Page 1 BOHNING: Mr. Roland, I know you were born in Philadelphia, but I don't know when.

ROLAND: I was born January 14, 1931, which makes me 64 years young.

BOHNING: Tell us something about your parents, your family background.

ROLAND: My mother and father were both Philadelphians; my father was a businessman who was an entrepreneur. I was born, as you can tell, in the Depression, and I have one sibling, an older brother, a year and a half older than I am, who is John Harry Roland, Jr. We were born in West Philadelphia.

My mother's maiden name was McNichol, and her father ran a clothing store, in fact had a chain of clothing stores in Philadelphia called Perry Men’s Clothes. My father was an entrepreneur. He owned a hardware store; he owned an automobile dealership; he owned a number of apartment houses; and he was a major shareholder in a local bank. When the Depression hit everything went South, but it was particularly unfortunate for people who had bank shares or were in the ownership or management of banks, because they had to pay back the value of their shares. My father walked in the day that the president declared a bank holiday and made a deposit. An hour later that deposit was gone too, so they were bankrupt, needless to say.

At that particular time my parents had just purchased a house in suburban Philadelphia, out in the western suburb called Upper Darby or Highland Park, and I was just born at that time. My father went to work as a salesman. At that time, you sold anything you could get your hands on, and thereafter you sold everything. He worked for a very large wholesale distributer in Philadelphia called Pierce-Phelps—they're still in business. He became general sales manager of that company, and there were some really hard times. I remember that during the war he would sell dolls. He would sell some kinky kind of things you would see on TV now. Page 2 He had been in World War I, so he wasn't called back into World War II. There were some interesting things though, because he sold some of the first TV sets. We always had TV sets and good radios. The product line both for refrigerators, white goods, and hard goods that Pierce-Phelps handled was Crosley, and Powell Crosley, who owned the Cincinnati Reds, was quite an entrepreneurial character and also created small automobiles. I got to see those little automobiles and drive around in one with my father. His life was interesting, and he made it interesting for me, maybe by virtue of circumstance.

We're Catholic, Roman Catholic, and so whenever there was a school holiday—and the Catholics had school holidays that others didn't get—I would be home. My mother didn't work; she stayed home and looked after the boys, and grandmother lived with us, my paternal grandmother. My mother's mother and father were alive too for many years, so there was a good-sized family involved. When we'd get a holiday, my father would put us in the car—or, if not both of us, at least one of us, whoever wanted to go, and I always wanted to go—and he would take us on his calls to the various dealers. These were small little mom and pop stores, and most of them had their living quarters upstairs. If they didn't, at the very least they had some kind of an apartment or kitchen arrangement in the back of the store or the basement of the store.

If you went to South Philadelphia, it was Italian; if you went to North Philadelphia, it was Jewish. If you went to another neighborhood six blocks over, it was Polish; if you went to another one over here, it was Irish. My father carried a yarmulke in the glove compartment in his car because there were lots of Orthodox stores that he went to, and he never knew when he was going to be invited to go to a bar mitzvah or something else.

So I got to meet all of these interesting people and to see selling, not just first hand, communicating first hand, but under very difficult circumstances, because these were people who would order a couple of refrigerators, a couple of televisions, a couple of washing machines or something. Then they had to make a quota, and then they would sell against that quota. Then there were all these trips that they would get to go on. I got to see that when I was a kid. I not only enjoyed meeting all the people and moving around town, but I got to appreciate all of the different kinds and colors that existed in the city of Philadelphia. This was a delight to me because I had been taken out of the city and transferred to the suburbs where I saw only one flavor when I was growing up, by in large, because I went to parochial school.

BOHNING: Was your education in Upper Darby or in West Philadelphia?

ROLAND: My education was in Philadelphia. I went to grade school at St. Lawrence, which was a parochial school in Upper Darby, Highland Park, and Immaculate Heart nuns taught there. It was a typical neighborhood kind of thing; the school was built contiguous to the church and we paraded into the church for the stations of the cross on Fridays and for other religious ceremonies during the year. The parish house was located right across the street, and the public Page 3 school was right next door to the Catholic school, so the public school kids and the Catholic school kids yelled over the fence and played and fought and threw rocks and all that stuff.

The diocese of Philadelphia was the diocese that we belonged to, and there were no catholic parochial high schools until long after I left. In fact, one of the kids I went to school with became the first principal of the first parochial high school, Bonner [Monsignor Bonner High School], I believe it was, which used to be St. Vincent's orphanage out in Upper Darby. Dave Duffy, who was one of my neighbors and classmates and buddies, went out and ran that school.

We went into town to school. We went in town to West Philadelphia, and I went to West Catholic High School. There was transportation right from where I lived. There was a trolley line, a high-speed trolley line, Red Arrow. Red Arrow went to 69th Street, which was the main terminus; it was the end of Philadelphia and the beginning of Upper Darby township, and then from there you would take the El [elevated train] into town. Well, nobody did that. We went out and stood on the corner of West Chester Pike, which was the main access from further West down into 69th Street and down into town.

There were people who drove by every day on their way to business. We all stood out on the corner and hitch-hiked in to class. There was a last trolley that we knew we could get, and there was a last hop which we knew we could get. We knew who those people were and we knew the times. There was a pecking order of seniority, and no matter when you came to the corner, if you were a freshman, you were the bottom of the line. If you were a senior, you went to the top of the line, so you just hoped that none of the seniors showed up while you were waiting to get there, [laughter] because it was a very anxious thing.

I would say that I could count on one hand the number of times I either missed or was late for class in the four years I went to high school, and that was amazing. Later on there when we got into senior year, there were some kids who ended up getting cars or having access to their parents' cars and we'd ride in with them, but that was a very casual, very easy-going thing. Today, I don't think we would see that kind of thing happening.

BOHNING: But West Philly's changed too, since then.

ROLAND: Oh, enormously. Only three blocks over or four blocks over, I guess it was, from West Catholic was West Philadelphia High School, and there was enormous competition between those two. West Catholic was big time, big-time sports, big-time school; Christian brothers ran it. When we won a football game, we were at 49th and Chestnut, and we'd go out to 54th or 56th Street and let the band off and let the team off. We'd march down the damn street, close off Chestnut Street or Walnut Street. People would come out on their porches, and that's the way it was. Page 4 When we had a city high-school championship game—it was in Shieb Park at that time—we'd get ten, twelve thousand people to go out and see it; some of the big ones, thirty thousand people would show up for the football game, so it was a very exciting time. It was a big school, but a decent education. Decent education.

BOHNING: Were you involved with athletics?

ROLAND: Yes, I spent a good deal of my time rowing. I loved crew. My uncles were both oarsmen, and my oldest uncle Babe rowed for Penn AC. I rowed for Penn AC. He also rowed in the Great Eight of 1928, who were an eight who rowed around the world and beat everybody. They were world champions from everywhere. They rowed with Jack Kelly, with Charlie McIlhenny and people like that in Philadelphia. When I rowed, Jack [Kelly] Junior was a big star. He was older than I was. I spent a lot of time down in Boathouse Row, and that was a delight also. That was a good education. I played sporadically in basketball, football; I liked ice hockey as well, but I'd say crew was my favorite sport. I spent about six, seven, eight years rowing both in high school and in club rowing after that.

BOHNING: Philadelphia must be unusual in that there are so many high-school crew teams. You won't find that in too many other places.

ROLAND: There was a huge league, both public and Catholic league, and the competition city- wide was very keen and very spirited. [laughter] There were a few brawls, even back then. North Catholic High School, I think, was the largest Catholic high school in the country. They had three thousand or two thousand kids. It was enormous. Huge plants.

BOHNING: You said your academic preparation was good. Was it rigorous, as it might have been in a Catholic school at that time?

ROLAND: Yes, it was, and I liked school. I always liked reading, and studying didn't bother me. I always got good marks. It was just something that came relatively easy to me, and I always enjoyed it. I was always disciplined enough. My brother was the opposite. My brother was the musician and had no interests in scholastics and what have you. Of course, he was talented. He could play the piano, and he could write music. He could do all that, so that was a whole different thing.

My inclination was, when it was Friday afternoon and I got off school, I had the whole weekend ahead of me; I did my homework Friday afternoon and Friday night. I didn't have to worry about it from then on, no matter how tempted I was to do something else. I said, "I know Page 5 I won't do it Sunday night; I don't want to do it Sunday night. The likelihood of my even getting it half right is better if I do it Friday when I'm leaving school, rather than Sunday when I'm going to go back."

That was the kind of attitude I had about my life and responsibilities and school. I did well. My father was not a college graduate; my mother was not a college graduate either—my mother had gone to girls' school for a while—but they encouraged me. They always encouraged me. I did most of the academic stuff on my own or with the teachers I had.

I had good teachers, and West Catholic was a big boy's school, and we had dummies. I went to school with some boys, and by the time we got to our sophomore year, we found out they really couldn't read. We had those cases. We had cases of people who couldn't add, who got a bad grade-school education for one reason or another and faked their way through or were passed through, but if you didn't get an education from the Christian Brothers, it was your fault; it you didn't get an education from the nuns, it was your fault. It was there. All the help you ever needed was there, because that's all they did. That's their full time job.

If you went after class and said "Brother, I don't understand what this trigonometry thing is," or "I don't understand fractions"—I was always lousy in math; that was my weakest subject—they'd give you all the time in the world. They'd take you over to the house. They'd put you in a room. They'd give you assignments. They'd come back and mark you and work with you, so it was your fault, not theirs, if you didn't get educated.

When I got out of high school, I had a crew scholarship offered to me from Columbia, but I wanted to go to Villanova [University]. I had no great desire to go to New York or to leave town or leave the state; I just enjoyed some of the things there. I liked rowing with the club. I said, "What the hell. I don't need the scholarship; I can work my way through school, do some other things," so I decided to stay home, went to Villanova and enjoyed Villanova immensely. Good school, much smaller then. It was a college, not a university when I went there, and they didn't have a law school or a med school or a nursing school or any of those things. I enjoyed it immensely.

When I went there I took business. That was my inclination. The first two years of college were always what we called toleration courses anyway; we all got the same crap. It was only after our second year that we picked a major we were going to focus on. I picked economics and pre-law, and that's what I did.

I enjoyed college; it was relatively easy. For the last two years, it wasn't known by many people, but I spent a lot of time marking papers and assisting professors in classes on constitutional law and economics and some of the other courses. They had bigger classes then, and the teachers said, "I can't read all these papers and do this. I'll need some help," so the profs would pick somebody from the class whom they thought was good enough that they wouldn't blow the test themselves, but wouldn't tell anybody what they were doing. Page 6 I took all the guys' tests home. One guy got wise to me. [laughter] He was the guy who took turns driving back and forth with me, and it was towards the end. He was a nice fellow and he was very straightforward about it. He said, "You know, it's interesting. I notice that the only time you carry a big briefcase is after a test. How come?" [laughter] He said, "Are you marking these papers?" I said, "Even if I was, I wouldn't tell you. You know that." [laughter] He said, "That's interesting."

BOHNING: Let's just back up a moment to high school. Was there anyone who had any particular influence on you while you were in your high school career? You mentioned your uncles and the rowing and that particular interest.

ROLAND: Not really. No one jumps out at me. I just had a good time. The coaches, the people whom I rowed with and hung out with, the teachers at school—they were just all neat people. There were lots of characters and a lot of color and a lot of excitement, and it was just a good time to be alive, in my opinion, and a thrilling time because there were always new things. Some of the questions you ask about changes and the future—I just can't imagine having been born and living in a more exciting time than I had.

I characterize that by a fellow who worked with me, who has since passed on. He worked with me over at Paint and Coatings [National Paint and Coatings Association]. His name was Francis Scofield. Francis was a genius; he had photographic memory and was well educated, went to Lehigh [University] and some other places. Dr. Shorty Long, who was one of the great teachers and innovators in the chemical industry and the coatings industry—polymers and things—said that Francis would have been a millionaire if he hadn't been so damn lazy. Somebody had to get up and kick him in the ass every morning to get him started; that was true. He'd rather have a drink than work, but he was a brilliant guy.

Francis Scofield's father worked in the Department of Agriculture, and Francis recounted for me how when he was a small boy, his father took him across Memorial Bridge where Arlington Cemetery is now—which was called the Meadows—to watch a demonstration by the Wright Brothers of their new air plane. They had hoped that this would have some value to the government, and one of the big departments in government, the only big department of government then, was agriculture. They'd hoped to get some money from the department of agriculture to develop this for crop dusting. I don't know what the hell they had in mind.

Francis also saw the men land and walk on the moon. That man's lifetime—his living, functioning, sentient, totally aware lifetime—went from the Wright Brothers to the landing on the moon. Now think about that. The history of aviation was like a fifty-year period, sixty-year period.

I used to hear the statement that ninety percent of the scientists who have ever lived in the history of the world are alive today. That's not because of a lot of old scientists; it's because Page 7 the realm of science as we know it is a relatively short period. We stand on the shoulders of the Newtons and a lot of other people back here, but there's this tremendous leap frogging that has taken place in fifty, sixty years, and the impact of World War II and World War I one accelerating just the industry that we're in—those things always impress me and excite me, okay?

Now, back to the question. There were loads of people whom I knew—nuns, priests, Christian Brothers, buddies, parents of my friends. Our parents always took us with them. I mean, when we grew up in the Depression, my father would come home on a Saturday and say, "I'm not working today; we're going to clean up the garage," or we're going to do this, or we're going to do that. He was a great handyman, and when the hardware store went bankrupt, half the stock from the hardware store was stored in the basement of the house, so we had every tool known to man available.

When we were finished at noon time, my mother went out and went up to the little shopping area where we lived. There was a butcher shop, and there was a grocery store, and there was a drug store, and there were all these little specialty stores. There was a dry cleaners and a gas station, and there was a bar and everything.

Well, the biggest thing for me was when my father would say, "Well, no lunch here at home. We're going to go up to Busty's Cafe to get a hamburger." He'd have a beer and a hamburger, and I'd get a sip of the beer, and I'd have a hamburger in the bar, with all the neighborhood guys. It was not that it was so attractive to be drinking, but just to be there in a social center, watching all these larger-than-life characters and what went on.

I didn't find that as some people say, "That leads you down the road to hanging out in bars." I found it more of an experience of life as to how to deal with these things. My father always took me wherever he would go, wherever I wanted to go, so I understood these things; they were experiences and I enjoyed them. I will say, the first time I really sweated, was I going to be good enough and am I good enough, was in law school.

I went to the University of Pennsylvania. I got accepted on my own and graduated on my own and made the bar the first time out, and that was hard work. But again, I did well, did very well. I joined a law club and did the gouge on two or three subjects down there, which meant I wrote the notes that the club sold to other people to study for their exams. I learned some lessons from that, but that was the first experience where I would say I met a most unforgettable character, and that was Dean Jefferson B. Fordham, who was the dean of the law school back then.

Jeff Fordham came from Michigan University, and he also had been down in North Carolina. He was a Carolinian; he was a consummate Southern gentlemen, a handsome man, handsome fellow, bright as can be. To my way of thinking, he elevated the law school, the whole environment there, by his style and by his brilliance. He had worked in the SEC under the Truman Administration, and he knew Washington. Page 8 The most important thing that can happen to you while you're in your law school career is to be chosen to work on the law review. The top people from the first-year class compete for this honor with grades and other things, and at the end of my first year of law school I contracted hepatitis. I was quite ill and missed a month of school. When I got well, I went back and went in to see Dean Fordham. He said, "Bob, do you think you're going to be able to make it?" I said, "Yeah, I'm sure I can." He said, "You know, you've missed an awful lot." I said, "Well, to the degree I could, I studied and read and what have you."

I was just sick as a dog. I don't know if you've ever had it, but I couldn't stand to eat; I couldn't stand to smell; I couldn't stand to read. I just laid there for the better part of three weeks, four weeks, until I was able to get up. He said "Well, I'll tell you what." He said, "I'll let you take the exams and we'll see how that works out." He said, "If you think there's a problem, don't feel badly about it; we can always go back and start you over." I said, "Okay."

So, I took the exams and I passed everything, and I missed law review, just missed law review. That bothered me to no end, but there was nothing I could do about it. He called me into his office right after the exams were posted, and he said, "You did really well. I'm pleased, and you ought to be pleased with how well you did." I said, "Well, thank you. I appreciate the support you gave me and everything else." He said, "What are you going to do this summer?" I said, "Well, I'm going to get married this summer." He said, "Well, would you like to work for me?" I said, "Jeez, I'd love to." He said, "Okay. Here's how much I'll pay you, and you get a desk in the law library where the law review people sit."

So, to all the guys who were my best friends who were now law review, I was still a peer.

[END OF TAPE, SIDE 1]

ROLAND: Dean Fordham was chairman of something called the American Bar Association, Municipal Law Section. The Municipal Law Section dealt with, largely, funding and instruments for funding, bonds and other instruments that municipalities and states and what have you would issue to fund their activities.

To digress for one moment, he asked me to edit the Municipal Law Service Letter. He said, "This is a publication that goes out to the American Bar Association members who belong to this section, and we review cases and do this and do that." He said, "I want you to put all this together and publish this newsletter, and at the same time, I want you to do some research for me, because I'm writing a casebook on municipal law and I want you to help me with the editing and the work on that." Then he said, "I'm also going to do one on constitutional law, and I want you to help me with that if you possibly could." Then we did one on regulatory law as well, municipal law and regulatory law. Page 9 During the next two summers and during the year, I worked for him. He brought me to Washington and introduced me to the people in the legislative reference service, which at that time was in the Bureau of the Budget. We were working on a legislative book explaining how laws were made. We did reviews on constitutional law. He gave me a problem. He said, "Here is a case we have. I want you to research and see if you can get me any other case law to support this."

I worked one whole summer, practically, on that thing. Just riveting. I found nothing. When you find nothing in the case law in the United States, you look at comparative law, so I went on to look at England and the Continent, and I ended up with Australia. The Australian legislative legal system is similar to the United States. They also have a balance of power structure down there, and a supreme court, and eventually I found a case in the Supreme Court of Australia that I thought was on point for this. I was extremely pleased. I went in to see him at the end of the summer, and I was turning it over. "Now here's what I've done on this. You've gotten all my reports, and these are the chapters on that, and oh, by the way, on this particular problem here I have found a case." I said, "It's not in the United States." He says, "Oh. Is it that Australian case?" [laughter]

Well, to me, that was not a put down. To me, that just said this guy is so smart. He said, "Well, don't feel badly. I didn't know that that was all that was left, and now I'm pretty sure that it is. You've made it clear to me that that is it." I learned from that, you know, that there are different reasons why people do things, and research requires proof, and checking, and peer review and all that.

I will say that working with and working for Jeff Fordham, being allowed to accompany him to a lot of places—he tried to make me a Democrat; he couldn't do that, but he was a wonderful man. Despite the fact that his experiences were so far beyond where I was at that stage of my life, for him to treat me as a peer, to treat me as a colleague, which he did, was a huge step in my maturation.

So, when I look back on people who have impressed me or have helped me, I would say that that experience, personal experience, was enormous. The personal experiences with my father during the very difficult times of the Depression, that was important. I would say that. When I got out of law school, I was married; I'd had my first child, and in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, you have a preceptor. There was a law firm in Delaware County, in Upper Darby, that was my preceptor, and I did some work for them too, but by the time I got out of law school, the Korean War was well on, and I had this feeling. I had been in the ROTC when I was in college; before I left college, I quit the ROTC. I quit because I said, "There's nothing going on here, and I want to go to law school, so I'm not going to worry about the draft. If I get drafted, okay, but nothing's happening." I got all the way through law school, but when I got out, I said, "You know, I just feel that I have an obligation, and I am concerned that people still get drafted." Even though I had a child and all of this, I enlisted. Page 10 I enlisted in the Navy. I said, "I want to get this behind me. That's just how I feel about it." I enlisted and was finally accepted, and I went off to boot camp. I went to boot camp at Newport, Rhode Island. When I got out of boot camp, they said, "Are you aware of the fact that you could be an officer very easily? It's just stupid to be an enlisted man. Just doesn't make any sense at all. You've got a law degree and you've got all this." I said, "Well, whatever you think," and they said, "Well, just keep on going through this officers' class then."

Well, I got out of Newport and I got a commission. I went in the Navy and spent three and a half years in the Navy, and interestingly enough—it's funny how things turn in your life— because I wore glasses, I could not get a line designator. Line officers are the ones who had the stars; the supply corps officers had oak leaves; the medical officers had a different kind of leaf. Even though I was an officer, I couldn't be a line officer, so I had to go to the supply corps. If you went to supply corps school and did well, then you would immediately be sent to sea. You'd get one year at sea, then you would be immediately transferred back to land. If you didn't do well, then you wouldn't get independent duty right away; you'd be sent to a base somewhere, and then you'd spend the rest of your three years at sea somewhere.

I went to Georgia and I went to supply corps school. I did well and was assigned to a destroyer, and I spent the better part of a year on the destroyer. We were headed for the Med for the Suez thing, and I came down with something. I had an ear infection and ended up with motion sickness. Severe motion sickness. The doctor on the ship, Dr. Marvous Marsteller, said, "You can't go to the Med. You've been on this ship now for the better part of a year. Every time you go out, you get sick as a bitch." I said, "You know, as a kid I was on boats all the time." He said, "It makes no difference. It's relative movement." He said, "Do you get car sick?" I said, "No. I've never been sick in a car in my life." He said, "It's relative. You don't see any movement. You've got a problem here."

So, the ship went to the Suez, and I went to the Charleston, South Carolina, Naval Hospital. They gave me all these tests. I got out of the hospital. The captain said, "You're never going to sea again. That's all there is to it, so maybe we ought to kick you out of the Navy." I said, "That's fine. Do whatever you want to do. I don't care." He said, "Well, we're not going to kick you out of the Navy. That's stupid."

The captain at the hospital made this decision. He said, "I can either throw you out or not. What do you want to do?" I said, "It's totally up to you." I said, "I signed up for three and a half years, or four years or whatever I'm in for; I'll stay in if that's what you want me to do, or you can send me home. I don't care." He said, "Well, we'll keep you in." I said, "Fine."

This was a huge Navy base, so they went over to the Navy depot there. He said, "We have this Ensign"—I was just about to make JG [lieutenant junior grade]—"down here, and we'd like to send him over there." The guy said, "I need another goddamn ensign like I need a hole in the head. We don't need him." Page 11 So, he looked at my file again, and he said, "You're a lawyer." I said, "That's right." He said, "Are you admitted to the bar?" I said, "Yes, I'm admitted to the bar," so he called the district naval officer. Because it was a naval command, they had a district naval officer. He called the captain over there and said, "I've got this ensign lawyer." The captain said, "Send him over."

I had temporary duty there for forty-five days, and during forty-five days I think I did forty-two court martials, as a defense counsel—which was the crappy end of the deal, as you can tell—including a death penalty case, which was very interesting.

Coincidences of life. Because of that independent duty and because of the decision that the captain made, when that temporary duty was over they sent me back to Philadelphia, to the Naval Air Command GSSO/ASO up on Robbins Avenue in North Philadelphia—big base up there, a supply base. The captain, Bob Northwood, had just gotten that command when I showed up. Nifty guy, subsequently became vice president of Meade Paper. First-rate guy. He said, "I don't have a billet in this command under lieutenant commander available at this time, but I look at your experience and your maturity, and I think you can handle this job." He said, "You will be in charge of all contract administration," which is the procurement for all of the hardware and equipment in all of the Navy ships, including the nuclear subs, everything.

I was an ensign at that time; about two weeks later I became a JG, so I was a lieutenant JG and kept that for the rest of my tour of duty. That's where I was, out of the Navy.

The experience in law school with Jeff Fordham in the municipal law legislative regulatory stuff gave me instruction that was so valuable to my job down here in Washington when I finally ended up here as a lobbyist, as an association manager, an industry manager. Look at the fortuity of this. The municipal law service letter, and the bond work I did for Dean Fordham could have put me on a path where I could have ended up like Bill Simon. Bill Simon is a billionaire today. My career path went in a different direction, because I got out of the Navy. In all of the experience I had in purchasing and dealing with people in industry, one of the things I did was to restructure the procurement system for paint. The Navy buys a lot of paint. The Navy was single service procurement for all paint, for all of the services, and I ran that. I created that system, or reformed the system.

The guy who was the head of the Paint and Coatings Association, the National Paint, Varnish and Lacquer Association at that time, was interested in me. He was a general. His number two guy was a colonel. The colonel came to see me, and I worked with them. All of their members were interested in procurement at that time, because bid business was important to the Sherwin-Williams and the Gliddens and the DuPonts and a lot of those people. That kept them in overhead. There were lots of small companies in there that weren't too honest or ethical, and they were the problem.

This was all because of my Navy experience, because of my law school experience, because of the fortuity that when I got out, I said, "I'm not going back to practice law." I'd gone Page 12 around, and Jeff Frodham had sent me to some of the best firms in town. I had at that time three children and the fourth on the way, and seven thousand dollars a year was what they could make available to you to start.

Red Elliot, Colonel Red Elliot from National Paint, Varnish and Lacquer Association came up to see me and said "Bob, would you be interested in coming to Washington?" Like that, I said, "Yeah. I think I'd like that."

That's how I got to Washington. It's that simple. If I hadn't volunteered to go to the Navy, if I hadn't done a lot of other things—all of those experiences ended up one of the best things. People said, "Jeez, why did you ever enlist? You wasted four years." I learned more in those four years about management. I mean, I had hundreds of people I was responsible for, millions and millions of dollars. I closed down the nuclear submarine program at one time because I defaulted a contractor. I closed down the whole Pacific fleet when I wouldn't allow them to land or take off any airplanes because the foam, the fire-fighting foam that had been sent wasn't up to spec. I froze the whole system. I had Admiral Rickover call me on the phone and cut me a new one. "You can't do this." I said, "I'm sorry, Admiral. It's my responsibility," and Bob Northwood said, "You're right; he's wrong. I'll stand behind you." Jeff Fordham had said, "You're right, I'm now secure in my knowledge that you've researched this. I'll stand behind you. I'll publish it."

Those were things that to me, as a manager, I learned, so that when I manage three hundred people here, and the lawyers come in, and the scientists come in, and the lobbyists come in and say, "This is what we have to do; this is right," I say, "Good, I'll stand behind you." I never was afraid to do that, because the other thing I learned from my experiences, particularly law school, was that I knew how to think. I knew how to solve problems. I knew how to analyze problems, so I knew that the spade work, the research work, the vetting, the peer reviewing, the best talent had been applied. That's not risk. That just takes a little courage. It takes a little bit of leadership, a little bit of foresight. Without that you don't get anywhere.

So, that's what my educational background is.

BOHNING: Very interesting. I have a couple of brief questions, just to back up a little bit. No one in your family had college experience?

ROLAND: That's correct. My uncles had gone to college. My uncles and my aunts. My mother was the second oldest in the family, but she got married relatively early, and my father was a wealthy man. They had cars and speedboats and weekends at the Bellevue and all of that, so that was not a matter of concern until—pow—it cratered.

BOHNING: So was it your decision to enter college? Were you pushed?

Page 13 ROLAND: It was never a question in my mind. My father and my mother both encouraged me, of course, but there was never a question in my mind that I wouldn't go.

One of the things that I always did, as I said, was read. My best gifts at Christmas were always books. I always was fascinated and to this day am fascinated by people and their careers, their biographies, how they got there. I always admired the leaders of industry and the leaders of the world, and I'd say, "How did this happen?" You know, I've looked at this very carefully, and there's an enormous degree of fortuity involved in all of this, whether it be family money, or this path versus that path. I tell you, I often look. I see Bill Simon, whom I know and worked with when he was here in Washington in the Treasury and after that. Bill is a brilliant man who made fortunes by doing what he has done in the bond market.

As I look back, I say "Wow, I was so lucky that I took the path I did. I did very well financially, but that's irrelevant. I worked with the best people; the most creative, concerned, committed people. I mean there's not anther industry in the world, given my choice, that I would take, over the chemical industry. Not another. And the abuse that this industry takes, in spite of its good intentions and good works, has always been catalyst to me to fight harder and to justify and to try and convince people that they are overlooking one of the great values that exist in the world.

I look back and I see the practice of law. I enjoyed court work. I was great at moot court. I can obviously talk, obviously communicate; I've done it throughout my career here in Washington. My father used to say to me, "Do you miss the practice of law?" I'd say "Dad, I practice law every day. It's just a different kind of law." I'll tell you something. What I created in CMA [Chemical Manufacturers Association] is probably the best boutique law firm in this town. We have fifteen attorneys on staff here. We spend millions on our legal advocacy function, and I managed those people. I brought them here; I trained them; I worked with them. To me, that's a great benefit. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. I knew enough that I could manage them and not interfere. Not interfere.

BOHNING: Just out of curiosity. You handled an awful lot of court martial cases in the Navy in a short period of time.

ROLAND: Yeah.

BOHNING: Was that unusual?

Page 14 ROLAND: No. It was one of the characteristics that troubled me the most and a lesson that I learned in personnel as well. These were all desertion cases, or AWOL cases, and every one of them I lost. Every single one of them. I lost because it was obvious that these kids did not understand their responsibilities, and for that I blame the Navy.

It was a lesson to me. Number one, almost every one of these kids had a poor education. Number two, almost every one of them came from a broken family or had poor parental guidance. Number three, they joined the Navy because they thought they were going to get something better than where they were. If you stopped and looked at their backgrounds, their whole history of experience was, if they didn't like something, they walked away from it. Went to work at a Safeway? "Screw, I don't like that." Went to work at a gas station? "Well, my hands got dirty." Went to work for an automotive repair shop? "It's noisy in there; I don't like that." Went to work somewhere? "The guy promised me this and he didn't give it to me."

So, they looked at the Navy or the military, and they said, "Ah, three hots and a flop." They go down to a recruiter and they say, "I want to work with airplanes." The recruiter says, "Sure, you can work with airplanes in the Navy." Or, "I want to go to sea." "Sure, you can go to sea in the Navy." Or, "I want to do this." "Sure, we'll let you do that," and the next thing you know, the kid finds that instead of being on an aircraft carrier where he wants to be, he's swabbing out toilets in some land facility, or he's working in a motor pool, or he's working in a food function. He says, "I don't like this," so he walks. He goes off on liberty on the weekend and says, "I'm not going to go back." Just chucks the uniform.

Well, that's different. You've raised your hand. Do you see? That's what it was all about, and every case was the same. It was just like a cookie cutter, and every result was the same. They all got dishonorable discharges, and they all got brig time, and they all got kicked out. It was sad. It was truly sad. The most I could do, I did, and the ultimate of this was the death penalty case that I tried, which was a man under almost the same circumstances who, during the time of war, went AWOL. He met a girl, went home with her to her uncle's farm. To make a long story short, this was a guy without a lot of education, again. He fell in love with this girl and married her. They lived with the uncle. The uncle was not aware that he was military. He had five or six children and ended up running the farm, which was a dairy farm. Then he was apprehended. This is some twenty years later, almost. His children were there. He was a hardworking, fine person, you know, everything else.

When I first met this man, when the case was first given to me, I said, "Look, you guys have got to get outside counsel for this. I don't know how much longer I'll be here. I'm not qualified to handle something of this magnitude; this is going to be an appeal, and appeal, and appeal." I said, "You'd better find yourself an attorney." I found them a law firm in Charleston and got them outside counsel, and the uncle was paying the outside counsel. This guy was convicted. It was sad. It went on an appeal, and he did not get the death penalty; he did get a dishonorable discharge, and he did get a jail term out of this thing, which I found out subsequently. Page 15 When he was convicted, I sat there and there were several captains on the court—one of the captains was from the hospital that had treated me while I was over in the hospital in Charleston—and this guy had tears coming down his face. I went up and spoke to him and said, "This is just the extreme of what I have been looking at for the past two months. Every one of these kids who comes in here is just as sad a case in my opinion."

[END OF TAPE, SIDE 2]

ROLAND: What it said to me was about how you recruit people, the expectations that you give them, the training that you give them. My greatest success at CMA has been being able to find good people and creating an environment and having the latitude and the resources to create an environment within which those people can function technically. That's totally different than it ever was, and totally different from most organizations.

BOHNING: Well, I would like to talk a little bit more about your pre-CMA time, but maybe we should come back to that. Part of what we've been talking about in our other interviews is this whole idea of creativity and how you nurture that, how you foster people to be creative and innovative. What atmosphere is conducive to that, and what's restrictive? Maybe while we're in that mode, we should continue with that thought for a little bit. How do you encourage people to be innovative and creative?

ROLAND: I use the term environment. One of the conditions of my taking this job, fifteen years ago, was that this kind of a facility be constructed. Where we were was not conducive to doing the job that needed to be done. The greatest illustration of that was that the leadership of the industry did not meet in the building. The leadership of the industry always met in Washington, in a hotel. They would meet at the Madison Hotel; they would meet in the Mayflower; they would meet in some nice property. They never met at headquarters building, and for good reason. It was a dump. It was pitiful.

I was particularly mindful of this, and I want you to know that in my previous twenty- one years at National Paint and Coatings Association, I constructed the model for what I brought to MCA, [Manufacturing Chemists Association] now CMA. Much of what I did do here, I had tested there and started there and constructed to a large degree there. It was the chemical company supplier members of NPCA who knew Bob Roland and knew that MCA needed to be reformed, who brought me here—DuPont, Dow, Monsanto, Carbide—those people knew; they were all members over at Paint Association, as suppliers. They were my board members. Dick Heckert was on my board. A lot of those people were on my board over there, so they could see that things that were being done at little old Paint and Coatings were the kinds of things that ought to be done for the big chemical industries, but weren't being done. Page 16 Back to the question. When they hired me, I insisted that I be interviewed over there, because it was a beautiful old mansion. You've never seen it, but it was very historic. It was the Bell-Morton Mansion. It was the Vice President's home. It is a magnificent edifice, and people would say, "Boy, you did pretty good. This is a heck of a lot better than my office back at the factory." I said, "Precisely, because we're not selling paint, we're selling beauty. We're not selling raw materials; we're selling finished goods. Now look, this building should reflect what the coatings industry, the decorative products industry, is all about. The fact that we are able to do that is an advantage."

The other thing was, I started there on the concept of involvement, member involvement. That was a very popular feeling as association management became more of a profession, not just a skill. This was back in the 1960s, primarily. The concept of the hired gun became very popular; they hired some smart guy to represent an industry. In the old the days, they hired generals and admirals and ex-congressmen and senators, because they knew it all, which was bull hockey. They didn't know it all. They knew parts of government. They knew how to access. Most of them were very bad managers, and most of their organizations weren't all that effective unless you were operating under war-time conditions for allocations and that kind of thing.

As we got into the sixties and the increase in government control, regulation, legislation, environmental/consumer activities and all of the big-government concepts coming from there, it was necessary that we have qualified people, very qualified people, in order to meet that kind of a challenge. The hired gun wasn't the answer. It would work for a while, and lots of people thought, "Okay, I'll speak for the industry; I'll be the czar; I'll be the commissioner."

The truth of the matter is, it works to a degree. If nobody is representing the industry, that's better than nothing, but what people really want is for the industry to manifest itself. Congressmen and senators and presidents and what have you don't want to talk to a hired administrator. They want to talk to a CEO of a company. Conversely, if I am going to effectively represent an industry, I must know what that industry believes and what they think.

Now, when I was first hired, I wrote down—I'm sorry I didn't bring it with me, because I have it—on a yellow legal pad, some fifteen items. I went to my first executive committee and I read those fifteen items. One of those fifteen items was to change the name from MCA to CMA. People said, "Well, why?" It was not an easy thing to do, I will tell you. It's the closest to a public hanging that these people had been in a long time. I said, "All right. You are Senator [Edward] Kennedy, and you are now going to regulate the chemical industry, or you're concerned about something in the chemical industry. Now, you don't know squat about the chemical industry. You don't know squat about anything, so you go to your staff guy and say, 'We're going to have hearings on this chemical regulation bill, and what I want you to do is get me some chemical people in here.' This staff guy, who was a political science major from Harvard, doesn't know anything either, so what's he going to do? He has to find some place to go if he doesn't know who all the companies are—oh sure, DuPont, Dow, but who else and what else and how do we organize it and what have you? They want to talk to the chemical industry, Page 17 and they look in the phone book. If you looked in the phone book for something in the chemical industry, would you look under M or would you look under C? I would look under C. "

Okay, so now the second thing is manufacturing chemists. They have a logo with this beaker and things, and people holding stuff up to the light, and brown bottles—doesn't that give you the image of somebody working in a remote back-room laboratory, some mystique kind of thing? Not what the products of the industry really are. I said, "Chemical Manufacturers Association, what does that say? It says we represent chemical manufacturers, and that's what we ought to be." I said, "It's that simple to me."

Now, the reason why they came looking for somebody was because they had been badly beaten on the Toxic Substances Control Act, TOSCA. They got badly beaten. They got badly beaten because one, they weren't organized. They really didn't know advocacy. Two, they were not organized personally and professionally; and three, they had no organization to go out and represent them and build staff support for these people. They fought all the time and they did what they normally do. They said "Well, okay, Dow believes this and DuPont believes that and Carbide believes this and somebody else, Shell, believes that. Charlie, you're the CEO of this company. You're going to be the chairman of this committee. You're going to organize our TOSCA thing. Right away, the other five guys are saying, "That s.o.b., he's never going to represent me. He's never going to do it right," de dah, de dah, de dah.

This was the climate; this was part of the environment that I talk about. Well, they had a bad professional environment. They had a bad membership environment. They had a bad everything environment. Nothing was working. Nobody had any goals or objectives, so one of the first things I said was, "We're going to change the name. We're going to get a flag that we can all march behind, and a flag that says to all those guys out there who are looking for us, Here we are. Here we are. You want to talk chemicals? Come see us."

Now, the risk is, we've got our flag—what do we have under the flag? How are we going to deal with these people? What, idiots? Disorganized, everyone talking for themselves, doing what they want to do? We're going to have to find out how to organize ourselves under this flag. You're the big shots. You come to town. Your limos pick you up at the airport, drive you up to Connecticut Avenue, park outside this drug store, go through this building with a hot dog smell, up to the second floor, mind you—not the tenth floor, which is a government floor. No air conditioning. You open the windows, and there's a bus stop down there. All you hear is vroooom! Clouds of fuel. You wouldn't stop there for ten minutes, so you go meet at the Madison Hotel. I said, "Well, from now on, we're going to meet up here. I'll tell you something. We're moving. We need a headquarters building which reflects this industry and is a place where peer professionals can come to meet."

The day I was interviewed in my office, my very elegant office at National Paint and Coatings Assocation, by John Henske on behalf of the board of directors, I insisted that it be at that place. I said "John, look around. What do you see?" He said, "This is very nice." I said, "Exactly. Why don't you meet in your own headquarters building?" He said, "It's not so nice." I Page 18 said, "How do you think your employees feel about it? "Well, they don't like to go there." "How do you think the staff feels about it? I said, "I can tell you that. They hate it."

It was a perimeter of rooms around a parking lot. It was a building that had a parking lot up through the middle of the building, so all the offices were on an outside perimeter, and all the corridor doors were locked, because when you got out of the parking lot you could walk into any of the offices, and there were strangers there. There was no way you could go from one office to the other around the perimeter, other than going into this inner corridor and rushing like hell around there. Nobody knew anybody, and there were no meeting facilities.

I asked John a very important question. I said, "John, what do you think the relationship between your staff and the staff of the association should be?" Without a hesitation, he said, "Peer professional." I said, at that moment, "You've hired me; you've hired me."

So, how do you foster creativity and innovation? Number one, you create a physical environment within which people can operate, where they can meet. First thing I did when I started, I got the industry behind this. I can talk more about that. We leased this whole building, subleased the upper part. We took this, and I constructed fifteen conference rooms, furnished them as nicely as we could. All the offices waited. We did the conference rooms first, because what we wanted to do was create a place where that peer professional relationship could happen. The guys could go from their offices to here and have a coke, coffee, lunch served in the building. They pay for it, but it's convenient for them. If they need a telephone, it's here. They need a tape, it's here. They need a fax machine, something else, it's here. It's all state of the art.

After a couple of years, we got into this building. Until then, I never unpacked my boxes. My boxes stood against the wall in my office on Connecticut Avenue, and every time a member came in or every time a staff member came in, he or she said, "Aren't you going to unpack?" I said, "Not here. I don't work here. I'll work somewhere else, but I won't work here. This is not where we're permanently going to be." All right, so we got that.

The second thing was, how do you organize the people, the people on the staff? I went into a staff meeting. I said, "We're going to have a staff meeting every Monday morning. The vice presidents will all be here. This is the way it is." I won't bore you with how many people I fired and how rapidly I did it. I did everything that was allowed under the law, but I got rid of a lot of dead wood, people who were sent to the association from member companies because they didn't know what to do with them, and they weren't doing their jobs. I went out and started hiring young, smart, aggressive people.

I went to the first staff meeting with the vice presidents, and we were talking about it and commenting on Superfund, and the staff was arguing about something. I said, "Wait a minute. Wait a minute. What's the association's position on this?" They didn't know. I said, "What's the staff's position on this?" They didn't know. I said, "Fine. I'm leaving the meeting. When you guys decide what you think the position of this industry and this association should be, you come back and call me, and then I'll listen to you and we'll see where we go from there." Page 19 That literally happened. Literally. They were so disorganized, they didn't know what they wanted, much less what the members wanted.

At this time one of the major problems we had was Love Canal. Love Canal was Hooker Chemical Company. Hooker Chemical was persona non grata within MCA at that time. I don't remember the fellow's name, Jack something or other, who had been on the executive committee. He came down and visited with me and told me the story of Love Canal, showed me some of the papers. I said, "This is amazing." Clearly the case has been proven that the city was at fault. The school district, by going in there and breaking the cap—they had all the authority and all the legality behind them to put that dump there, and everbody knew it. These guys went in there and sold it to developers, broke the cap, and that's what caused the problem. The dumping of that sludge and stuff in there was legal at that time under the law of the State of New York and the county and city of Buffalo, so this was all bull hockey.

Now, I was convinced as a lawyer and as a businessman that this was wrong. I carried that fight to The Wall Street Journal, which was the first newspaper to ever come out and say the industry was right, the damn city and the school board were wrong. I took those papers up and sat down and showed it to them.

I went to the executive committee, and I created an agenda one day at one of our meetings to discuss this. The chairman of the executive committee said to me, "Why are you doing this?" I said, "It's very simple. There but for the grace of God goes every one of you guys around this table." I said, "You just don't know. You can turn your back on Hooker, but you can't turn your back on this problem, and that's what you're doing. You're setting yourselves up for a great fall." I had him come in. When the meeting was over, he left, and the executive committee sat around and talked and I told them exactly that. I said, "Gentlemen, there but for the grace of God goes each and every one of you and your companies. This is not how this organization should function. This is not how this industry should function." I said, "We must support one another. We must decide policy. We must do the right thing, and we must do it as quickly and as potently as we possibly can."

The next thing was, "Your responsibility is to run this industry and control it. It's not my job. I manage the association for you. If John Henske's philosophical belief, and mine, of peer professionalism is to happen, I need your best people working with my best people, and I need it in an environment where they can be creatively comfortable. I need it with the understanding that you will support us. You will support us not just financially, but philosophically, personally, by making policy, by doing the things that need to be done to carry this instrument forward. I need your commitment."

They were ready for that. In the synergism, the fortuity, I was there. I believed that I had tested it. They were there; they understood it; they believed it. Now, it didn't happen over night.

How much of this is all public record?

Page 20 BOHNING: You control who has access to it. There are release forms which you can control, so it's up to you. You have the ultimate control over what we have.

ROLAND: Well, I will tell you very quickly. You see, one of the most unique things in CMA is called the Greenbrier procedure. Are you familiar with that?

BOHNING: I've heard of that.

ROLAND: Okay. The Greenbrier procedure came about in this fashion, and what it is is a statement in our yearbook that is printed. It says that if you, as a company or as a member, disagree with the position of CMA, you can publicly express yourself by writing to the president of the association, and the president of the association will arrange for you to bring your position before the board or executive committee of the association, at which time your position will be debated. If you carry the day, fine. If you don't carry the day, then you cannot publicly say to the rest of the world, "I am CMA, and I disagree with them," and blah, blah, blah. If you start that divisiveness within the organization, you're going to destroy it. We only have a couple hundred members, so you can't afford to go down that path.

The worst part of it, though, is what it does to our adversaries, what it does to our advocacy program. It fragments us in the eyes of the public, and once they divide us, they conquer us. What you could do is say, "I'm still a member of CMA. I still believe in CMA; I support CMA. I part company with them on this issue. My belief on this issue is as follows." The association's position will be stated by CMA. Okay? You do not go out and badmouth the association, because the next time, it may be you who's in the majority and someone else who is in the majority, so let's hold this together.

That came about because a member company went to Capitol Hill, and one of their staff people started to cut a deal, and it created this kind of bifurcation and caused serious problems for our advocacy. When I found out this was going on, I found out which company it was, and I called the chairman of this company. I said, "Your employee can no longer represent this association. He will no longer be on our committees; he is no longer welcome in this building. I want you to know that's how strongly I feel about this, and I want you to know that you must do something about it. Otherwise, you're going to be persona non grata in the board of directors and the executive committee because of this man's conduct."

That CEO removed that employee from that function, came to Washington, visited with all of my staff and apologized to them publicly for what his employee did. It was just at that time that we were having a board meeting and an executive committee meeting in the Greenbrier. Barc [H. Barclay] Morley was the chairman of the executive committee, and I told Page 21 him. I said, "Barc, I've got my resignation in my pocket. I will not tolerate this. If I go, I will take the rest of my staff with me. They won't tolerate it. You don't send us out on a limb and then saw it off. We're not hired guns. Remember what we are? Remember how we run an association?"

We had a closed meeting, and I ran a seminar for two and a half hours, with the executive committee, on how you run an association and what are the responsibilities of the policy-making members, the guys who are the shareholders of the association. We wrote that down, and that was what became the Greenbrier procedure. I don't know of another association which has one. The Chamber [U.S. Chamber of Commerce] tried to put something like that in. Others have looked at it. The man who's company this was was John Henske—a very courageous man. The man I owed my job to!

BOHNING: Hmm.

ROLAND: Isn't that interesting?

BOHNING: Yes.

ROLAND: John was so mortified and so angry. I used to call John the Protestant Pope, because he was so circumspect; he was so ethical; he was so concerned about always doing the right thing. He just went out of his way to make sure it was done correctly, and it was so unfortunate that it would be John and Olin—who had hired me and been so instrumental in the creation of what CMA would claim to be and is—that it should be one of his people.

That incident was part of the tempering of this concept. That and other incidents, again involving John Henske. When John was outgoing and part of the selection committee for part of the next series of officers, you know as well as I that there was some serious managerial conflict and corporate career conflict between John Henske and Paul Oreffice. John was at Dow while Paul was there. They were peers; they were arguing and fighting for the same job. Paul won and John left and went to Olin. That's how he got there.

The right guy to succeed John at CMA was Paul Oreffice. We needed a big company guy with huge stature, and Paul was busy as heck reforming Dow and taking them worldwide and everything else. Henske was chairing this meeting, and I said, "The candidate we ought to look at and consider is Paul Oreffice. The sooner the better." John said, "He'll never accept it." I said, "That's irrelevant. The important question is, do we ask him? If he does accept it, then how much further ahead are we? If he doesn't accept it, we haven't hurt him. We have flattered him." He said, "Who's going to call him?" I said, "You are." I said, "John, you know you're the Page 22 only person who can do that, and that's a job you should do." Well, he did it. Paul said, "I'll call you back tomorrow and let you know."

That afternoon or evening, Paul called me and said, "Well, I want to do this. I want to do it because I support and believe in what you're trying to do in CMA." He said, "You know I'm busy and I don't have time for this." I said, "Paul, I know that," and I told him the story of J. P. Morgan walking the fellow across the floor of the stock exchange. A fellow wanted to borrow money, and J.P. said, "I can't lend you money. I don't do that, but I can assist you in some way." He said, "Meet me at the stock exchange." He met him and walked him across the floor of the exchange and out the other door, and he said, "There. Now I've done as much for you as I possibly can." Having been seen with J. P. Morgan, the guy got all the money he ever wanted. Paul knew this. I knew this.

I said, "This is what I need you to do. Put your arm around me and around CMA, and legitimize what we're doing in the eyes of the most important members of the chemical industry right now. Because from this day on, no CEO or major chemical company can say, 'I can't do this. I don't have the time. I can't afford it.' Because I can always say, 'well, if Paul Oreffice could, why the hell can't you?'"

Paul and I worked out a deal.

[END OF TAPE, SIDE 3]

ROLAND: All of those things lead to the creation of the environment which is based on the points that I made to you, and that's what CMA is all about. That's what it's all about.

BOHNING: How would you characterize the industry at the time you took over in 1978? The reputation the industry had at the time of Silent Spring (1) and a little bit earlier was simply one of just stonewalling.

ROLAND: Yes, no question.

BOHNING: They tried to shoot Rachel Carson down because they questioned all kinds of things.

ROLAND: They made her a heroine just like General Motors made Ralph Nader a hero. Same deal, no question. They also were in that stage of industry where people believed that bullshit beat brains; just do another study or send some more smoke out or do this. That's not it. We've Page 23 beaten people here. We've won every major battle we've gone into with brains, because we had better data; we had better people; we trained. For the first two years the only person who was ever on TV or radio or anything was me. I told the executive committee and the board, "This is over. I'm doing this to show you that it can be done. I'm doing this to carry your water for you. It's not my job. It's your job, and you're going to be trained to do it."

We created a training program, and today people come up to me constantly and say, "How do you get such good guys to go down and testify?" I say, "We train them." We have a "murderboard," all this equipment. We videotape them. We put them before a panel. We ask them the questions. We punch a button. We show them how a question was answered in the hearing yesterday or last year when they had it, all the people who testified, who's going to be there, and the kinds of questions they'll ask. When they come out of here it's like, "Jesus, I've already done it." Once they do it once, and they walk away having been prepared, having been a CEO and accomplished something, they say, "This is easy. I like this. I like this."

That's why we ended up with guys like [Louis] Fernandez and Bob [Robert] Forney, [W.] H. Clark, and Gene [Eugene] McBrayer, and God, I could go on, every one of these CEOs. Frank Popoff. These guys were brilliant. We'd put them in the chairs, and God, they'd just knock them dead. Then we'd take them on media tours. They were just wonderful.

No, 1978, head in the sand. Two things. Remember the Hooker story? Not only do I not want to tell the public—it's none of their goddamn business anyway. All I'm here to do is make money for the company and do good things. I don't necessarily need to tell you either, my peer in industry.

What I had to show these guys we developed by simple things. They went out of town for board meetings, and that's fine; I believe in that. I said, "Now we're going to take wives." "What?" I said, "Yeah, we're going to take wives. We're going to have a dance, and we're not going to wear tuxedos. We're going to play golf, and we're going to do some other stuff. You know Charlie, and Charlie knows Harry and Frank, because you're incestuous. You all buy and sell to one other. You contract with one another. You drink with one another, shoot and play golf with one another, but do you really know one another? Are you friends? Because you're going to have to be friends in order to link arms and stand up to your adversaries. You're going to have to be friends to sit around a table and take a deep gulp and say, 'That's not in the best interest of my company, but yes, it's in the best interest of the industry, and therefore we should do it.'"

We created a homogeneity, a social contact as well as a professional contact. When people leave the chairs, when people leave the industry, they say, "I can't tell you how I miss CMA more than anything else."

BOHNING: Interesting.

Page 24 ROLAND: See? We created CMA as the focal point for the industry's policy, the focal point for the industry's advocacy, and the focal point for the industry's professionalism. When Frank Popoff comes to the United States from Europe and is put in the chairs of Dow, I've got Dow staff people in here saying, "Okay. How soon can we get him in a CMA chair?" Because he's not going to get an SCI medal until he gets the CMA chairmanship. He's not going to get this until he gets the CMA chairmanship. He's not going to get that until he gets on the board of the finance committee. How do we get this thing organized to give this to these people? He's not going to be invited to these social functions; he's not going to get invited to these professional and political functions. How do we organize that?

CMA is important, and that's what you have to have, and we had cases. George [J.] Sella [Jr.]. Now, George was chairman of American Cyanamid, had been through our chairs; a tough guy, wonderful, delightful guy as far as I'm concerned. Different than anything. George said, "I can't take the chairmanship, because I'm really going into the pharmaceutical business much bigger than I am in the chemical business, and I've got to spend some more time over there."

I said, "Wait a minute. You've spent six years going through the chairs. You're not going to do this." "I just really can't do anything." Okay. I got off the phone; I called Paul Oreffice. I said, "Paul, George's balking." He said, "He can't do it." I called up Ed [Edwin C.] Holmer from Exxon. I said, "Ed, George can't do it." Who else did I call? I called one other major customer. Major Customer! [laughter]

Next day, when Sella called me, the first words out of his mouth were, "You son of a bitch, you." "Hi, George. What's wrong?" "You sicced them on me, didn't you?" I said, "Of course I did, and you know it's right. You'll be glad. You'll be a hero. I am here to make you a hero. That's what it's all about." "Well, goddamn it, I'll do it;" you know, blah blah blah. It was a Superfund year, tough decisions. Boy, we had lots of problems, and George made one of those major decisions that was not in the best interests of his company but in the best interest of the industry. We won the battle, and it worked out well for him, and for the industry. His next phone call was, "Well, you did it." I said, "What?" "You made me a hero." I said, "I told you I would."

That's all I am here for—to create an environment that says to the member, "You can accomplish things here; you'll be a hero;" that says to the staff, "You will get credit for the stuff you will do, and you will be supported. Work hard, and I will give you all the resources you need that I possibly can." We fight like hell. Money is not easy to come by, and we've grown from four million to today one hundred and some million. People are bringing more and more things here because stuff gets done.

It is an environment within which I don't have to hire. I have no trouble getting people. People from the government, people from the Hill, people from other associations—they stand Page 25 in line to get here. This is where they want to work. That's what I've always believed, and that's why I've always worked like that.

BOHNING: You didn't have an easy road when you started.

ROLAND: No, it wasn't easy.

BOHNING: Could you tell me something about your first meeting, your multi-media presentation to the assembly? [laughter]

ROLAND: Well, that was an eye opener. It was intended to be flamboyant, and indeed it was. I mean, I wore a very light summer suit. I sat on a stool, and there was a floodlight that came down. We had six screens, and images that were moving. It was rear-screen projection, and there was music and dynamism. Some of the times we had tapes in there; some of the times I spoke. These guys sat in the audience and said, "Jesus, MCA this isn't."

I'd done this before. The presentation that I did similar to this for the paint industry went over so well that we took it to high school students around the area and showed it in student assemblies—about industry, and the chemical industry in particular, how advocacy is done and things like that. This was the first annual meeting that I was responsible for. I was hired literally in June, and I was flown to the Greenbrier to see a couple of people and flown back to Washington.

John Henske invited me to an August meeting where they were going to review the budget. I sat there with my predecessor on the other side of John, and the committee chairman came in, and they had had no money for the budget. They hadn't funded any of the programs that the committee chairman had asked for. When it was over, John turned to me and said, "You can see the problem, can't you?" I said, "I certainly can."

Well, I was then officially on board in August, I think. We started having meetings, and aside from this Hooker event, one of the things I just consumed them with in the first series of meetings was, I had all the committee chairmen come in with all the staff vice presidents. I said, "You will all sit down and prioritize your programs. I want to know. When we put this budget together, none of it had been funded or very little of it had been funded. The budget has been approved. I don't know what I can do for you this year, but we will do something, and next year we will do more and more and more."

They worked like hell. The environmental management committee had a "Chowder and Marching Society." That's what it was called. They met in rump sessions. I said, "There will be no more of this. There's only one place that it's going to be done, [raps table] and that's here. Page 26 You don't like that, you're going to be fired. I can fire you." I did. I kicked committee chairmen out, called their CEO's and told them to get out. "Don't send him back again. The guy can't work in the process. Won't have it."

But they all turned. They all knew that something was going to happen, and they gave me an act of faith. I said, "I promise I'll support you if you support me."

Well, those meetings. I went into an executive committee meeting and I said, "Well, here are the priorities from one on, and today we're talking about the environmental area. Now, here is the budget.” The chairman came in, and the staff vice president came in, and the right people presented to the executive committee, saying, "Gentlemen, we've got to have this. We've got to do this." Then they'd leave, and I'd say, "Okay. Now you can sit here and contemplate your navels, but what the hell are you going to do? Which ones do you want them to do, and how many of them do you want them to do?" They got involved in the decision-making process. We went through a year or two of that.

The purpose of this presentation the following June was to put all of those issues on the stage, to show them the priority, to show them what can be done, to show them our intentions are to do it and to give them a face, because the membership, the rank and file, had never seen this. The only people I had dealt with were the board and the executive committee. I had not gone out to visit all the members. Never did. Never did. I got to meet all the members in time, of course, but I never made a list for Bob Roland to go visit.

I want to build this thing. This will sell itself. You can't sell from an empty wagon. "You've got a problem? Come down, I'll talk to you. If I'm in your neighborhood, I'll be in to see you, but I'm not going to get on a dog and pony show." This was the dog and pony show. These guys walk out of here and say, "Jesus, something's going to happen here." That's what they were supposed to say: "Something's going to happen here." The chairman got up and said, "As you can see, something is happening here."

Well, that served its purpose. My television appearances served their purpose, but by the time we got through the first couple of years, then we were here. Three years, third year, we were in here. The board and executive committee knew that the association was being run by their professionals working with the staff's professionals, and if the staff wasn't good enough, Bob would get somebody good enough. We'd better provide them with some more resources. By the way, these guys came up and we created; I'll tell you, Gary Herman did a marvelous job. I hired Gary before I was ever on board here. Before I went up to Connecticut Avenue, I hired him as our treasurer. I knew Gary worked with the forest products association and did a swell job there.

MCA had no budgeting system. This pocket was CMA or MCA, and this pocket was the treasurer, I guess, and there was no relationship between the budget and the committees, so we created a budgeting system which I think is the best. Our members stand in awe of it, so if they like it, you know it's got to be considerably better than most trade associations have ever seen. It Page 27 is a project-driven budget. On one side, we have the money, and on the other side, we have the programs. On this side, we have the people, and on this side we have the programs' objectives and goals. If they come down to the bottom of the page and say, "Jesus, this is more than we think we can afford," fine. Now they can go over to this side of the page, and this side of the page, and tell me which ones they want to change. The committee chairmen come into the finance committee and make their presentations. They look their bosses in the eye and say, "You've got to do this, and this is why you've got to do this." Their bosses look them in the eye and say, "I'm sorry. I can't do it."

That doesn't make me a son of a bitch; it doesn't make them frustrated. They understand, because one of these days they're going to be on this side of the table, and that's what this is. We created a farm system of people coming through the chairs from the committees up to the board of directors.

BOHNING: Do you think that this was also the time when the nature of the CEO was changing in the industry?

ROLAND: Oh, sure. I think more and more of them knew that they could run, but they couldn't hide. Their people were telling them. When we started bringing them in here for advocacy training, lots of them were doing that stuff at home. They were starting that at home, so they were taping things. Lots of their ad agencies were putting on these training sessions for them in television, and advocacy journalism, and ambush journalism. Some of them had been trained in that, and when they saw it happening here, they encouraged it here. They encouraged it at home. Make no mistake about it, the timing, the fortuity about what I wanted to do and what they knew they had to do—they just needed somebody to push them. They needed somebody to structure it for them. They needed somebody to say "Yes, we can do it," and show results. The timing was right. No question about it. No question about it.

BOHNING: You said that during those early years Superfund was, always had been, part of your life, but I suppose the bench-mark event was Bhopal.

ROLAND: Bhopal was indeed a bench-mark event in lots of respects. It was a bench-mark event, number one, because it took us to the next plateau that was really called proactive. Up until then, we had been doing good advocacy. Up until then, we had been doing good representation, good public relations. We were getting known. Bhopal took us beyond that to proactivity, and I'll say more about that. That's point number one.

Point number two was, Bhopal clearly put the spotlight on the global characteristic of the chemical industry, anywhere, any time, any place. We're everywhere. This is Union Carbide. Page 28 Couldn't happen here in the United States, but over there in India it happened, and it's a U.S. Company in India. Jesus, these chemical companies are everywhere. Ubiquitous.

Well, those two points. The international point is relatively easy to deal with, but it helped enormously something that I had been trying to do since I came here, and that was the creation of an international chemical industry organization. The chemical industry has been global for a long time. Most of this industry was purchased from overseas, and it was during the war that lots of our resources, organic chemistry, were developed here. After the war, it spread very rapidly and competed with the Germans, the French and the Italians and everybody else— primarily the Germans and the English.

The chemical industry in the United States has always been global. I mean, we have traded people in and out of the industry very easily. We not just went into partnerships and economic relationships, but we bought, purchased, established, and built overseas. We had a presence around the world, much more so than other companies and other industries. We also were very successful. I think the people of the United States are the best marketers of the world—I don't care what anybody says—and they believe it; and that's important. We made a lot of money selling overseas.

This association was not established to do advocacy on economics or on trade. Our member companies do that far better than we could, and they've been doing it a lot longer than we've ever been interested in it. Our job was advocacy to create a level playing field through the trade negotiations, the GATT and the NAFTA and things like that, buy America. That's what they looked to the association for, so we've been involved in the trade area for that.

As this impetus of regulatory activity came to the United States, it was not long after it happened in Europe as well. This was pushed by the environmental movement and by the consumers movement and pushed by the “greens.” I remember that the first month that I was in my office on Connecticut Avenue, representatives of the German association and the German industry came to see us and said, "Tsk, tsk, tsk. It's so difficult for you, so poor you. People in Germany understand that the chemical industry and chemistry is a wonderful thing, and we have a special bond with the public and with the media and other people. We would never experience what you have over here." Three or four years later they were back in my office saying, "Tell us. How do we deal with this? How do you deal with this? What do you do?" That was indicative of a different kind of global interest of the chemical industry, and it said to me that we in CMA need to provide leadership here.

Again, it was a case of reaching out to the leadership of the industry, the CEO's of the companies. We created a mission. We went around. I had spent years introducing myself, going to their meetings overseas, inviting those people here, my peers in the association field. But then, I said, "Okay, Bob [Robert D.] Kennedy, and okay, Mr. CEO over here. The guys you're doing business with at Hoechst and Bayer and ICI, your counterparts over there—let's get together and start doing this." I had known my counterparts, and I felt this could be brought together, and eventually it was. That's another story, but it's an important story, I think. Witness Page 29 the fact I got the medal partially for that. I think it's a big story and an important story, but that was one aspect.

The big thing here at CMA was becoming proactive. You will recall there was a hiatus of about a year, I suppose, between Bhopal and Institute, West Virginia. A lot of people forget about Institute, which was also Union Carbide. They had a release of the same material at Institute. They said, "Oh, it can't happen here." Well, it did happen here, and it happened with the same company. What we did in Bhopal was for the first time become the command center for a major issue that affected the entire industry, an attack that was going to be severe. This was what we learned from Love Canal and Hooker at that first executive meeting, and now we had it happening here. The industry was under assault, and the response was so different.

These two rooms were opened up here, and we had every wall covered. We had every staff person and every committee person working under the leadership of Dr. Geraldine Cox, who was our technical vice president. We worked in this room, and every idea, every concern, every problem was structured. Every piece of intelligence was brought into this room. We organized a crisis center for this problem, for the industry. Gerry Cox was secunded to go to every television show, every radio show, every debate. We had industry people who were qualified to speak on this. We didn't turn down a single one. We went to every editorial board and every magazine. The officers of the association and myself—and I'm an officer—went to Connecticut and sat down with Warren Anderson and said, "What can we do for Union Carbide, and what do you think the industry should do for you, and for the problem."

We sat there and worked with it from the day they were aware of it. In that, we were successful. We were very successful. We legitimized the process that we had put in place. We legitimized the relationships we were developing. We proved to the industry that CMA was the advocate that we'd hoped it could be, that we would provide not just cover, but leadership.

Because we had Chemtrec and we had these other things, we said, "It's not enough that we know inside the fence line that we are good. The community doesn't believe us. They don't know, because we don't let them in. We ask them to make an act of faith in the company. Then there's a leak, and sometimes we tell them about it and sometimes we don't, so how are we going to change that?"

[END OF TAPE, SIDE 4]

ROLAND: I was having a meeting, and this came out of a total brainstorming thing with Ham Hurst from Nalco and Gerry Cox and a couple of other committee people who were meeting down in the executive conference room. I remember it well. I said, "We've got to do something here. I've got an idea." I coined the phrase CAER, Community Awareness Emergency Response. I said, "We're good at emergency response. We can put the lid on the pots, and we Page 30 can put the fires out, and we can have mutual assistance and all this stuff. It's this C-A part that we stink at—the Community Awareness."

So, we coined this phrase, and we started working on the CAER program, and the CAER program was exactly that. It had two parts to it. We had a committee that dealt with one and we had a committee that dealt with the other, and we developed a terrific program.

At the same time, our friends in Canada—same companies, by and large—in the Canadian Chemical Producers Association, Jean Belanger was my counter-part, and Jean and I were friends, meeting together all the time, going to Europe together. We got involved with this. They came down, and we gave them Chemtrec. They came down, and we gave them CAER, and we gave them all this other stuff. They sat down and started to play with it, and the problem that we had was a pragmatic one. It wasn't the Carbides and the Dows and the DuPonts or what have you that would have the difficulty, it was the smaller companies. When I said, "You've got to go out and deal with the community," they said, "Hmmm, we're not sure about this. We're not sure about this."

As we got a year or so into this and we started to audit, we found out—I remember Hal Sorgenti was very big on this, and so was Bob Kennedy. They had to be, because they were the chairs together, and we were having a planning meeting at the Greenbrier. I had started this, and we were now at the stage where I would get together with the officers, outgoing and incoming, with just myself. We'd sit together for a whole day, and we'd say, "Okay, you've seen the annual reports. You know what we're doing. Here's the budget; here's everything else. Where are we good? Where are we bad? Where are we screwing up? What do we need to do? What is your view of the future? What do you think is going to happen?" We would use that as just an anecdotal opportunity for the leadership of the business to get together and think about what we were going to do.

Two things came up all the time. How do we make sure that everybody contributes to the sweat equity of the association, the peer professionals? Because we keep tabs on everyone and we can see that Dow has two hundred and some people in here, all the time, and this company only has one person or none. How can we make them do their share of the sweat equity?

Two, how do we get everybody to follow and march to the same song of proactivity, corporate proactivity? How can we make them do it? Well, that's not something—this is not that kind of business. Our friends in Canada were playing with the CAER program, and they came to the same conclusion. They said, "Maybe we ought to package all of these good things together—not just community awareness or emergency response, but standards, programs that we have, other management training programs, other awareness programs." They came up with the term Responsible Care.

At this planning session, Kennedy said, "You know, my guy in Canada was telling me something about a program they're working on up there," so I got hold of Jean Belanger, and he Page 31 said, "Yeah. We're trying this thing. What we're thinking about is creating these management practice codes, these corporate practice codes, performance standards, if you will." I said, "Jesus, God. I thought there was a hanging when we wanted to change the name of the association. What'll happen here?"

We went back to the planning session with the officers, and they said, "That's what we need, but God, will we ever get it?" To make a long story short, that became Responsible Care, and Responsible Care we knew would only work if everybody was made to do it, and therefore it had to be a condition of membership. That's what it was. When it was voted in a membership meeting, one vote per company, every member of the association save one voted in favor of it. That company now supports Responsible Care, has signed on for it. The guy who came to the meeting was their new general counsel, who came from IBM. He said, "There's no way that I can." We had all kinds of legal opinions saying that this was fine and everything else. He said, "I just can't bring myself to believe that this is right, and therefore I'm not going to vote for it." I said, "Well, 199-to-1. We can go for that."

So, it was voted, and today we have Responsible Care throughout the industry, around the world. It is utilized to the fullest degree possible by our European counterparts, and I say fullest degree possible because they have different laws and different vernacular. Using the same terms doesn't always work overseas, as you know, but the International Counsel of Chemical Associations [ICCA] has endorsed Responsible Care; we are training people in Responsible Care. When we did the CAER program, Community Awareness Emergency Response, the United Nations picked that up through ICCA and called that APLL, Awareness and Preparedness at the Local Level. The chemical industry in the United States and Europe and Australia and Japan provides resource people and money to the United Nations Environmental Program, UNEP, to have seminars and training in thirty countries around the world on CAER.

Now we are looking to go beyond that. When I retired, the people in UNEP were wondering, is there a way that the industry and United Nations can go the next step into something like Responsible Care? Well, our feeling is that any industry growing in any emerging nation that wants to develop a chemical industry or chemical products industry or chemical technology can start from the beginning with this kind of thing, and ought to. Damn well, if they're going to use the resources of any developed country or company, they're going to have to, because the criteria for Responsible Care is that you will carry it with you to any country that you go to.

BOHNING: Do you having any policing mechanisms?

ROLAND: Yes.

BOHNING: That's not the right word, I suppose, but that's what I mean.

Page 32 ROLAND: There's an auditing system of sorts. We get reports from the company and we have a field staff. Our concept, though, is to assist, not discipline, so we go out to make sure the company can comply, and there are performance criteria that they have to meet at different stages. If they don't meet them, we send a team out to help them. If they don't know how to do it, then we get somebody from a company to come in and help them and show them how to do it. That's something that has been ongoing, and to get the real detail of that you should sit down with Dick Doyle and the people who are managing the program now.

We built a field staff from member companies. We've had them, some secunded here, and some of them we've hired here full time on staff. That field staff goes out to assist people in doing it. We have an advisory committee in Responsible Care of outside greens who have approved this program from beginning to end. They would still like some kind of an audit, an outside audit system. I would say we are a short step away from that. We have internal audits. We have company audits. We have the CMA staff work, but we do not have an independent audit agency yet. The people in Europe were looking at ISO-9000 and things like that as a relationship to this. How that's going to play out, I don't know, but it's going to happen. It's going to happen one of these days, I'm sure of it.

If you had asked me fifteen years ago, "Do you think that you would be able to have a requirement of membership that was predicated upon performance standards in areas of health, safety, environment and other things, transportation and all that," I would have said, "I'm not sure that I legally believe that it's possible, much less as a manager do I believe that people would do it in an industry at an association level," but somebody told me once, management is accomplishing things through people. I've been through this, and people ask me what's the definition and the function of a trade association. I've told our staff, "The definition of a trade association is, a vehicle for problem solving. That's it."

Nobody believed that we would be running insurance companies. I created and started and ran a very successful insurance company in Paint and Coatings for many years, an off-shore insurance company, and we became so competitive that we drove the domestic people back into the business, because they ignored it, and I said, "Well, screw you. I'll start my own off-shore." We had the first insurance company off-shore, where the underwriting was completely done outside of the industry.

BOHNING: Wasn't that a problem after Bhopal? Insurance companies started looking at cutting back?

ROLAND: Yes. They started playing around with that. Maybe enough people said, "You know, Bob Roland started an insurance company in the paint industry. Maybe he'll start one again." We started doing that. We had some special committees and task groups looking at it, Page 33 and it never really did materialize. Enough insurance companies saw that this was an opportunity as well as a problem, so they got back into it. There was some pooling that went on and some other things. It just never materialized. I looked at it for about a two-year period, and I finally said, "Look, I wouldn't put the money into doing this. I think that there are enough companies out there that can handle it." That's the way it turned out, and today you can see what's happening.

BOHNING: Philadelphia's Sun Oil Company had a refinery down in South Philly. Just this past year, it had a catalyst released through a faulty valve, and there was a big yellow cloud. In fact, I saw it out my office window many miles away from that. Immediately, one of the Sun representatives was in front of the media saying, "Well, this is non-toxic. There's nothing to worry about." Yet, it's obvious nobody wants to breathe this stuff, regardless of whether it's toxic or not.

I was struck by that because almost immediately the community activist groups hit on that statement right away. For a day or so there was a big flap in the media, because they really didn't handle the situation in a way that would put people at ease. In otherwords, if I worked for the general public, I would say, "He's not being honest."

ROLAND: Sun is not a member of the CMA; I want to make that clear to you. They were a member that got out because they felt that complying with Responsible Care under their new management was more difficult than they could accept, that they had a program that was equally good, so they dropped out of CMA. They're back in CMA now. I can tell you that; I'm fairly certain of that. They had a management difficulty.

I will tell you, to comment on that—and I'm not deprecating Sun; it's a fine company— but that's a typical mistake that people make. Whenever you get into a crisis situation, the first thing that you do is, number one, accept the responsibility and sympathize or empathize with the public. "Yes, we did wrong. We are very sorry we did wrong. We are going to do everything to correct this. If anybody is affected by this, we will do everything we can to assist them. Our people are out there now. The emergency people are there, and we've all been trained, and we're working with them. If there's anything the community needs, we stand ready to do that."

Second, "Oh, by the way. The material that was released was not a toxic substance, although it may be bothersome, and nauseous or something else. Even that degree of inconvenience should not be accommodated, and here's what we're doing to prevent that from happening." We had seminars all over the country. I can't remember the guy's name, but he was and is still one of the reigning experts in this area. We made this man a millionaire, this professor from Princeton. He put together videotapes for us and training sessions as part of the Responsible Care program, and we held these all over the country, local level, everywhere. He made the point, and rightfully so. He said, "You must understand that what the public is manifesting is a sense of outrage. Smoking is a decision they can make, to do or not to do. Page 34 Owning a handgun is a decision they can make, to have or to not have. Living under the yellow cloud is not a decision they can make. You did it to them, so they have a sense of rage about this being done to them, and the first thing you must do, if you want to communicate with them, is to ameliorate, to deal with that sense of rage that you would do that, you could do that to them."

So, it needs heavy "mea culpas," and I mean genuine "mea culpas." This isn't bullshit beating brains. You must be able to demonstrate to the community that indeed, you are sorry. You open the door and show them how you're going to prevent this from happening again, and explain to them carefully how this one happened, that you do know how it happened and why it happened, and now that you do know, it won't happen again.

That's a totally different system than what you called stonewalling, indeed. "Trust me." "No thank you, we won't." You see, when I said that this is the era of proactivity, you can see Page 35 the steps that I've taken you through, the steps of saying Community Awareness and Emergency Response. We're good in the E-R but we're not good in the C-A. Not everybody thinks they can comply with this kind of a public persona. Well, we'll train you to do it, and here's how you do it. Then, how do we get everybody to comply? We go to Responsible Care. Well, how do we make sure Responsible Care is being done? We have an auditing process and an assistance process. This has taken from 1989, I guess, or 1985; when was Bhopal?

BOHNING: In 1984.

ROLAND: Yes, and 1989 was ICCA, and Responsible Care was around 1985, I guess, so you're talking ten years. Ten years, which in the lifetime of the industry, in the lifetime of a sea-change in management techniques and attitudes and everything else, is a relatively short period of time in my opinion. The credit for that—yes, fortuity—that CMA was on the right track and the industry knew what had to be done, but the leadership of the industry gets the credit for it, the guys who made the hard decisions within their companies and said to their staffs, "We will do this;" who said to their shareholders, "We will do this;" who said to the public, "We will be responsible and do this." These were not easy decisions to make. Not easy.

BOHNING: Do you think that some of the impetus behind this was the media coverage that didn't exist years ago but now does. Today you're really operating in the public eye.

ROLAND: No question. There's no question. To this degree, you must say that's why freedom of the press and First Amendment rights are an inherent and critical part of this country's make up and success. It's like everything else, though; it's a matter of degree. I think there have been incredible abuses. One of the biggest abuses, the most frustrating situations to me, has always been the fact that half-assed scientists and technicians—more technicians than scientists—have been given enormous credibility speaking on behalf of environmental organizations, where very qualified scientific minds and voices working in industry companies or working in academe have been quiet. The reason why is they say, "Well, that's not my job," or, "If I stick my head up like a groundhog, the first one who gets up gets his head shot off, and that's not what I'm here for."

I think that in balance, the media now understand that they've been snookered by the Greenpeaces, and the NRDCs, and the EDFs, and the rest of those people, and spooked into doing things that were not sound science, not practical, not even truthful in many cases, some cases. The scientific community realizes that if they do not speak up, there will be no scientific community. It's the jobs that pay for their education and their research opportunities. It's the businesses who provide the jobs to the students who pay the tuition that give you the right. It's the grants. It's all of the other stuff. Page 36 If industry goes down the tubes, we all go down the tubes. There is no unaffected, innocent bystander in this. You're either a player or you're not, and that's always been an argument of mine. You're either a player or you're not. If you're going to be a player, be a good player, an honest player, so in that respect, the media has been a catalyst, the provocateur— whatever you may want to call them—to move industry into these areas, but that's human nature.

BOHNING: Couldn't keep the head in the sand any longer.

ROLAND: Oh, no. Let's face it. The transition, for the major companies, from where they were to Responsible Care is not that great. The biggest problem that they had in DuPont was that they had to change the name of what they were doing, and they did that. They incidentally did that. They now are Responsible Care, because prior to that they had all these programs— they had them but marketed them under their trademark to other industry companies. Now, they're still marketing their techniques and their methodology and everything else, but they'll say this meets the Responsible Care criteria, and that's a big step for a proud leadership company like DuPont.

Ed Woolard made that determination, and that's a tough choice throughout the company. I mean think about that. "Jesus, we're going to do something that CMA created?" No, the industry created it.

But yes, the media had an effect.

BOHNING: Well, that's part of bringing the industry together, as opposed to when you started in 1978. There was still this secrecy; there was this device.

ROLAND: It never could have happened back then.

BOHNING: Well, my favorite story is that Herbert Dow's first plant was in the little town of Nevarre, Ohio, on a site along the old Erie or Ohio Canal, one of the canals. He built a plant, and he built a big ten-foot high fence all around it. He refused to tell anybody in town what he was doing, and he had a small leak at one point, I think of chlorine. There was a German pharmacist in town who fancied he knew chemistry, and Dow refused to talk to him, and he created such a public furor that they ran him out of town. He went off; he left Navarre. That's where his first plant was. Today, Navarre is still a very sleepy little town, [laughter] could have had a lot more to worry about.

Page 37 ROLAND: These things happen. I guess my experience in life is that there are some people who are prescient; there are some people who are visionaries, but even those people have a way of reading the tea leaves or reading the signs and symbols. Somehow it falls together in their minds or their process of thinking differently from everyone else. They are creative; there is a creative skill or creative gene. People who have great intution, I wonder why they're always challenging, but the rest of us, by and large, are just trying to look over the next hill, trying to create certainty, and this is one of the big things about industry and industry organizations.

The hobgoblin of industry is uncertainty. You'll see, business will accept any degree, almost, of rule or regulation as long as everyone has to do it, and we know when we have to do it, and how we're going to have to do it. I've preached this to the guys. I said, "Don't come in here, pound the table, and say 'they can't do that to me,' because they can, and if they can, they probably will, and you will comply. You will find a way to comply, so don't give me this bullshit that 'I can't do it.' Either come up with a better way to do it, so that they don't do it to you this way, or let's figure out how we can do it, and let them get on with it. What difference does it make? They want to raise the price for you? Fine, let them raise the price for you. You can't do it, but they're going to force you to do it, and they're going to pay the price. When the consumer says, 'I'm not going to pay that,' you'll see those things taken out of the cars, or taken out of this or taken out of that. You've seen it happen, so don't say 'they can't do it.' They can do it."

Most of the time, what we're trying to do is create a level playing field economically, a degree of certainty that lets us build our businesses, plan our activity, and enough creativity that we are that much ahead. Other than that, if I went off and closed myself in a room and said, "I'm going to think about the most important thing for the chemical industry for the next decade," by the time I'd thought of it, they'd have fired me, probably. There'd be nothing out here. [laughter]

BOHNING: What about instinct? I'm amazed at how many people I've talked to who say that when it comes to decision-making time, one of the factors that plays a part is gut instinct.

ROLAND: That's true. Absolutely true. Gastronomic reaction, what we used to call the law of gastronomic jurisprudence. Instinct is like wisdom. It's an acquired talent, and it's acquired by many experiences over time. The reason I mention—and I think of it often—the business about the little dealers in the little neighborhoods with my father and his old Ford—that's all part of that learning process. That's all part of the instinct, and the more experiences you have, the more you learn. You put that together.

Aside from that, there is then a moral quotient involved in this thing too, a strong sense of what's right and what's wrong. Call it moral; call it equity; call it whatever you want to. I always feel that it's somewhere, and I've preached this around here too. We've got a number of people on our staff, I can think of four, a couple of lawyers, a couple of technical people, who have come to me and said, "Bob, I love working here, but I think we're on the wrong side of the Page 38 issue." I say, "Well, how do you mean that?" "Well, I would just be more comfortable if I was arguing on the other side." I say, "Well, I can appreciate that." We've worked with those people to get all of them located in the right place, given them recommendations. We've remained friends. One of them is in academia now, and over a period of time he has mellowed more towards our position then where he thought he had to go to begin with. But we have always told our staff around here that they must, at some time in this process—and the earlier on the better—come to the decision that it is right, that it is correct, what they are doing. If not, they ought not be doing it.

[END OF TAPE, SIDE 5]

ROLAND: I'll give you an Illustration of that. We created a communication technique here that I will not describe in detail, except to say that we could sandbag the legislators on the Hill and we could frame issues on TV programs, congressional district by congressional district, in a way that was absolutely foolproof. The only problem was, it involved a technique where we would send a camera crew up to the Hill to talk to a congressman. We would go to the congressman who was on the opposition side of our issue; we would also go to a congressman who was on our side, and another independent third person who was on our side. Then we would take those three interviews, put them together, and send them off to the congressional district of the guy who was on our side, so that the guy who was attacking him could not weaken his position at home. What we did was edit those things so that it would look like the opposing guy was wrong and all these other people were right, and he was the minority in this debate. We didn't deceive. This was no more, no less than "Sixty Minutes," or something like that.

The problem was, we were using an outside film agency to do this. We created the issues. We created the script. We did all that. They'd go in and they'd do it, and then the thing would appear, and it was awesome. I mean, we could just nail these bastards, big time. We did a couple of them, and it was kind of fortuitous that it came about. We didn't structure it this way. It came about because we didn't have the facilities here to do it. We started looking at this. We were having a managment meeting once, and we had both the tapes up, and we ran the tapes. We sat there and said, "This is just frightening. It's so good and it's so helpful to our side." Then somebody around the table said, "Would it pass the red-face test if they found out that this was CMA that was doing it?" In other words, is it right? Is it correct, what we're doing? We said, "Well, suppose we tell them that it's CMA that's doing it?" "Well then, you're not going to get the same kind of interviews that you're getting now."

We looked at it and said that it wouldn't pass the red-face test. It's not correct. We can get away with it, but we shouldn't do it. We stopped. We stopped it. We only did two.

That technique, the film company that was doing it with us, took the concept and went to another industry association, and they did it all the time, continued to do it until they became so disfavored. I won't tell you which industry it is, but it's not in the chemical industry. It is an Page 39 industry that is still the lowest-ranked industry in the United States and in the world. So yes, things have to be instinctive, but they have to be right!

BOHNING: CMA still has a very massive public relations campaign out there now.

ROLAND: It's not massive. It's very small considering the size of the industry, frankly.

BOHNING: I see it, but I guess I'm more sensitive to it. I'm aware of the ads and I see them.

ROLAND: Incidentally, all of those ads are tied to Responsible Care, and every one of them is reviewed by this advisory panel of environmentalists, teachers, ethicists, and all those kinds of people. There are no industry people on that panel. They're all scientists, teachers, activists, and they review every one of those things. It's interesting.

BOHNING: With this whole community activity business, I was struck by an article I found that said that Dow had actually gotten Mary Sinclair into the fold as it were, and of course she was, for years, a thorn in Dow's side. When you start bringing the opposition into your committee working along with you, it makes quite a difference.

ROLAND: It does. The guy who is responsible for that is now a director and senior official in the company who was one of the people in the Canadian Chemical Producers Association, president of that association at the time that they created Responsible Care. He was subsequently shipped out to the United States and became active in CMA, and his name is David Buzzelli.

BOHNING: Oh, I've met him.

ROLAND: That's David's corporate responsibility now, and he is the guy, and you can see the structure of the Dow organization and the movement in this area as a result of what Dave Buzzelli did. His career has been tied to the Responsible Care activities. Now, he was also a good business man. He ran Dow Canada, but that again goes back to my story about sitting at the Greenbrier, asking how can we make people tow the line, and some of the guys saying, "Our people in Canada are playing around with something, and Canada is us." Much to their chagrin, one of these days it will be even more so.

Page 40 BOHNING: Well, CMA was heavily involved in NAFTA.

ROLAND: Oh yes. The plain fact of the matter is, it was the leadership of the officers of CMA that lead to the creation of the International Council. It was my dream; it was something I worked on for more than ten years. The Germans were the ones who resisted it the most, because they felt that it would diminish their role of leadership in the European Chemical Industry Association, and they were the big dog over there, but they finally realized that they could not handle all of those issues by themselves, as a country or as the single largest trade association within the European community, so they found themselves coming over here and working with us and depending on us to show them how to solve some of their problems over there. The greens just started killing them in Germany, and they had to turn to Responsible Care-like programs in order to resist. Then they realized that maybe there is something to this, and it was going to happen all around the world, and that's what we're about. We have to look out for the interests of our industry all around the world, and the Germans are one of the biggest exporters of them all.

Finally, they said, "Okay, well, let's try this," and we got organized. It started with just a handful. There were the European Association, the U.S. Association, Canada, Australia, and Japan. Now we've got all kinds of people who want to get into it; India, for example, wants to get in. These things trouble me enormously. Mexico wants to get in. Brazil wants to get in. A lot of these people have chemical industries, and some rather substantial industries, so what we've done is through the good offices of Hugo Lever, head of the European Association, and our staff here and others, say that they're going to have to comply with Responsible Care to get in through the International Association. We created a training facility, a subgroup within the ICCA to deal with Responsible Care, and we're helping various countries move into Responsible Care by sharing with them our experiences and everything in the U.S. and Canada and what have you.

We have a criteria we've written that says that they can't get in until they meet these criteria. They must have at least this much of a program, at least this kind of activity going on. We are using the ICCA as the vehicle for propagating and training Responsible Care around the world, and these other industry organizations we will let come to ICCA meetings, but they only come as a Responsible Care communicant, not as a vote around the table of the big five. Until we see a movement of the same kind of ethic, the same kind of commitment, the same kind of evolution as we've gone through at our industries, we ain't gonna let them sit at the table and vote.

BOHNING: You spent twenty years with your previous association.

ROLAND: Yes.

Page 41 BOHNING: It seems like a long time to be in one spotlight.

ROLAND: I just started young. [laughter]

It was the best job in town, next to this one. It was just delightful. I'd reached the point where there were other opportunities that were offered to me, other trade association opportunities, other things that I really can't discuss, would prefer not to discuss. They offered NAM [National Association of Manufacturers] to me, right after I came here. I said, "No, I'm committed to the chemical industry, but I can get you a guy who can run NAM and who would be perfect." I will tell you that I supported that job for Sandy Trowbridge who was one of the best leaders of NAM until he retired. Jerry Jaznowski came in behind him. Because of the leadership of those two guys, and some stupid mistakes that the Chamber made, I think NAM is more influential today than the Chamber is.

There were jobs in industry that were offered to me, but there was just something about it. I was very interested in what I was doing. Even though it was a smaller structure, we were doing seven million or so when I left Paint and Coatings. They were bigger, budget-wise, than the MCA was, and certainly much more influential. Well, as an association you can't say we were more influential than Dow or DuPont, or the individual components, but we were organized. I guess I ran out of interest, and then I saw there was very little growth after I had been there about fifteen years, and I knew I had maxed out and done as much as I possibly could do at that time.

I didn't coast. I don't believe in that; I know people do. I also believe that when you're ready to make a move, there's something out there, and it's like an intellectual estrous or something. When it happens and you go into heat, people are aware of that, and then you become a known entity. You don't send your resume around. I never did that. I never wrote a resume, never had one out. But it became obvious that I knew what my next job would be.

I will tell you in all candor that I knew that MCA would be my next job, should be my next job. There were people who were active in MCA who said, "God, you aren't going to do this," and I said, "Well, it's not my job to apply for it; if you want somebody, let me know." In the meantime, I continued to develop some good things down there, but I will tell you that when the time came, the ability to walk into an executive committee meeting of the leaders of the chemical industry and read the list of fifteen and say, "These are the things we must do and why we must do them,"—from that moment on, there was no question in their minds or mine that we were going to run this ship, and that I was in charge of it. They had put me in charge, and I would push them as far as I possibly could, but when they said no, that's no. I understood that.

BOHNING: You mentioned earlier that you still have that original list.

Page 42 ROLAND: Yes, I do.

BOHNING: Would it be possible to get a copy of that somewhere along the line?

ROLAND: I'll go home and pull it out and look at it. [laughter]

BOHNING: If you feel comfortable with it, it would be interesting to have that on record somewhere.

ROLAND: Yes, I have it, and I think I know where it is.

BOHNING: Okay. Do we still have a little bit of time?

ROLAND: Yes.

BOHNING: We had briefly mentioned this earlier when you showed me the medal, but what did it mean to you to win that medal from SCI?

ROLAND: I will tell you in all candor, if you asked me dates, I'd have trouble reconstructing. I can tell you how I felt; I can tell you what I did, but to say that it was March of 1982, I can't do that. I have never dwelt on the past. I have always been more concerned with the future. But all of us, in our hearts and our minds, wonder, "Did we do well?"

I don't have an "ego wall." You know what an "ego wall" is? I never had one in my office. I don't have one at home. The people who get the credit in CMA are the members and the staff. If it gets screwed up, I get the blame. They get the credit. That's the way it has to be. But you still wonder, "Did I do well?" Frankly, until I sat down and read the stuff that was prepared for the submission, I never really realized, well, we did do a lot, didn't we? We have accomplished a lot. Since then, any number of people have come to me and said, "I can't tell you how much your guidance meant to me. I can't tell you how much your leadership meant. I can't tell you how much I've learned from you." All that, and I never did it with that in mind. Mentoring was something that I just assumed was a responsibility that managers had and that good people had. Page 43 My retirement was planned by me; I picked the time; I picked the circumstances. I gave them a list of people from which they could choose my successor. I advised my staff. My successor was in here for the better part of a year; for the last six months or five months of that, he ran CMA. I sat in the office. His office was down there. I said, "I'll be here, but you're gonna run it, and everyone's gonna know you're running it, so that when the day comes in June that I walk out of Greenbrier and you get sworn in, you're going to be able to take out your list of fifteen and walk up in front of the executive committee and do the same thing that I did, because you'll know what's going on."

Despite all of that, I still wonder, did I do well and did I do good? That medal was the highest honor that I could have. It was the greatest, and the dinner, the dinner—very particularly, to be there with Keith McKennon, who was one of my peers. I'm a little older than Keith is, but we went through so many things together. The Paul Oreffice thing, he was Paul's sherpa. He was our counselor on so many issues. We learned; he is the preeminent crisis- control manager in the whole industry, and to get an award at the same dinner with Keith McKennon—I know a lot of those people were there because of Keith, but a lot of them were there because it was both of us—and to get the International Award, which has only been given six times, and very special because Keith helped enormously in the international area, and so did Frank Popoff. Dow was always a major player and a major supporter.

I believed my greatest goal was to eventually create a hemispheric association, Canada, the U.S., North America, Central America, South America. I always believed that that was the answer to the common market. I still believe that that is the answer to the common market, and I think they're the markets that we can control, and then we can compete everywhere else, and that's gravy. We know how to do that. I think this is ours. If we can't capture this hemisphere, I don't know who the hell can.

So, getting this medal for something I spent more personal time on than almost anybody else, that I inveigled the officers into going along with me on, that was a hard sell, that has resulted in some very good things happening for the industry globally—I was very proud of that. When I left that dinner where I was advised that this was happening—I got some wonderful letters, just wonderful letters—I could really say, "Bob, you must have done okay. It must have been rewarding to them. It must have been useful to them. You can feel as if you've accomplished something."

I think all of us need that kind of justification. I think all of us need that verification that the things that we've done—and I've always slept at night, and I've lived in the empty room. That's what being a CEO is—you live in that empty room. You can get all the counsel you need; you can have all the friends you need, but you have to sit in the room and say, "Do I put it on the line? Do I put them on the line?" This just is a verification that yeah, you did it better. You batted better than .300, I guess. [laughter]

BOHNING: Yes.

Page 44 ROLAND: It's worthwhile. Don't stop doing it. You know, a lot of it is kind of social, but it is very important. I told you the degree to which the people in industry look forward to these medals, and it's a driver. It's a driver, and it is very important to them, and I think it's very important to the industry that these things are there. It's a motivator.

BOHNING: Is there anything else that you'd like to add at this point that I haven't covered? I think in one way or another we've looked at pretty much everything, but let me see.

ROLAND: I think we've talked about most of the involvement and advocacy and personal stuff and leadership and the cohesion and all of that. I think of one other thing about the medal and the fact that I got it. I told our staff here, and I mentioned this when I received the award. I think it is a verification of the worthwhileness of CMA and the association's function. I don't think that there are other industries or other organizations that stand in quite the stead we do and the high regard we do, and I'm proud of that.

I think that sure, it's a reflection on things that I did and that the staff has done, but it's been permitted. It's been supported by the guys of industry. It's their organization, and they know that, but I think that what's happened at CMA is a laboratory of what can happen in other industries if they put their minds to it. You know, I don't give a damn about other people. I just try to do the best that we can, but I think people are trying to emulate what CMA has been, and to get an award like this is again saying, "Hey, the association is an important part of the industry." As I said, I'm particularly pleased it has an international spin to it, because that's clearly where the future lies for all industry and for our industry in particular. I think that we have the finest.

In the speech that Werner [C.] Brown gave when he got the medal (2), he alluded to this glorious, wonderful industry of ours, this most satisfying career. To hear people talk about their careers, their technology, their life in business and commerce as being that gratifying, that has always been an inspiration to me. Aside from the fact that I like working with successful people, these are successful ethical people. These are people who care about what they're doing. I will tell you, in the thirty six years—and I've worked in the chemical industry all those years, because I consider Paint and Coatings to be the same, and indeed it is—I can't on one hand think of people whom I would at least not go across the room to see or whom I would not prefer to see. Finest group of people, bar none. Now, how lucky can you be, to work in that kind of environment with those kind of people? That's what it's been here.

The future of chemical innovation? Well, it's the freedom to innovate. We've got to fight to keep that. I don't want regulation. I don't want legislation to frustrate innovation at all. With research and development—and not just product development, not just refining, re- engineering—I think we need to continue to do basic research or close to basic research, Page 45 continue to do innovative things. There are no industries in the United States, other than electronics and chemistry, that are doing that today. It's not happening anywhere else.

BOHNING: Even in chemistry, there are times where you wonder or you see things happening.

ROLAND: Stuff that should be out there that doesn't get there.

BOHNING: Yes.

ROLAND: Well, I will tell you that we've been working on risk assessment, and we've been working on this product liability stuff, for over ten years at CMA. We were the only association—at least one of the only ones; there were a few others, but God, there were precious few of us, and we may get there—and when the language was written, it was our language that was written. When the speaker said, "I want to introduce something; I want something done," he came to us. That's because he knew that we'd been doing it. We'd been talking with him and working in this area for a long time. I find that to be satisfying.

BOHNING: Well, on that note, I think we'll close, and I'll thank you for spending the morning with me. I appreciate it.

ROLAND: My pleasure.

[END OF TAPE, SIDE 6]