Doing What Ya Gotta Do
The publisher as delivery boy; a great painter as nurse and shopkeeper; a three-star general as traffic cop
August 2007 By Denny Hatch
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In the News
FIRE ISLAND JOURNALWhen a Paper Called the Tide Rolls in, It’s the Publisher Delivering It
As Warren McDowell, the publisher of The Fire Island Tide, docked his boat in this hamlet, he was greeted by a longtime acquaintance pulling a blue wagon. “It’s nice to know the exalted publisher of The Fire Island Tide still carries his own paper to the masses,” said the man, Jay Trien, who with his wife, Ildiko, ran another local paper, The Fire Island News, Until he sold it 10 years ago. “Warren told my wife, ‘You win the prizes, I’ll make the money.’”
—Corey Kilgannon, The New York Times, Aug. 7, 2007
Fire Island is a quirky barrier island off Long Island’s South Shore, 32 miles long and half a mile wide. Cars are not permitted on the island. The only way to get there is by ferry, private boat or swimming. The wheeled vehicles of choice are kids’ wagons that carry everything—your luggage, groceries, dry cleaning and babies.
Sure, the publisher could get a permit for a delivery truck to drive the beach. But this is a waterfront community, so delivery by boat is correct. Sure, he could hire someone to make the delivery, but for McDowell, whose offices are on the mainland, this is the only way he stays in touch with his customers. In addition, he always picks up some news and gossip for his next edition.
So the publisher becomes a delivery boy. Warren McDowell does what he’s gotta do.
His intensity and drive reminded me of two of the most luminous personalities of the twentieth century, Sara and Gerald Murphy. Gerald, a fine painter, was first turned into a child’s nurse and then, for 22 years, he became a storekeeper.
He did what he had to do.
The Extraordinary Murphys
Two weekends ago, my wife and I drove to Williamstown, Mass., where the Williams College Museum was staging a magnificent exhibition, “MAKING IT NEW: The Art and Style of Sara and Gerald Murphy.” It was dreamed up and assembled by Deborah Rothschild, senior curator of modern and contemporary art.
Born in 1888 and a Yale classmate of Cole Porter, Gerald Murphy was the son of the owner of Mark Cross, a store that started out selling leather goods and equestriana—saddles, tack and coach supplies. With the advent of the automobile, Patrick Murphy changed the business model and began stocking luxury items such as driving gloves, cocktail shakers, wristwatches, thermoses, safety razors and fountain pens. Son Gerald later described the store as “a monument to the nonessential.”
Gerald fell in love and married Sara Wiborg, whose father made a fortune manufacturing and selling printer’s ink by the barrel and who owned 600 acres in Eastern Long Island’s Hamptons that would be worth billions today. Over the objections of both sets of parents, the wedding took place in 1915 in the Wiborgs’ Manhattan apartment, whereupon Gerald went off to war.
Takeaway Points to Consider:
* Shit happens.* When it does, you do whatever it takes to make things right.
* Often it takes courage to do what you have to do. For example, the Big Three automakers—Ford, GM and Chrysler—are on the ropes. For years management put off dealing with the 800-pound gorillas: ruinous health insurance costs for employees and retirees and car lots filled with gas-guzzling SUVs in an era where the cost of fuel rose to over $3 a gallon. The result was a horrific downsizing of the work force: Chrysler-Daimler (19,000); Ford (30,000); GM (138,000). The secondary result: Toyota is now No. 1 and the Big Three are now Two-Through-Four.
* Same thing with the federal government and the twin sacred cows of Social Security and Medicare. As more and more retirees depend on fewer and fewer workers, these programs will go broke in a certain number of years hence—or if not dealt with harshly, break the American economy. Yet politicians keep putting off doing what needs be done.
* One of the great failures of managers is not knowing what the people who work for them do. When a key member of the team is hit by a bus and nobody knows what he did, much as you would like to do the right thing, you don’t know what the right thing to do is.
* Sometimes what you have to do is stand aside and let others do it.
Web Sites Related to Today's Edition:
Warren McDowell and “The Fire Island Tide”http://tinyurl.com/ywvgtp
“MAKING IT NEW” exhibition at the Williams College Museum
http://www.wcma.org/modules/murphy/index.html
“MAKING IT NEW”—Exhibition Images
http://www.wcma.org/modules/murphy/images.html
Making It New: The Art and Style of Sara and Gerald Murphy by Deborah Rothschild (Exhibition Catalog, Paperback)
http://tinyurl.com/2xoydu
Everybody Was So Young: Gerald and Sara Murphy: A Lost Generation Love Story (Paperback) by Amanda Vaill
http://tinyurl.com/2d4tsq
“Living Well Is the Best Revenge” by Calvin Tomkins (out of print)
http://tinyurl.com/2p6f3j
The Wiborgs’ Spread (Sara’s Family) on Eastern Long Island
http://nymag.com/arts/all/features/17561/index1.html
“The Unknown Monet” at the Clark in Williamstown
www.clarkart.edu
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