirit. Yeah, after one year, she had a graduation class, and she said, you're out of here. She's in one years long enough and then my youngest daughter Ruth she She worked she went to University of Florida and I don't want to bore you, but I asked Ruth I said why so when we finished when we get ready for her to go to school they were all good students and They got accepted wherever they applied and I said Ruth where do you want to go to school? She said when they you let the others choose the school they wanted to go to I said right she says UCLA I said what? I said pick another one. She said Hawaii. I said Ruth, let me show you something. I showed a map of the United States. I said you see this line that goes north and south of the Mississippi River. I said we're going east. I see this line right about Virginia. We're going south. Now Ruth, pick a school. She said Florida. I said how are you picking these schools? She said it's warm. No, that's right, but she did very well in Florida. So she then went to work for Ernst & Young as a benefits consultant and traveled around the country and just did that outstandingly. So she did that for a while, and she had a couple of children, and so she became a full-time mother. Well, you're very, very fortunate to have all these healthy, beautiful babies in your life. You're right. And they're all here. You're right. You're right. You don't have to even go anywhere. You're right. You must have wonderful holidays, all the holidays as they come and go. Well, we're lucky. You know, as I said, we enjoy having them. We enjoy having them over here. In fact, we looked at moving in the park place before we built this house, and my wife said we would live there two months, and we would be evicted from all these grandchildren coming up and down on the elevator. She said, Leo, they wouldn't let us stay there. And so we had to build this house in defense. But, you know, what we tried to do is, as you said, build a house that's friendly for children. And we wanted a place where they would enjoy coming and being with us. And I bet they love it. And so, well, we tried to make it that way. Family is very important. I grew up that way, and I want them to have the same philosophy that your family is very, very important to you. You've got friends, family's number one. And as I said earlier, every year we take them on a trip, all 17. So you do this big travel thing together. Right, yeah. And I told them, I said, anytime y'all don't want to do it, we'll stop. But we've been to Alaska together. we went to Rhodes where my parents were born I took them all there and then we went to Israel and we went to a dude ranch we went on the Caribbean on a cruise we went well I hope so that is a great experience well your whole life has been rather a grand experience if I might say. Well I've been very very lucky. I think you have been lucky. I think you've enjoyed good health and been able to take advantages of all the assets that you have all the skills and attributes that you have. I think we've been lucky to have you at Georgia Tech and here in Atlanta. You've contributed a great deal to our community and it's just been a pleasure to hear your story today and I can't thank you enough. Well before we sign off I want to say one thing I love Georgia Tech and if I didn't have that background that they provided I don't think I could have achieved the things that that I was able to achieve because they really taught me the discipline of work and application and prioritizing your time it really was an incredible experience for me forget Duke Yeah. And that was more important than acquiring knowledge, but learning how to assess the knowledge of the whole world. You're right. You put it to the test, it worked, huh? Well, tech was good for me, and I benefited from it in an extraordinary way. Well, it's been good for us too. Well, thank you. Thank you so very much. Okay, thank you, Marilyn.