Old Business Cards! 

Hi, everyone:  

As I reviewed my July post, I realize I left out one specific piece of information which might be of value.  My nickname, throughout high school and again at Princeton, was "Duke."  Everyone thought it was for the Duke of Earl, but it far preceded that.   As a twelve year old in 1951, my view of the ideal baseball player was Edwin "Duke" Snider, the Hall of Fame center fielder for the Brooklyn Dodgers.  The neighborhood kids started calling me "Duke" and it stuck with me for the rest of my developing years.  

Since I was an early rock 'n roller, it was an appropriate nickname.  And when Gene Chandler made "Duke of Earl," it was stuck for good.  Willy Nelson and the Dukes were just following that pattern, I guess.

So, that, in a circuitous way, takes us to business cards.  I have always saved them.  I probably have fifteen or twenty different ones of my own, both personal and from all the businesses I owned and worked in, and was particularly supported when I attended General Georges Doriot's Manufacturing Class at Harvard.  Dr. Doriot said to keep your contacts in an organized way.  That made a lot of sense, and I followed his sage advice.

So this week, I went back and picked through my oldest business cards.  Even if you have thousands, there is a story to each one.

As you might expect, many of the ones from my teenage years are car related and music related.   Later they are business related, first IBM and computers in the early 1960's, then surfing, then furniture and design, then back to computers and Internet memes.  Now they have e-mail addresses as well as phone numbers.  I will start with a couple of examples and then pick up the post later with some of the even earlier ones.

See below two of the most interesting ones (at least to me).

Who is this gentleman, and why did the card matter?

In my memory, this is the first true calling card I had ever seen.  Mr. Raynor lives, or lived in Shushan, NY, and came over to visit the H. T. Cushman plant I was running in Bennington, VT in 1967.  I have done some research, and I believe he is still alive. He would be 84 or so now.

Some of my Princeton and Harvard classmates had calling cards, but they always had some type of contact information on them; either a dorm room or a phone number.  Even my Newport, RI friends had more detail than is on the card above.   On the other hand, this was really "old school."  "I'm here. This is who I am."  Congratulations, Mr.  Raynor.  I went on, and copied you.

Now, this guy below you probably know.  But when we talked at some length, and he gave me his card, "Who'd have thunk it?"

At the time (1996 or '97, I believe), Mr. Cook was a talented and aggressive mid/upper level executive for Intelligent Electronics, a computer company support group of which my company, Computer Power Supply, was an active and engaged member.  Mr. Cook was supportive and encouraging of our product, HOPE Software, and made some valuable introductions for us.

Of course, Mr. Cook is now Chairman and CEO of Apple Computer, the most valuable company in the world.  

Hope you enjoyed this brief introduction.  More to come later.

Stay safe!

Will Somers

More music thoughts:

Hi, all:

Well, I have to say the music memories inspired me to think back on grade school and high school. .  I did something I had never done before; I joined the Tenafly High School Class of '57 group.  Great pictures of many of the young ladies I remember.  Elaine Perry (Provenzano). Alice Falkiewicz (Peterson)., and one that really inspired me, Delores Linhart (Hughes) in 1954. (fair warning; there are a number of HS classmates mentioned here.

But the thing that surprised me the most was how little I know about some people. One of my high school classmates, Gil Markle, had a career in music which was fascinating. Business is never easy, and to move from being a professor to a record company owner is probably no more weird than moving from surfboards and furniture to computer manufacturing, Internet Hosting and running a chunk of IBM.  Whatever... I read a number of Gil's essays - http://gilmarkle.com   - Diary of a Studio Owner

I guess Gil liked to write, too. But then, I knew that.

But what always interests me is the "six degrees of separation."  Before I found Marilyn Miller (Somers), or she found me, I dated Beverly Wright from Cresskill, NJ.  Of course, her younger brother, Gary Wright, is famous for "Dream Weaver."  He lives a mile or so from my son Will in California.  I have his book.  Here's a picture of them from 1948.  Beverly does not look much different from when I knew her.  Gary talks about camping up near Hank's Cabin... between Cresskill and Alpine, NJ.

Gary was in my sister Patti's class, along with Jimmy Carroll. As they started, they both sang with Willy Nelson in a group they called "the Dukes."  As Ricky Nelson's cousin, Willy had it made, but they were good vocalists, too.  Their biggest hit was a single called "No Dough."

Jimmy was friendly with my sister and asked me to sing with them, I'm guessing in 1960.  He said, "Where do you think we got the name "the Dukes"?  I said "Come On..."  He said, "You got it."

The key point is Gil and Gary knew each other, because Gil's brother Bill was also in the Dukes.   Music careers are interesting and often interwoven.  

 We all did interesting things, but even a couple of years of age separation can be too much. Another guy mentioned in one of Gary Wright's bands was Bill Elmiger from Tenafly, NJ, who went on to be an excellent furniture designer and did some great work for me in the 1980's.  See what I mean?  Sadly, Bill died a couple of years ago, but in the year before that, I drove down to see him in North Carolina.  Another good guy.

So where did this all start?  Tenafly High School SO Night, Jazz Concert, probably 1956:  Me, Judy Beach (Onerati), Yogi Hebrank, John Romero, Linda Madison (Cavanna), Joe Jerkovich.  The backup band was "the Kingsmen"; Leigh Travis, Ray Capozzi, Russ Cook, etc.  A little better choice of songs and we probably would have made a career out of it.  

Anyway, that is my rumination for today.  None of this stuff is in my books.  

Music - Light and Dark

This is a brief riff on music.  Keep in mind that, as I have noted in prior posts, music was the backdrop of both my formative years and my entire life. 

In my books “Surfing Through Time, Books One and Two,”  

https://www.amazon.com/Surfing-Through-Time-Start-up-1964-1968/dp/1796463973

https://www.amazon.com/Surfing-Through-Time-Book-Two/dp/1796685720

I started each chapter with a song excerpt. Because the books have surfing as a major theme, many of the songs have a surfing meme, and, in turn, many of them are little known.  Throughout, in the ocean or elsewhere, music was the “soundtrack” to pretty much everything we did.  When we were working at something, we found a song about it (or at least we thought so) and identified the two together.  I know others do that too.

I have written a few songs myself, both melody and lyrics.  I put some of them up on YouTube on the “Will Somers Surfing Channel (see below)”.  Thanks to my sister Jerri, they get better, and she has contributed significantly to several of them.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeAIOWtqXqunRccM9iVkq_w

There are a few more, mostly surfing themed.  At one point, I thought about putting sixteen songs on an album, putatively titled “Surf Both Coasts” with songs tracing surfing trips up and down the coasts of the Americas.   I may still do that, time and health permitting.

It goes on.  Late in 2019, I had the unexpected pleasure of sitting next to Mike Stoller at a Broadway show.  Mike, of course is one half of the famous song-writing team of Lieber and Stoller, who wrote many of Elvis Presley’s top hits, as well as those of vocal groups including the Coasters, the Cheers and the Drifters; much of the song track we grew up with.  I sent Mike and his wife a letter afterwards, and while the contents were personal, I was pleased and gratified by the response I got from them and their son.  At eighty-five, Mike still gets it.

As for me, well, I still listen.  And, interestingly, many of the songs mentioned below are from the nineteen-eighties vintage.  They are not all happy.  Many of them have mixed roots.  My comments below are after brief studies, and your thoughts and views may be more valid than mine.  On the other hand, as the saying goes “I can’t get these out of my head…”

Holiday Road – Lindsay Buckingham – Copyright by Lindsey Buckingham – 1983I first heard this in the movie of the same name.  The way it was used, as Chevy Chase dreamed about Christie Brinkley, is brilliant.  So, then I went back and watched Buckingham’s original video.  For every person, fantasy is part of life.  Kudos to all involved.

Smugglers Blues – Glenn Frey – Copyright by Glenn Frey and Jack Tempchin – 1984 – While Holiday Road is a slightly dark fantasy, this song is gritty and real.  I’ve probably watched the video ten times.  Back in the late 1980’s, I went to Warner Brothers Studios and saw the Miami Vice version of this.  Again, kudos to all, and all too true.

Somewhere Near Japan – The Beach Boys - Copyright by Mike Love, Bruce Johnston, John Phillips and Terry Melcher – 1989 – This song has an interesting history.  John Phillips of “The Mamas and Papas” wrote the original version (Fairy Tale Girl), which is purportedly about an effort to help his daughter.  I do not know, but we all want to help someone.  Melcher, Love and Johnston orchestrated it and made it unforgettable.

Make it Big – The Beach Boys – Copyright by Mike Love, Bill House, Terry Melcher – 1989 – This song has its origin in a light movie called Beverly Hills Troop.  The movie is cute, and so is the song.  We all want to “make it big.”

Come On Eileen – Dexy’s Midnight Runners – Copyright by Kevin Rowland, Jim Paterson, Billy Adams – 1982 - I liked this song when it came out, but it didn’t get its hooks in until I saw a video of a woman from a little three college group singing it.  Her rendition was dead on, and I haven’t gotten it out of my head since.  The low key request in the title captures a certain part and strata of life pretty well.

We Built This City – (Jefferson) Starship – Copyright   Bernie Taupin, Martin Page, Dennis Lambert, Peter Wolf – 1985 – Once again, kudos to both the writers and the impassioned singer, Mickey Thomas (as well as Grace Slick).  Yeah, if you go back to 1966-68, San Francisco was built on Rock ’n Roll.  Some people (including many I know) don’t think so but look at the real estate values.

These are brief cuts.  Next year there will be new flavors.  Hope you like these.

All:

Two more years have passed.  There have been many changes in the world, a relatively benign economic climate, and an increasing concentration of power of various forms, civil, economic and marketing.

The next several years may test the recent trends.  I have developed a few additional Websites (in addition to those cited below).  One of the more interesting ones of these is http://njhbs.org  - It's a group of HBS graduates who would like to help non-profits in new Jersey.  I like to think we have already done some good and useful work.  I also worked on a Climate Concern site.

Stay tuned.  More to come!

Web Update

The primary Web focus lately is hope20.com, the current site for HOPE software.  We have some pretty interesting approaches to the Web, and its about to a get even more interesting.  Stay tuned!

Web work - always trying to improve!

As of 12/1/2015, Here are the Websites I am actively working on:

http://WillardSomers.com

http://Mersman.net

http://MersmanFurniture.com

http://MersmanTable.com

http://Somersman.com

http://comfortablehomespa.com

http://golfinteractive.com

http://hopesoftware.com

http://hope20.com

http://mylandprofit.com

http://cps.net

http://atlanticsurfingmuseum.org

http://mersmantable.com/asm

https://www.youtube.com/user/wsomers21

Fourteen and counting - probably enough, don't you think?  In future posts, I will discuss each one and their roles and interrelationships.  Thanks for the interest!  (Also  WD.html under golf, e-commerce under somersman)

Thanksgiving 2015

Well it has been three years and eight months plus since Marilyn died.  I left her picture and obituary as the latest post in this blog for that  entire period of time.  Now on Thanksgiving three years later, I can only express my gratitude and thankfulness for our fifty-five years together.

Life doesn't and didn't stop for me, although it threatened to for quite awhile..  I have been doubly fortunate.

Anyhow, this is me in the recent past.  Still riding.  I will begin to post more as life continues and time progresses.  Marilyn would want it.