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Just over 22 years ago, members of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra played a slow rendition of the eponymous melody, “I’d like to buy the world a Coke,” as the coffin of legendary Cuban-born Chairman of the Coca-Cola Company, Roberto Goizueta, was born down the aisle of Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Atlanta.
I wasn’t there, but I did spend an enjoyable day a few years before spiriting Roberto through his first visit to McDonald’s then-sprawling home office campus in Oak Brook, IL. He chain-smoked through our tour, each time we entered his limousine to visit another part of the campus. In one of those short rides, I mentioned that their recently acquired brand, Barq’s, was may favorite root beer. He launched into the story about how his father in Cuba had loved root beer, and this aquisition was in his memory. Then he added, “And, it was a very good deal.” Goizuita made many very good deals during his Coke career, making him a billionaire and making Coke Shareholders over $180 Billion dollars.
He was one of the most successful corporate executives in American history. And though he came from a wealthy Cuban family, he lost everything and moverd to America to start over. An ambitious, but loveable guy.
Cider our curious 18-year-old cat at Applewood Lodge, “confurs” with author Chuck Ebeling, about their new book of essays, “Apple Pressings” which is newly available on Amazon Books. Cider is acknowledged in the introduction for his role as he “trod the keys in attempts to add his random edits.” Author Chuck is more than willing to share the blame for any typos or spacing issues in the newly-published book with his “confuree.”
(Photo taken near the end of my McCareer at my old office within McDonald’s Oak Brook, IL global home office.) Fifteen years ago tomorrow, I retired, at the very cusp of the Millennium, vowing I’d worked enough in one century, and wouldn’t make that mistake in another. In early 1985, I’d joined McDonald’s as head of corporate communications, a position I would hold for 15 years. At my retirement party, in a take-off on Ernest Hemingway, I’d noted that I’d spent much of the 1970’s with McDonald’s national public relations agency, Golin/Harris, which I referred to as my golden salad days, then from the mid-80s through the 90s at McDonald’s corporate office, as the hearty main course of my career, and then in the new 21st century began the savory dessert course of so-called retirement. And like most desserts, this final course, over the last 15 years, has been sweet and savory. Thanks to all who have been along on all, or even part, of my continuing journey. Cheers for the New Year!
From today’s Writer’s Almanac: Today is the birthday of English novelist and diarist Frances (Fanny) Burney (1752). She was born in Kings Lynn, Norfolk, the daughter of a music historian. She didn’t learn to read and write until she was 10 years old, but once she did learn, she wasted no time in putting her skills to work writing plays, poems, and songs. Her mother died when she was 15, and her father remarried that same year; her stepmother didn’t think writing was a suitable hobby for young ladies, and Fanny burned all of her early work.
When she was 16, she began keeping a diary, a practice she maintained for more than 70 years. She was a keen observer of society and manners, and her journals recount visits by such luminaries as Dr. Samuel Johnson, James Boswell, David Garrick, and Sir Joshua Reynolds — all friends of her father. She also described the Battle of Waterloo, the madness of King George III, and her own mastectomy, performed without any anesthesia beyond a single glass of wine.
Her first published novel, Evelina, or the History of a Young Lady’s Entrance into the World (1778), was a comedy of manners, informed in large part by her own observations and experience as a young woman in society. She published it anonymously and disguised her handwriting, afraid that publishers would recognize her hand from her work as her father’s literary assistant. The novel was a great success, and she followed it with a second — Cecilia, or Memoirs of an Heiress (1782) — which would inspire Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813). Burney succeeded in making novel-writing an acceptable enterprise for women, and she paved the way for many 19th-century social satires.
Burney went to the court of King George III and Queen Charlotte in 1786, and she served as “Second Keeper of the Robes” for five years. She was unhappy in her post, since she was too busy to write novels, though she kept up with her diaries. When she was released from service, she married French expatriate general Alexandre d’Arblay, and proceeds from her third novel, Camilla, or a Picture of Youth (1796), paid for a house for the newlyweds. In 1802, they took their young son to France for a brief stay that ended up lasting 10 years, due to a renewal of the Napoleonic Wars. She recorded it all in her diaries, and her account of the Battle of Waterloo may have provided Thackeray with material for Vanity Fair.
She wrote one more novel, The Wanderer (1814), and several plays, only one of which was staged in her lifetime. And near the end of her life, she dedicated herself to publishing her father’s memoirs and to organizing her sizable collection of diaries and personal papers. She died in 1840, at the age of 88.
Apple Pressings 