Remembering Aunt Bertha

Bertha Emma Freudenstein Carter (1889-1993) was my great aunt. She was also the moral center of our family the entire time I was growing up. Born the eldest of six children, she only made it through the fourth grade. Her handwriting always looked like that of a fourth grader, but it never stopped her from sending letters and cards to her family and loved ones on every occasion. While I was in the army in Vietnam, she sent me packages of cookies, with a note and a few Oral Roberts religious pamphlets. She was an avid Oral Roberts fan and watched him every week on her 14-inch black-and-white television.

She and her husband Alonzo "Curt" Carter married in 1907 and homesteaded a dairy farm near Mount Rainier; they ran it almost until Curt died in 1951. Aunt Bertha never had children of her own but was surrogate mother to dozens of us, especially the children of her brothers and sisters. After Curt died, she sold the farm and, even though she was then in her 60s, she opened what today we would call a board-and-care home for the elderly. She operated it until she was well into her 70s, cooking three meals a day for as many as 10 people, doing massive amounts of laundry, and cleaning -- always cleaning. Until 1965, she drove the 1940 Ford V-8 that Curt had bought brand new while they were living on the farm. But by the mid-1960s, she had decided she needed a new car with automatic transmission. So she traded the Ford in on an American Motors Rambler, four-door with push-button radio and electric windshield wipers. (If only I had been smart enough to buy that Ford from her back then. It only had 60,000 miles on it in 25 years of driving, and the original grey-green paint and felt upholstery were still in good condition. Sigh.)

Aunt Bertha would pull up to our house, usually on a Saturday morning, just to see how we were doing. She'd usually bring us something she'd baked or picked out of her garden. Her baked goods weren't the most elegant, but they were always tasty. My mother, however, wouldn't let us eat her pies because she used lard in the crusts. Mother also tossed out a lot of the apples Aunt Bertha brought because they were too bruised from falling off the tree. Bertha never wasted anything.

She was very religious, but in a way that I wish more people would be today. She attended two different churches, one in the city and one out in the country where she used to live on her farm. She never preached or proselytzed. Instead, she showed what she believed by what she did. She cared about people and didn't judge them. She laughed with us when we were happy, grieved with us when we were sad. When my dad died at the age of 47, she was a rock of strength for my mother, sister, brother and me. She had a big painting of Jesus on her wall everywhere she lived -- the Euro-centric kind that showed him with light brown hair and blue eyes. But she never spent any of her precious time trying to convert others. You just knew what she believed. This is the kind of faith I have tried to have. I hope I measure up to her example.

She never stopped doing or caring. Very late in life, when she was too frail to be helpful to others any longer, she grew increasingly impatient with God. She really wanted to leave this life and get on with the next. It took longer than she wanted it to, but she endured the wait and called it the price she had to pay. She died in 1993 at the age of 104.

Two of my most treasured possessions today once belonged to Aunt Bertha. When she was well into her 90s, she began giving away her possessions to those she loved. When I paid her a visit one afternoon, she told me what she wanted me to have. She walked over to her old curio cabinet and took out a tarnished silver cup and saucer. Her father brought it back for her when she was 10 years old from his time as a failed prospector during the Yukon gold rush of 1898. She had kept it all those years, and decided I should have it now because I was interested in history.

My other prized possession from Aunt Bertha is a Packard-Bell table radio in a red bakelite case. For years, it sat on her kitchen counter. She would listen to music and the news while she cooked. When I got it, it had been stored by my mother for years and no longer worked. Fortunately, I found a man while we were living in Dallas who repaired old tube-style radios. Today, Aunt Bertha's radio plays just fine. While I cook or wash dishes, I listen to it. It's usually tuned to KIXI-AM in Seattle, which plays music of the 40s, 50s and 60s. And when I hear a tune by Tommy Dorsey, Jo Stafford, Frank Sinatra or Ella Fitzgerald, I smile.

Biting The Hand That Used To Feed Me

I worked for five different shareholder-owned, private corporations for nearly 40 years before I retired last year. I was fortunate enough to work in close proximity to top management most of that time, and I saw the internal workings close up. I made a good living and managed to save a decent nest egg for retirement, although my definition of "decent" has changed dramatically since the economy melted down in September 2008. So what I have to say now probably won't sit well with some of my former colleagues.

I think American capitalism has gone terribly wrong in the past couple decades. Companies have grown "too big to fail," to use the term that became popular a year ago to justify government bailouts. In my opinion, however, "too big to fail" is simply a convenient cover to hide the self-preservation instinct that seizes corporate managements when the economy heads south. "Too big to fail" has given too many companies an easy means to protect senior management and almost nobody else.

I'll give you an example. I am investor in a company (I'll be polite and not name it) that sold "auction-rate notes" secured by municipal bonds. Easy redemptions were supposed to be readily available at any time to small investors like me because the company simply went to the credit markets every week for short-term borrowing to fund them. "Nobody expected all credit markets to seize at the same time," was the explanation I got when suddenly none of the company's investors were able to redeem any notes. Now, almost 18 months later, "market conditions" still aren't good enough for investors to get most of our money out. But when I read the fine print in the company's regulatory filings, I found another reason for the problem: During the boom years, the company had borrowed massive amounts of money under its bank credit lines to fund an ambitious growth strategy. So much borrowing, in fact, that the banks have refused to extend any further loans, leaving the company at the mercy of the "credit markets," which is code for billionaires, foreign banks, hedge funds and other shadowy fat cats. And these "credit markets" will only invest if they're comfortable that a company has the wherewithal to survive. Smart of them. I wish I had that option right now.

I add all this up and here's what I get: This company's knows there are ways other than the mysterious "credit markets" in which it could raise capital and take care of its investors. But its managers also know that those other ways -- acquisition, merger, sale of assets, etc. -- would jeopardize their own jobs, bonuses and future employability. So management's solution has been to stall the small investors with reassuring gobbledygook while it finds "other solutions" that will "facilitate investor confidence." Um....right, sure. But let me suggest that if any lower-level worker in any American company tried to stall this long to cover a problem, she or he would pounding the pavement right now and their kids might be using food stamps to eat.

This is just a small example of what's wrong with American capitalism these days. We have allowed an entitled class of executives to take control. These folks refuse to accept responsibility for what has failed us. In Japan and elsewhere, managers usually resign when things go badly -- even if they are not directly to blame. But not here. Our entitled executive class holds on with with a clueless ferocity that would make Marie Antoinette proud. The delusional explanations take my breath away: the scope of the crisis was "unanticipated," "market conditions beyond our control" created the situation, "external factors" affected results. They ought to add that the dog ate their homework. What do shareholders pay executives for if not to anticipate crises, plan for changing market conditions and stay ahead of external factors?

Wouldn't it be refreshing if a company "too big to fail" owned up to the fact that its management borrowed too much, took too many risks and blinded itself to the dangers ahead in order to boost executive perks and rewards? Refreshing indeed, but it'll never happen. Just consider the lawsuits that would be filed! The personal liability that might be incurred! You'd have to be crazy to say that! The lawyers would never let us do that!

To be sure, American capitalism has always been about who could clobber the competition and grow bigger, faster. It has also always been about greed -- which Gordon Gecko memorably told us is "good." Andrew Carnegie and J.P. Morgan were hardly warm and fuzzy guys. But I can also remember some better angels of corporate nature in my own career. When I started with Times-Mirror Company in the early 1970s, the Chandler family of Los Angeles considered the company a reflection of themselves. It was their patrimony for generations. When you went to work there, you knew the company would take care of "its people." Of course the Chandlers grew fabulously wealthy because of "its" company, but there was always a feeling that they cared about us. Most importantly, bonuses at Times-Mirror Company were based on performance. Nobody ever got several times their annual salary, which became almost a norm in some Wall Street firms.

That's what missing today. Few shareholder-owned corporations have institutional memory any more. New management comes in, cuts costs, boosts revenue, gooses the stock, makes huge salaries and bonuses -- and then cashes its chips and leaves the poker table. Then the next management arrives and the cycle starts all over again.

No heart, no soul.