Where do we go from here......by Grandpa

How about backing up and talking a little about our goals, our thoughts and our feelings.
I stated earlier that we were "two dumb and happy people starting out on a new adventure", but it went beyond that. It was our first and maybe our last chance to really change our lives and possibly the lives of others. We had our five year plan. We both agreed that during the next five years we would do whatever was necessary (as long as it was not illegal, immoral or indecent) to achieve our goals. Not only for us, but everyone around us.
I would like to say that we were able to do it - but alas we 'failed'. It took us seven and a half years and was not a 'total' success - but about 90% of what we wanted. And we found it was not a 24/7 job, it was a 24/365 job!
Let's look at the company. We were a minority stockholder. Bob Reeves had 40%, Don Geary 40% and Margaret and I had 20%. Bob had the title of President and Don was Secretary/Treasurer. I was Vice President/CEO and Margaret was comptroller. We later let Harold Roffmann, Mt. Vernon City Engineer, in at 5% for drafting and preparing our building prints free. This left Bob 38%, Don 38% and Margaret and I with 19%.
It was an unusual set up, with Bob holding the title of President in name only, he wasn't allowed to do anything without my approval.
We lived in Paducah at first, then moved our trailer to Mt. Vernon and at first had the two room office, hired one office girl (Dee Smith) and got up to five motels quite quickly. From this point we took off like a rocket.
I was almost running night and day, Margaret likewise. Her main responsibility was bookkeeping, bill paying, payroll and the taxes, profit and loss statement, bank balance and supervising the reports that came in from the motels. We went from our two room office to a four room office and eventually built a 10 room office and warehouse (more about this later). The office staff grew from Dee to a total of nine girls.
Margaret helped me with my pending development projects and helped prepare complete feasibility studies and projected profit and losses for the lending companies. She even flew to Oklahoma City once to secure a loan we needed for a motel in Midwest City. I guess what I am trying to say is that Margaret did a beautiful job at every endeavor and she was a very large part of our success. I could not have done it without her. Thank you, Margaret, very much.

Back to our five motels and growing. We were building as fast as we could obtain financing and buying existing locations. At the same time, our franchise group known as CW were building several motels of their own. So we met with developers, viewed sights all over the country, viewed potential motels for sale, provided the necessary paperwork to apply and secure the loans, supervised the construction of the various motels, ordered the furniture and installed it, interviewed and hired the managers, and basically ran the total operation of the company. Time seemed to be running together and after all these years, we both have problems in coming up with exact time lines of the various motels, but I believe that after the first five motels, we went to 15 motels in the next year alone and had three more under construction. This would be by December 1973.
At least half of my time was spent on the road working on new locations and expansion. I had one motel in California in the works - Rohnert Park. At this time my brother Bill got interested in the promotional side and went with me a few times, and got involved in our west coast expansion. He must have left poor son Cliff to handle the repairs at his Radiator Shop by himself.
Bill came up with a couple of investors which produced properties for us in Vallejo, Calif. and Battle Creek, Mich. He and I checked out sites from Spokane, Washington, down through Oregon, California and Nevada.
Bill, with Frances, Joe, Casey and Patrick, moved back to Mt. Vernon to help out in the main office. He became my maintenance supervisor, controlling all the major changes we made to existing motels and the maintenance of our own properties.
He was a lot of help and we enjoyed Bill and Frances and the boys being close. It was then that Frances and Margaret started their sharing Thanksgiving and Christmas. We would always have them together, and they took turns in being the 'chief cook and bottle washers'. more later.

The early seventies

The early seventies seem to fly by. And to an extent merge together as one blur of work, business trips, work,company and partnership affairs, more work and the occasional get away. One highlight of that period was the birth of our second grandchild Rebecca. Having a company plane (three different ones over the period of time) and a company pilot, made travel a lot easier for Dick and he was gone a great deal of the time. I was able to go on some of the trips with him, but for the most part Dick traveled and I held down the office. A typical office day started about 9am and would continue until 9 or 10 in the evening. We seldom took a day off, so the few breaks we did take were most welcome.
We combined many business trips with trips - New Orleans, Corpus Christie, San Antonio, Las Vegas, Galveston, Montreal, and the west coast a couple of times , taking some of our key employees with us. One memorable trip to Montreal, there was Dick and I, the company pilot who was also one of our supervisors, our construction superintendent and his wife who was also our secretary, and the main supervisor and his wife who also worked in the office. We had a terrible trip being forced to fly through a thunderstorm as the traffic control would not let us fly around. It was only through Ray's superb piloting that we didn't crash. Afterwards Dick did say, that we needed to split up our key players of the company a little on these trips!
We had some fun company events - awards dinner, Christmas events, picnics and once rented a houseboat on Kentucky Lake and took three of our key employees and their wives for a long weekend.
I made more trips to Wales to be with my father, and Dick was able to make one of the trips with me. Other than that our biggest real vacation, just Dick and I and no family obligations, was to LaPaz, Mexico. We stayed right on the beach. No television, and only one phone in the area. Katrina was expecting the birth of Becky at any moment, so we would 'book' a phone call each evening and did in fact get the good news there.
Life was full. Life was tiring and stressful. Life was a challenge. But we were doing what we wanted to do and were accomplishing something together.

The non-business side of those early years -

was interesting and busy too. When we started to build the motel in Carbondale, Dick and I found ourselves in the strange position of basically a 9 to 5 job, as once the construction workers had gone home, there was not much that we could do. We soon ran into our first 'tug of war' with Bob Brewer and it was over the colors for the motel. He wanted it to be blue and white and called something like Dutch Inn, which he said depicted cleanliness. We wanted to follow in the footsteps of Motel 6, with the stress on the price, and came up with the neutral motel with dark green trim and orange doors. Neither side wanted to give and Lowell and Don didn't seem to be able to visualize either one, so we decided to build a model of the motel with our colors on it. We had more fun with this project and I think it turned out amazingly well since we were just using material we could pick up at the five and ten! When finished we showed it to the partners and the vote came in for Best 7 Inn looking like the above model.

We were able to make the trip to California for Katrina and Jerry's wedding. We drove straight through (in our new 69 T Bird!) 2400 miles in 40 hours. We would have made better time than that but we decided to take a short cut over Tioga Pass - after all June should be no problem. But the pass was closed because of a snow avalanche and we had to drive down to the cross over into Bakersfield and then come up the Valley.
We ended up putting a huge amount of miles on our T-Bird and seem to burn up the tires regularly. The above motel in Huntsville is a trip we made many times - usually after a regular work day and we would take turns in driving. When I think of it now I have to admit to shuddering at the speeds we used to drive - and much of it was on 2-way country highways, before the days of the freeway system.
In 1970, I received the bad news that my father's health was failing and the doctors did not anticipate that he would make it through another winter, so (thanks for Dick and American Express!) I went home to spend time with him. The parting was tough as you can imagine, and I promised to go back the following year. This way neither one of us had to verbalize on the fact that we didn't think he would make it.
(As a side note, I should add that he lived another five years, and each year I, sometimes with Dick, would make the 'last visit').

1970 also brought us our first grandchild - Suzanne, born in Hawaii. At this point Dick was 39 and I was 33 - both very young to be grandparents. But it was fun in those days - I used to show the photographs and brag, and love it when they said "You're not old enough to be a grandmother". Later on, it was painfully obvious when they didn't say that!

The Big Problem solved - we had a job -----

so we now had to move to Illinois and begin work. We had a large bill for the airline fare to take care of and almost no money, but by selling almost everything we had except for a stereo console, our clothes and personal items, we ended up with less than $700 and with Bill and Frances helping us with the tires, we were set to go. We were eastward bound, a 1966 Ford Mustang 6 cyl. towing a loaded trailer, and two dumb but happy people starting out on a new adventure.

We arrived in Bloomington, Illinois, home office of Mr. Oneals' business operations and began looking for a cheap apartment. Bloomington was a State College town and rentals had a waiting list and were not cheap. We wound up staying in a cheap motel in a small near-by town, and because of the short money supply lived on two small meals a day. Usually toast and coffee for breakfast, and the lunch/dinner was about 2.30 to 3pm and consisted of a hamburger or a cheap lunch buffet. After about three weeks ONeal was able to find us a small apartment. We spent a week or so learning his discount business and how they operated and were then sent to each of his stores as future store managers. We would show up on Monday morning and be put to work as managers in training under the existing manager. We were spies for a week. We were mostly given the roughest jobs but on the Friday afternoon it was our turn. We would spend about 1-1/2 to 2 hours grilling the manager then report to ONeal on the Saturday. This went on for about six weeks.

Mr. ONeal was also wanting to start a new chain of stores. His existing stores were simple discount centers with clothes, shoes, cookingware, hardware, toiletries and typical 5 and 10 cents store items. But no groceries. He had heard about another company which were opening discount groceries. Basically they were the fore-runner of Costco, except no perishables. They were located in Northern Iowa and South Dakota - so guess what! Our next trip was to those locations on a week and a half visit , watching their operations, how they did things, their pricing, volume, appearance and their advertising. We returned and delivered the information to ONeal, along with some recommendations. He opened one store of this type about four months later, but it did not turn out to be a good moneymaker for him. In order to save money he had gone with a location about five miles out of town, and ended up with half the volume he needed. When you are in the discount business, the secret is volume.

Our ONeal venture over, we now dug into what we had gone back to the MidWest for - to build a chain of motels. Don had secured a loan for $450,000 which is what I had told him it would cost to build and furnish the 80 unit motel with pool. But as Margaret said in her blog, he was not able to do it for that and we agreed that I should do it, so from then on I was the contractor/builder as well as the operator.

Due to the weather (snow and freeze) we were not able to start until the middle of March. Normal construction time for a project this size was six to eight months at best, but we (Margaret and I) worked as a team to build this motel. We got our base subcontractors signed up and called a meeting. I told them we were going to be renting rooms in 110 calendar days. "No Way" was the response. But I pinned each one down in front of the others and said "Are you the one who is going to hold us up" "No, not I, was the response". We had a challenge going.


We failed by eight days. It was no fault of our base contractors - it was our roofer than let us down by stalling us a week and a half. The base core subs were proud of what they had done and the local newspaper ran an article on the motel and said "yesterday a vacant lot - today a new motel - the Best 7 Inn. I would like to take a bow and all the credit for building so fast, but Margaret deserves most of the credit, if not all of it. She was very organized and worked with all the subs, kept a current and projected schedule which was adjusted daily and would call each contracts and supplier one week early, 3 days before and the day before. This system worked with everyone of them - except the roofer!

The motel opened and it was an instant success. Margaret and I ran it for about seven months. Bill and Frances flew in to visit with us that summer . Carbondale was a college town - Southern Illinois University - with about 25,000 students. They were a big reason for our success, but also gave us most of our problems (how about 19 students all crammed in one room for a starter). You name it we had it!

We hired full time managers the following January, but in the meantime, financing money was very tight and it was difficult to obtain development loans and we were not going anywhere with future development. Don Geary and one of his partners Bob Reeves had obtained a loan and started construction on a motel in Paducah, Kentucky. This was going to be our first franchise and second Best 7 Inn, but other problems were coming up. Both Lowell ONeal and Bob Brewer were dragging their feet on expansion because of the difficulty in getting loans and Don Geary and Bob Reeves decided to drop their franchise and go forward as a new chain if we (Margaret and I) would join them. Paducah was about half finished, and they asked that we finish the construction and then go ahead with a new chain Regal 8 Inns. We said yes.
You might wonder why we chose to leave a successful on-going operation and start over. But we knew that we would not have had that motel if is were not for Don Geary's ability to hustle up money (in that case a good friend who was President of the Mt. Vernon Savings and Loan). And it was he, and he alone that had found the money for the motel in Paducah. It was obvious that ONeal was losing interest and was talking about getting into politics, maybe running for governor or congress (which he never did). Bob Brewer, who was the person I dealt with mostly on operations, was very controling, had his own ideas about the smallest of details and was beginning to be a royal pain. Needless to say, he and I were beginning to butt heads. Don Geary was my kind of man - a go getter, a gambler and someone who made things work.
We made two major purchases - a new 1969 T-Bird and a trailer that we had set up in a trailer park in Paducah. Were were able to complete the construction late May and a month later we completed the Sambos Restaurant next door.

We had hired managers from the start up in Paducah and we purchased the second Regal 8 Inn in Huntsville, Tx (a Rodeway Inn), followed by another purchase and motel #3 in Fairfield, Illinois (about 30 miles east of Mt. Vernon). In the meantime Don Geary with another group of partners (known as the CW group) had started building a new Regal 8 Inn in Mt. Vernon, Illinois.

We moved our trailer to Mt. Vernon and rented a small two room office. We purchased another existing motel, this time in Midland, TX. This made five in all - and all making money and doing well. At this time we were managing the franchise operation(s) for a fee ----------------THINGS WERE LOOKING GOOD.

The deal

Dick has told you about our trip back t0 Illinois and the steps leading to our deal with the developers back there, so I have little to add to that, except to expound a little on the actual deal itself.

Dick and I offered to both work for the sum of $1,000 a month - a ridiculously low figure even in that day and age. But we both felt that it would show the investors that we were sincere in our belief that we could make the company grow and were willing to put our time and effort in at low cost, in order to cash in when the company gained success. The salary had built in automatic raises as motels were added (after the first five)and we also had a bonus (10%) of any profits generated. But the big clincher on the deal was that we had the option to buy into 25% of the ownership for the predetermined price of $25,000 AND they agreed to advance us the money whenever we opted to do it and we would repay them over a period of time. It was a good deal for us if we could make it successful, but it was also a good deal for the developers as their costs were kept low in the early stages.

Lowell O'Neal, when he got the other partners interested and when he approached us, had the idea of copying Motel 6 exactly - just under a different name. But Dick and I didn't agree and part of our presentation to them was to offer the concept of an up-graded Motel 6. We wanted a slightly larger room so that no beds were right up against the wall. We wanted color television (free of course - no meters!) instead of black and white and we wanted phones in every room. Plus we wanted to accept credit cards. Another gimmick we wanted was to offer free coffee in the lobby all day. We were able to persuade them on the new concept, so we left with that plan in mind.

The overall plan at that time was for us to go back to California, take care of business, pack up and head back to Illinois. They would proceed with the plans, the permits, financing, etc. and Geary Construction would build it. In the meantime, we would do jobs for Lowell O'neal in his other ventures until we would be a full time part of the motel company.
All packed up and ready to go, we headed across the US with our 66 Mustang and a small trailer with all our belongings - which at that time mounted to very little. We were a little worried about the tires on our car but didn't have the funds to put new tires on it, so brother Bill came to our rescue and bought some tires for us, and we paid him back as soon as we could.

We stopped to visit Louise and family in Texas on the way (the first I met Louise) and arrived in Bloomington, Illinois and made contact with Lowell. We found a very cheap motel that we were able to rent on a weekly basis (thank goodness for American Express again) and cut our meals to twice a day and found every bargain place in town to eat. Things were REALLY tight until the first pay check came and then it was slim pickings most of the time. Lowell was able to find us an apartment to stay in which helped a little. It was the attic of an old house with four gables. Two larger gables east and west, and two small gables north and south. One larger one was the living room, the other the bedroom and the kitchen and bathroom were in the smaller ones. Only one of us could be in the kitchen at a time it was that small and the bathroom was a riot. It didn't have a shower, only a tub in the lowest part of the ceiling. When Dick took a bath, he had to hold his head sideways in order to fit!

Lowell had us work in his Cousin Fred Stores and presented us as Managers in training, so most of the managers gave us the most menial jobs as part of our training. We stocked a lot of shelves! The real purpose of our visits to these stores was to act as an observer for Lowell and give him a report at the end of each visit on what we saw and how things could be improved.

In the meantime, they had obtained the financing and Harold Rothman, architect had drawn the prints based on Dick's plans and specs. Don Geary had come up with estimates on building the units and it was way high. We recognized Don's problem. He had been a housing contractor for years in the area and used the same contractors over and over on his relatively small projects. They gave him their cost estimates based on their small project numbers and he didn't want to shop the prices because he wanted to stay on good terms with them. So the long and short of it was that Dick persuaded them to let him act as the General Contractor. They agreed and we moved into an apartment in Carbondale that Don Geary found for us and Dick and I ran the construction job for the first new motel - the Best 7 Inn, Carbondale.