GE: imagination at work

Progress Reports: Jared Allen

A Performance To Remember

“The Great Communicator.” It was the nickname that embodied all of Ronald Reagan’s tremendous political talents. And for good reason, it stuck.

But long before the world knew him this way, before he led the nation or even his home state of California, Ronald Reagan shared his gift of gab on a much smaller scale — to hundreds of thousands of GE employees.

For eight years — from 1954 to 1962 — Reagan was the host of the Sunday evening television program General Electric Theater. Of course, Reagan wasn’t exactly a stranger to Americans at that time. In fact, Ronald Reagan was one of the more popular screen actors of his day, and in this role was already something of a household name.

But while with GE Theater, Reagan took on another starring role, spending 10 weeks a year as a roving ambassador for the company, traveling from plant to plant and state to state to meet, greet, share stories, laughs — and more than a few memorable experiences — with the men and women who were literally building the technology of tomorrow for GE.

Reagan would later credit this experience with helping forge his skills as a campaigner. But the exercise may have left the biggest imprint on the company.

In addition to leaving in place a legacy of inspiration that remains central to all that GE does, the future President left a lasting impression on scores of employees. Reagan’s way with people, even in the infancy of his political career, was simply second to none.

Through hundreds of testimonials, employees who met Reagan for only a minute or two shared vivid memories that they’ve treasured for upwards of a half-century. Ronald Reagan walked onto their plant floors a celebrity. He left as one of the most kind, thoughtful, inspiring and remarkable persons that many had ever met.

Frances Browne was supervising a circuitry assembly line when Reagan came to tour her Auburn, NY plant in 1959. Because the components she was building were destined for missiles for the U.S. military, Frances and her group were locked behind a gate in a secure area of the plant floor.

“Well, when he came by, he looked up and saw this iron gate separating us and said, ‘Oh my God. If I knew you were going to be in here I would have brought you a cake with a saw in it!,’“ said Browne, who at 97 years old says she still remembers meeting Reagan like it was yesterday. “I was just touched by him being so friendly.”

Browne saved a picture someone snapped of the two of them. And many years later, when Reagan was elected President, she made copies for all of her children to keep with them.

“It was quite an impression that he made on her,” one of Browne’s children, Sandy Foglia, said.

Reagan’s kindness was omnipresent. In May of 1960 Reagan toured GE’s Hermetic Motor Plant in Holland, Michigan. Bob Sessions, the plant’s superintendent, recalled Reagan as “strongly people oriented.”

“In chatting with a woman on the coil winding line he learned she had a daughter home with a broken leg who worshiped him,” Sessions remembered. “He got her telephone number [and] as we passed an empty office he went in and called her for a fairly long chat.”

Reagan brought along his kindness and cheer even when he had to muster it.

Brian Hope caught Reagan on a rather bad day — fighting a nasty cold — when he arrived at Hope’s Cincinnati aircraft engines plant. Despite “near collapse” while traveling between plant buildings, Reagan rose to the occasion the moment it was needed, according to Hope.

“When he walked in, he had his shoulders up, his head high, smiling like he was on top of the world,” Hope recalled. “It was quite a thing to see.”

After Fred Kaimer led Reagan’s tour through a GE facility in Allentown, Pennsylvania, he asked Reagan where he was headed next. To Kaimer’s delight, Reagan was scheduled to travel by limousine the next day to York — where Kaimer’s father was the plant manager.

“I said, ‘Well, how about I drive you?” Kaimer recalled. “He looked at his security guy and then back at me and said, ‘Well, it’s alright with me if it’s alright with you.’”a

After getting that early dose of the folksy, good-humored manner that would later come to define Reagan’s natural way of interacting with people, Kaimer got a whiff of his political aspirations, as well.

At one point during the nearly three-hour drive, Kaimer asked Reagan what he wanted to do next.

“First I’d like to run for governor of California,” Reagan replied.

“And after that?” Kaimer asked.

“Well, I’d like to stay in politics,” Reagan answered, “and someday be President of the United States.”

And did Kaimer think that the actor who he had just met had what it would take to one day become president?

“Absolutely,” Kaimer said. “He was just that kind of person.”

By the time General Electric Theater had concluded its eight-year run, Reagan — by his own account — had visited a total of 139 GE research and manufacturing facilities, and had met over 250,000 individual employees.