December 15 1975

 

 

 

Dear Walt:

 

There were a few things in your letter to me of December 1st to which I’ll take exception, and I wish to state my counter views. I gather that it is fashionable in The Stelle Group to regard me as “irrational” and “paranoid” since you use those phrases and infer­ences frequently in your communications with me including your letter of December 1st. Your statement to MaryAnn and me that my administration of The Stelle Group was insane and your insistence when I objected to the term “insane” that most of the people you’ve talked to who “survived” my administration agree that my methods were “insane” indicates to me the real level of the group’s possible acceptance of me and what I have to offer. Your habitual use of such loaded terms cannot help but color your representations of me to newcomers in your Orientation classes. I admit that you are not the only person currently at Stelle who has sought me out to tell me I am too strange; so I have more than one person who conveys to me the temper of the group. I do not care to try to function in an arena which is that poisonous toward me. You complain that my problems largely stem from my habit of not defending myself and that I am the sole cause of my troubles. I don’t happen to fully buy that reasoning however “rational” it may seem to you. I do not have control over the motives and actions of other people. You are like the policeman who berates the owner of goods which have been stolen for not having guarded his valuables more diligently, but no one thinks to criticize the thief. If I am supposed to be “suffering” the results of my actions, then so too is The Stelle Group suffering the results of its aggregate actions. My view of the Stelle situation is from a unique vantage point which has kept me from suffering personally, even though I am troubled about how to reach the group. The words and tenor of your letter strike me as petulant if not actually scur­rilous, and what you wrote seems to me to seek some sort of political advantage or one-upmanship for Walter Cox rather than to instruct me.

 

The “frank, open and above board” letter you wrote to Jerry Foreman denouncing, in your own views, fraudulence and incompetence in the exercise of his duties as construction superintendent was probably mostly accurate, but in distributing copies of that letter to others you forced an issue which the trustees had already taken other steps to correct. We could not allow you to profit by your condemnation of another; so Ronald Nebola was recommended by Howery and Ennor to replace Jerry. But Ron complained that you became impossible for him to work with. I find it difficult not to draw comparisons between your letter to Jerry and your open letter to me. Your haste to state your disclaimers of responsibility for the impressions of the group’s consciousness you may have conveyed to me will, I believe, foster false impressions by you in the minds of the membership. i.e.

     1.) I have never told anyone Japan was supposed to sink into the sea. My discussions of Cayce’s prediction in those terms was one of my doubt, and I told you I thought a tsunami, which can sweep away trees and villages and denude the land even of topsoil, might have been what he foresaw, and this could be a logical result of a sub-Pacific quake.

     2.) Stelle Woodworking did not undercut an existing supplier to A.B. Dick Co. to get business. The owner of one of their suppliers in Cabery died, and our quotes were sufficiently in line for us to be considered as a substitute supplier. I felt that my past conflicts while I was a fellow employee with their purchasing agent, stemming from my having to continually push and remind him to do parts of his job, would unfairly penalize Stelle Woodworking were he to know I was associated with Stelle. Actual negotiations with him were conducted by others in Stelle Woodworking, and I had but little contact with him by phone. As a purist for frankness, you could say I should have risked the future of Stelle by flaunting to him my association with it, but we were only just barely in line with the several firms we were bidding against and he would likely not have approved us as a supplier. Once we earned our position on his company’ s preferred vendor list, I didn’t mind his knowing my identity.

     3.) I never “operated” Stelle Industries in excess of $150,000 in debt, nor was there any design or intention to not pay within sixty days. A $50,000 current accounts payable was a reasonable and acceptable level for a corporation with the volume of our com­bined businesses. Since you know all the details and facts behind our sudden projection into a slow-pay category, I wonder what you are trying to infer.

          4.) I’d like to know what design of Factory 1601 I allegedly insisted upon. The shape was dictated by the steel design that was found most economical by Raillard (I had hoped instead for glue-lam trusses), Laibow designed the interior layout and exterior appearance completely on his own, the panel walls were designed by acoustical and thermal technicians in Laibow’s Harrisburg office (my only insistence was to use carriage bolts instead of lag screws to mount the panels to the steel), and the placement of machinery was done by Curt Johnson with his assistants while keeping the dust exhaust system in mind.

     5.) I do not recall any time when wages were not paid on time.

     6.) No one at anytime was asked for impossible precision or pro­duction in construction. The Stelle industries have never come up to efficiencies on the outside. You yourself were one of the prin­cipal complainers about sloppiness and slowness and waste in house construction, and you asked for more and more authorization for you to force the shutdown of construction if errors were not corrected to your satisfaction. Obviously, walls had to be straightened and windows cut where they should be and not be corrected with sledge hammers. You were the first to insist on quality control being at least to the level of your own skills. Your job was to find the errors and the omissions of others. Quality control and production are always in tension in all commercial operations. Your personal conflicts with the supervisors were due to your own self-righteous assessments of blame, and I cautioned you about that level of zealousness on more than one occasion.

     7.) You don’t know what you’re talking about when you accuse me of “brutal” treatment of Tokle. When I asked her to come before the board of trustees rather than have a private discussion about the things I wanted to question her about, she began to shout “I can’t believe this” over and over and seemed to be crying, although Howery afterward commented that she never shed a tear. Cysewski was immediately melted by Tokle’s histrionics and he became irritated by the ses­sion; so it was halted prematurely without anything useful being accomplished.

     8.) I have never stated that Ben Drell was the victim of inter­ference by Lower Entities because of his accusations of me. I have stated that his condition was inherent in his own mentality. Ben had suffered an extreme disappointment in that his trip to a healer in the Philippines did not correct his back condition. He went deeply into debt because of it and was not able to recover finan­cially or get his car repaired while working for Stelle Woodworking. At the same time he suffered extreme weight loss, agitation and an inability to concentrate due to his rejection as a suitor by Marcie Shepard. He quit Stelle Woodworking about March and began telling people that The Stelle Group people were too impractical to ever be able to make a success of the project. He became worse than useless in his function as trustee; and when I asked Jeanette if she could help support him through his difficulties by undertaking some posi­tive projects with him, Ben began to drag her down instead. Due to Ben’s continuing deterioration, I suggested in June that Jeanette discontinue involvement with him. He came up with his own explan­ations for my action and felt I was trying to destroy him. Subse­quently, Ben stated he reasoned out that he had been Ben Franklin in his last incarnation and was the true intended leader of The Stelle Group.

 

What interests me, Walt, is that you’ve already known all the facts I’ve just restated in the above eight examples as a result of our discussions in the past. So I find your resorting to catch-word charges, your obvious distortions of my motives, and your use of highly charged words to be particularly troubling. In my efforts to sort out your motives in even having written your letter of Dec­ember 1st, I have failed to detect any purpose useful or beneficial to The Stelle Group. Since we had gone over all this privately in the past, why your sudden reversion to other people’s old charges in what is essentially a public letter?

 

I expect you to publicly repair the damage you’ve done to my offices by your letter, and I believe I’m also entitled to a public apology. I’ve generally allowed you considerable boldness with me, but do not imagine that my restraint in countering you meant I thought all your statements to be valid. I love you and am gratified to see you gain­ing strength and ability, but knocking me will not add one whit to your stature.

 

Yours most sincerely,

 

 

 

Richard Kieninger

 

 

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