Internationally Celebrated Author—Biography, Social History & Fiction
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Blue Bloods
In 2005, Morgan Stanley fired chairman and CEO Philip Purcell (with a $24 million golden parachute), as a result of the efforts of the “Group of Eight” retired executives. The group included a former chairman, a former president and the former heads of the firm’s major divisions.
When Pulitzer-Prize winner Ron Chernow wrote The House of Morgan, the firm’s then-chairman, Parker Gilbert, instructed employee not to talk to the author. During the fight for to oust Purcell, Gilbert and the members of the “Group of Eight” reversed the firm’s policy. A constant stream of newspaper and magazine articles kept the story alive, and pressured the board to oust Purcell.
During the battle, the Irish betting site InTrade gave the Group of Eight a single digit chance of winning. (InTrade closed in 2012.)
In 2016 Morgan Stanley has 60,000 employees in 42 countries, and more than 1300 offices.
S. Parker Gilbert III, former Chairman and president of Morgan Stanley
John J. Mack, Chairman & President of Morgan Stanley, 2005-2010
Only months after Philip Purcell was forced to leave Morgan Stanley, he posed for a New York Times article, showing off his enjoyment of his new leisure.
After the Ball
Always a dandy, James was known for wearing a white carnation in his buttonhole, and for the distinctive red heels on his spats.
A superb rider, and famous driver of four-in-hand coaches, the race between James Hyde and Alfred Vanderbilt was covered in newspapers nationwide. Caricature by SEM.
The glamorous 1905 Hyde Ball was turned into a scandal to prove that James was too frivolous to control the Equitable Life Assurance Society. Here he is shown at the ball with the Countess de Rougement.
The caricaturist SEM depicted James striding from New York to Paris, where he lived for forty years after the Hyde Ball. James never returned to the United States until Germans took over Paris in World War II.
Good Daughters
My mother, Sarinda Dranow, my sister Elizabeth (left) and me in Maine.
My daughter, Hillary Beard, my mother and me in 1988. My mother was seventy, and looked and felt far younger.
My mother and me, the summer after she turned eighty.
Newsmaker
A self-made boy from a poor family in Indiana, Roy Howard started his newspaper career at the turn of the 20th century when he was still in high school, and didn’t stop until the day he died in 1964. A publisher, editor and journalist, he was the first head of the fledgling United Press. In his thirties E.W. Scripps renamed his newspaper empire—one of the two largest newspaper concerns in the United States—Scripps-Howard. The confidante of the famous, Howard advised every U.S. president from Hoover to Eisenhower, and in 1930, was named one of the “59 men who ‘rule’ America” in a front-page story in the New York Times. His fifty years of diaries and thousands of pages of “Strictly Confidential” memoranda are no less than the background to the history of the first half of the century.
When Roy grew into his bike, he used it to deliver newspapers, one of the five weekly jobs he held to help support this family.
Roy Howard was a young dandy with a big future.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt began by admiring and consulting with Howard; then publicly turned against him.
Roy traveled an estimated 2.5 million miles in search of news and clients. Among his close contacts was Chiang-Kai-shek, the president of China who was defeated by Mao Tse-tung.
Stalin gave Howard a exclusive scoop, published in 600 papers nationwide.
In the post-war period, Dwight D. Eisenhower counted on Howard for advice.
When Roy first met E.W. Scripps on his California ranch, his new boss looked like a ranch hand, while Roy showed up in dapper city clothes.
Certain Summer?
“Patsy” age four raising the flag in Maine
First cousins, Camille Beard and Stella Schafer, taking the big leap.
Stella pulls her brother Sam along a sandy path.
Landry Beard and Stella Schafer gathering wood for a beach bonfire.
