The Autocrat
By: Tim Battersby
Tags: Mystery, Politics, Cars, World War II, Spy

If you enjoy the first chapter of my latest novel The Autocrat you can purchase it at Amazon Books in PB or Kindle. Thanks for trying out my new tale.

CHAPTER 1

A Panhard motorcar.

Harriman Holdings

John Richard Harriman died in September 2015 at the age of 88. He was my uncle and the nicest and most honest man I’d ever known. He was a quiet man filled with inner wisdom who always had a kind word for everyone he came in contact with. He was buried in Arlington cemetery with full military honors, a funeral to which my husband Jim and I attended. A week after the funeral, I received a letter from his lawyer saying I’d been mentioned in my Uncle’s will and asking me to contact him as soon as possible to make an appointment to meet with him so he could read the will.

My name is Jenny Harriman Holland and I live in Pensacola Florida. I am a 10th-grade teacher at Mullins High school right here in town along with my husband Jim Holland who is the music teacher at the same school. As Jim and I sat in the vestibule of Jerry Ludlow’s downtown Pensacola office waiting to have the will read, we held hands nervously like two teenagers even though we’d been married for over thirty years at the time of Uncle John’s passing. After about 15 minutes Jerry Ludlow popped his head around the door and with a welcoming smile beckoned us both in and waved us to two chairs with a flourish. I won’t bore you with the details of the mechanics of Uncle John’s will but suffice it to say that we learned that morning that Uncle John had been an extremely wealthy man. After the mention of several gifts to his relatives, friends, and employees he left the bulk of his estate to me. It turned out that Uncle John had, at the time of his mother’s death, become the recipient of a living trust which he was charged to administrate for the rest of his natural life. When he died he had decided to pass on the administration of that living trust to me.

In essence that gave me an annual salary and the responsibility to invest and oversee a vast fortune that as a direct descendent of the Rockefeller family (on his mother’s side) Uncle John had decided to bestow on me. In addition to the trust, Uncle John left me his house in Pensacola and several million dollars in an account that he liked to refer to as “his unsecured money.” Jim and I walked away from that meeting in shock. We both knew that Uncle John was comfortably off but had no idea he was the administrator of a massive trust worth in excess of 300 million dollars. Along with the reading of the will Jerry Ludlow had handed me a sealed envelope with my name written on it in Uncle John’s handwriting. I tucked it away in my purse to read at a later time.

Teachers by definition don’t earn a lot of money and while Jim and I were comfortable we were by no means rich. We both drove cars that by yuppie standards were ancient and our house was tucked away in an older Pensacola neighborhood that had seen better days. We’d lived there our entire marriage and saw no reason to move. We were comfy in our lifestyle. Both of us nearing retirement, me less than a year away and Jim about 2 years away. I was sad obviously at the demise of our beloved uncle but was delighted to have been left some money by someone who’d been so important to both of us throughout our long marriage. I grew up in McLean Virginia, the daughter of Bill and Ginger Harriman. Dad was a cabinet maker in nearby Fairfax and Mom was a homemaker. I was one of four children and we all went to local schools. Like all families who grew up in the 60s, we were diametrically different. Family is God’s way of teaching children how to get along in society later as an adult. His little sociological joke I guess. In my family, the dinner table was ruled with the iron fist of a domineering patriarch, and a timid mother who if she dared speak out of turn had to suffer the ire of my dad. Similarly, if any of us kids had the audacity to display emotion of any kind they’d receive a tongue lashing from him. My entire childhood felt like we were constantly walking the plank.

I won a full scholarship to George Mason University which was where I first met Jim Holland, the man who would later become my husband. By the time we graduated 4 years later both of us couldn’t wait to get out of the area and start looking for teaching jobs that were available at the time. To cut a long story short that was the first time Uncle John had interceded in my life. I’d always been close to him and Aunt Rachel and out of the blue he telephoned me one day shortly after I graduated and told me about a job that had come available for a teaching position in the Pensacola school system in Florida where he and Aunt Rachel had moved some years earlier. The call surprised me because I had no idea that he knew anything about the school system in Florida. As far as I knew he was my Dad’s cousin who we used to see for picnics and family functions when I was a kid. I followed up on the job and wrote to them and they asked me to come down and interview for the position of 10th-grade teacher at Mullins High school starting on August 5th just 6 weeks away. I was overjoyed and rang Uncle John right away who invited me to stay with them, as they lived just outside Pensacola, for a few days during my interview. He also arranged to pick me up from the airport. The interview went exceedingly well and after the first meeting, the principal of Mullins asked if I could return the following day to meet the school board. Over dinner that evening Uncle John mentioned that he knew most everyone on the board and to please give the chairman a letter from him introducing me to the system! The following day I arrived at the school board offices in downtown Pensacola and introduced myself to the secretary. After a while, I was ushered into a large room where 7 elderly men were sitting in a row at a long table. I took a seat in a chair set up as an interviewee’s solitary perch. When I first entered I once again saw the principal of Mullins sitting amongst the 7 judges. I nodded to him and took my seat. They quizzed me on my political beliefs, my religious beliefs, and my marital status. After a few minutes, I realized that I was now officially in the Deep South where all the aforementioned questions I’d been asked were vitally important to answer in the manner they wanted to hear, for me to be accepted into their school system. Before I answered their audacious questions I had a brainwave. Quick as a flash I stood up and walked over to the chairman’s seat, looked him squarely in the eye, and handed him the letter Uncle John had given me. “My uncle sends his best regards,” I said confidently, swiveled, and took my chair again. After a few moments, the chairman having read the letter turned to his colleagues and in very much of a stage whisper began chatting to all of them. Then after deliberating for a moment longer, he turned to me and said. “Ms. Harriman welcome to the Pensacola school system. Your first day will be August 5th and you will be employed as a 10th-grade teacher at Mullins High school. Mr. Herschel over here,” waving his hand toward the principal, “will be sending you a contract within the next few days. Welcome aboard Ms. Harriman.” And with that, the meeting concluded and I left the building realizing for the first time in my life that my uncle had apparently helped me in more ways than I could imagine. I stayed with Uncle John and Aunt Rachel for a couple more days and then flew home to tell the exciting news to Jim. 4 weeks later he and I drove south in our old Volvo packed with all our belongings and moved into a sweet 1 BR flat in a charming old Victorian house on Trinity street just a couple of miles away from Uncle John and Aunt Rachel’s in downtown Pensacola. Jim planned on applying for a job in the music department in the school system as soon as we settled. 3 days later we arrived and spent our first night in our new flat. It wasn’t until years later I discovered that the sweet flat was owned by none other than Uncle John.

My dear Jenny,

If you are reading this letter, it means I am dead and you have now been informed that you are my beneficiary. You have spoken to Jerry Ludlow and he has filled you in on what will be expected of you. For the past 55 years, I’ve loved administering this trust fund but now I’m handing the reins over to you my dear Jenny. I have absolute faith that you will handle the day-to-day operations admirably and once you have been filled in on your new responsibilities you will succeed with all the aplomb of the lady I know you to be. There are so many things about me that you know nothing about, and I hope you don’t think less of me after you discover my other world. For the moment I am introducing you to my right-hand woman, a lady called Cynthia Hawkins who has been with me for over 40 years. You can find her at 27 Majestic Drive at my building Harriman Holdings. She knows all about you and will fill in all the blanks and answer any questions you may have. The office number is 471–389–2756. Since I was a boy I have always loved old cars. I have been fortunate in my life to be able to indulge that passion. I own 25 antique cars that I’m leaving for you. They are in varying degrees of restoration and are being housed in a warehouse that I own close to Pensacola. Cynthia will furnish you with the address. Amongst my treasures, I own a Model T Ford, a 1929 Duesenberg Touring car, and a Mercedes Benz 300s. Now you own the collection, maybe in your spare time you can achieve what I could not, and that is to restore as many of them as you can and then pass them on to whomever you choose to be your successor? I was not the man you thought I was my dear Jenny. At some point in the not too distant future, I have asked Jerry Ludlow to release one final letter to you which will explain why I chose to live the way I did and also the rationale of how I chose the companies that I bought. In the meantime, I suggest that you meet Cynthia and have her tell you more about my story so you can embark on a journey of getting to know some of my companies. I love you like my own daughter and hope you enjoy what I have bequeathed to you.

Forever your loving,

Uncle John.

As I folded the letter and put it away with my important papers, I wiped a tear from my eye knowing the adventure I was about to embark on would be one of mystery and intrigue. That afternoon I rang Cynthia Hawkins and made an appointment to meet her the next day at 10 am. I knew downtown Pensacola very well. My husband Jim joined me after I was first hired 30 years earlier in our new 1 BR flat and despite not yet having a teaching job he spent our first year working for a building company headquartered in downtown Pensacola and so we would meet after work and cruise the restaurants and go for long walks in the balmy southern climate. He applied to the school district for a job in the music department and finally was offered a job as the music teacher of 5 schools within the district. Over the past 30 years of working within the school system, he has done great things for music students including building a fine orchestra.

Pensacola is a classic small southern city. A shining treasure. It’s the site of the first Spanish settlement within the borders of the continental US in 1559, predating the establishment of St. Augustine by 6 years, although the settlement was abandoned due to a hurricane and not re-established until 1698. Pensacola is a seaport on Pensacola Bay, which is protected by the barrier island of Santa Rosa and connects to the Gulf of Mexico. A large United States Naval Air Station, the first in the United States, is located SW of Pensacola near Warrington; it is the base of the Blue Angels flight demonstration team and the National Naval Aviation Museum. The main campus of the University of West Florida is situated north of the city center. As I entered Uncle John’s tiny office the following day I was mulling over the magnificence of the city. Sitting at what must have originally been his desk was a heavy set woman poring over stacks of papers. As I walked in she looked up and a smile telegraphed across her face. She jumped up and walked over to me and said. “You must be Jenny? I’m so glad to meet you” and gave me a big bear hug that told me how welcome I was.

Within a few moments, I realized why Uncle John had initially hired this woman. In a word, she was a dynamo. Everything she said had a point, and the point to this woman was an undying loyalty to my uncle. Her respect for him knew no bounds and in that first meeting, she told me things about my Uncle John that no one had ever mentioned before. For instance, she told me that soon after she was hired Uncle John made a series of bad investments that threatened to bankrupt him. After he got started in the “salvage” business as Uncle John liked to describe his job, he went out on his own and began making quite a bit of money by buying up failing businesses and adding a new business model by streamlining it until it was profitable again. He then sold the company and purchased another. Bit by bit his reputation grew and he became successful until he made several bad deals all of which went belly up. Rather than quit, Uncle John tightened his belt and worked harder. In the space of 3 years, he turned his business around. This gave him the impetus to change his methods. He worked harder and became more businesslike and over the next 20 years made a fortune working from this office with just me and him working long hours. 10 years earlier he had begun an incentive program for me that has ultimately made me a wealthy woman. I will always be most grateful to your uncle.”

Over the next few days, I learned all about Harriman Holdings. I learned that Uncle John owned more than one hundred companies ranging from bakeries to tire manufacturing plants, to several lumber mills, and a tech company in Silicon Valley. His business model was always the same no matter what he was selling. Profit profit profit. When he started out he would buy a failing company. It didn’t matter to him what the product was, he knew that if he applied the identical business principles to each firm he had acquired, as long as the employees pulled their weight, he could make the business a viable operation. The very first company he bought back in 1954 was in Milwaukee. It was a family-run metal die manufacturing plant. The forming dies were typically made by tool and die makers and put into production after being mounted into a press. A die is a metal block that is used for forming materials like sheet metal and plastic. For the vacuum forming of a plastic sheet only a single form was ever used, typically to form up transparent plastic containers (blister packs) for merchandise. Vacuum forming was considered a simple molding thermoforming process but used the same principles as die forming. For the forming of sheet metal, such as automobile body parts, two parts were used: one, called the punch, performed the stretching, bending, and or blanking operation, while another part that was called the die block securely clamped the piece and provided similar stretching, bending, and or blanking operation. The piece passed through several stages using different tools or operations to obtain the final form. In the case of an automotive component, there’d usually be a shearing operation after the main forming was done and then additional crimping or rolling operations to ensure that all sharp edges were hidden and to add rigidity to the panel.

The Maple Tool and Die Company: Sadly for the company the process was complex, and the family who had owned the company for 100 years was eager to make a profit, the current board of directors was made up of the wealthy Grandson and Great Grandson of the founder of Maple Tool and Die Company. The Maple family had run their company into the ground through greed and bad business practices and had jeopardized the careers of 24 employees at the plant. Uncle John purchased Maple Tool and Die Company at a bankruptcy sale for a song. The following week he flew to Milwaukee and met with the employees. The Maple family had abandoned ownership of the company and a team of auditors was engaged to go over the company books with a fine-tooth comb. It didn’t take long for Uncle John to realize something was terribly wrong. Young Mr. Maple or Mr. Ben as he was known around the plant had been dipping his hand into the company till for years and had bled the company dry. That time Uncle John realized that Mr. Ben’s malfeasance was none of his business, bought the Maple Tool and Die Company and allowed the authorities to handle Mr. Ben’s wrongdoing, but he made a mental note to himself that if he were to buy this kind of business again, he must protect himself and open a gumshoe private eye investigation business. Uncle John clearly did not approve of ignoble people.”

Cynthia Hawkins had been talking for about an hour now and she was just revving up to launch into another story when the phone rang and she began chatting to a sales rep. It gave me a chance to collect my thoughts. I’d always known that Uncle John was good and kind. He and Aunt Rachel, who was childless, had spent every Christmas, Easter, birthday, and special occasion with Jim and myself celebrating with other members of our family at our table. In all the years that we knew them, I never heard them utter a harsh word to each other, and I never heard Uncle John complain about anyone. They loved our one daughter Molly and watched her grow up with all the pride of loving grandparents and joined Jim and me at Molly’s high school graduation. Seven years later at UMD, School of Medicine they attended Molly’s graduation as she celebrated becoming an M.D. I was deep in my memories as Cynthia hung up the phone and continued telling me about the companies that I now owned.

A Citroen Deux Chevaux

After a few more hours she handed me a list of companies with 107 names, contacts, and addresses on it and suggested that we stop for the night and pick up tomorrow so we could continue discussing my new life and my new responsibilities. I didn’t get much sleep that night, spending a lot of time googling the 107 companies that I owned. They were spread across 37 states and included production plants, construction companies, retail outlets, and even some restaurant chains. It appears I was now the proud owner of a Steakhouse franchise with 22 restaurants throughout Florida. “hmm,” I thought. “I must pay them a visit real soon.” I laughed silently to myself. I made a list of questions I could ask Cynthia in the morning and turned the light out around 4.00 a.m.

Early the next morning I got to Harriman Holdings to find Cynthia Hawkins working hard at her desk already. The office was only about a 15-minute walk from my house and so I decided to walk along the charming leafy streets of Pensacola. Cynthia looked up from what she was doing and with a bright smile leaped up poured me a cup of coffee and bounded over and placed it on the desk in front of me. “Here we are then,” she said “good morning to you Miss Jenny. And how’re you this fine morning?” Slightly startled by her heartiness I picked up the cup nodding my thanks and replied. “I’m very well and how’re you today?” After we’d dispensed with the formalities I asked Cynthia the questions I’d written down the night before, and she answered them like the professional she was. To say I was impressed with Cynthia Hawkins would be an understatement. She turned out to be a walking encyclopedia producing names and addresses of companies with ease; which I found to be a tool that proved vital on a number of occasions.

“How did Uncle John choose to buy the 107 companies on the final list?” I asked having asked a number of earlier questions that Cynthia had happily answered. “Quite early on shortly after I started working for Mr. John it became clear that he needed a way to vet companies he was considering purchasing. Everyone had a sob story, and frankly, not all of the stories were true. All the companies that Mr. John was interested in were going through bankruptcy proceedings and the owners were rarely honest as to why their company had got into such a position. And so after a while, Mr. John decided to hire an investigator in order to get to the truth so that he could make a determination on the potential of the business he was interested in buying. I knew a man called Bill Rein from Virginia. He ran a security company. Mr. Rein could vet a company and produce a time and motions study giving us a report on the viability of the company within a month and the reason for its failure. It made perfect sense to hire Mr. Rein.” “Were there any companies where Bill Rein found any illegal activity?” I asked. Cynthia paused for a moment and then said “There were a couple, I remember.” Then she switched her attention from me and looked at her screen, scrolled through a few pages, and finally said, “here we are then, I thought those two were ones I remembered.”

The Paley Shoe Company: “This company had a very strange story to tell but after considerable thought, Mr. John decided to go ahead and purchase it shortly after the court case and the conviction. The Paley Shoe Company was located in Salem Oregon and had been family-owned since 1845. John Paley the founder had 3 boys who eventually took over from their Dad and ran the business after he retired. With hard work and a rigid work ethic, the boys turned The Paley Shoe Company into a supremely successful shoe manufacturing plant. By the time Jerry Brady came to work for them on the factory floor in 1957 the 3 Paley boys had long retired and the company still family-owned was being run by the great-grandson of John Paley the founder, a man named Terry Paley. One of Terry Paley’s employees was Jerry Brady whose illegal activities caused so much attention from the press that it torpedoed the business. Orders dried up and within a few months, Paley’s Shoe Company went into Chapter 11. The press that Jerry Brady had received was after he was arrested for the murder of multiple women in the Salem area.

Jerry Brady was a serial killer who committed the murders of at least four women in Oregon between 1965 and 1969. He was born in 1939 in Billings, Montana as the younger of two sons. His mother had wanted a girl and was very displeased that she had another son instead. She would constantly subject him to emotional and physical abuse. As a child, Brady and his family would move into different homes in the Pacific Northwest, before settling in Salem, Oregon.

Brady had a fetish for women’s shoes that surfaced at the age of 5, after playing with stiletto-heeled shoes at a local junkyard. He reportedly attempted to steal the shoes of his first-grade teacher. Brady also had a fetish for women’s underwear and claimed that he would steal underwear from female neighbors as a child. He spent his teen years in and out of psychotherapy and spent time in psychiatric hospitals.

In his teenage years, Brady began to stalk local women, knocking them down or choking them unconscious, and fleeing with their shoes. At age 17, he abducted and beat a young woman, threatening to stab her if she did not follow his sexual demands. Shortly after being arrested, he was taken to the psychiatric ward of Oregon State hospital for nine months. There it was found Brady’s sexual fantasies revolved around his hatred towards his mother and women in general. He underwent a psychiatric evaluation and was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Despite being institutionalized, Brady graduated from high school with his class in 1957. Shortly after graduation, he got a job at Paley’s Shoe Company as a factory worker. Paley was never told about his employees’ childhood.

In 1961, Brady married a 17-year-old girl with whom he would father two children and settled in a Salem suburb. He asked his new bride to do housework naked except for a pair of high heels while he took pictures of her. It was at about this time that he began complaining of migraine headaches and “blackouts,” relieving his symptoms with night-prowling raids to steal shoes and lace undergarments. Brady kept the shoes, and the underwear, and (for a time) the bodies of his victims in a garage that he would not allow his wife to enter without first announcing her arrival on an intercom that he had set up. Between 1965 and 1969, Brady strangled four young women and attempted to attack two others.

Linda Howard, 19, a saleswoman knocked on Brady’s door in January 1968. Brady lured her into the basement while his wife and children were in the house, knocked her out with a 2x4, and strangled her. He dressed her in different female undergarments and shoes he had stolen, and arranged her body in provocative poses, and used a hacksaw to cut off her left foot, which he kept in a freezer and used to model his collection of high-heel shoes. He disposed of Linda Howard’s body later in the Willamette River.

Karen Tanner, 18, was abducted at gunpoint by Brady from a parking lot outside a department store in May 1968. He was dressed in women’s clothes during this attack. He brought her to his garage, made her try on his collection of undergarments and pose while he photographed her, raped her, and strangled her by hanging her by her neck from a pulley. Brady had sex with the body on several occasions and cut off her breasts to make plastic molds. Afterward, he tied the body to a 6-cylinder car engine with a nylon cord and threw it in the Willamette River.

Jan Salmon, 23, a motorist whose car broke down on Interstate 5 between Salem and Albany on November 26, 1968. Brady offered to drive her to his home with the excuse of letting her call a tow truck there. While still in the car, he strangled her with a leather strap and raped her post-mortem. He kept the body hanging from the pulley in his garage for several days, during which he dressed, photographed, and had sex with it. This time, Brady cut off one of her breasts and made a resin mold of it that he used as a paperweight. Afterward, he tied the body to a piece of railroad iron and threw it in the Willamette along with Linda Howard’s foot, (who he’d murdered 10 months earlier) which by this time had rotted.

Sharon Harner, 24, and Gloria Jones, 15, were 2 females who Jerry Brady attempted to abduct at gunpoint respectively from the basement floor of a parking garage in Portland on April 21, and April 22 1969 unsuccessfully.

Linda Edwards, 22, was abducted from a shopping mall parking lot on April 23, 1969. Jerry Brady brought her to his garage where he raped and strangled her and played with her body. He decided not to cut her breasts off because they were “too pink,” by his own admission, but instead drove an electrical current through her in an attempt to make it jump which failed. Afterward, he tied her to a transmission with a nylon cord and threw it in the Willamette River.

Brady would dress up in high heels after committing a murder. In May 1969, a man found the bodies of Linda Edwards and Karen Tanner in the Long Tom River. The police asked students at a nearby university campus about suspicious men and one student interview led them to Brady, who had phoned her several times to ask her for a date. Brady gave police a false address, which increased their suspicions. When they located him, police found the copper wire in his garage that was determined to have been cut with the same tool that cut the cords used to tie the bodies. Jerry Brady was arrested and he then made a full confession.

The ensuing criminal case against Jerry Brady was the final nail in the coffin for The Paley Shoe Company. For months reporters had been camped outside the factory in the vain hope they might be able to interview John Paley the founders' great-grandson.

On June 28, 1969, Brady pled guilty to three first-degree murders (Tanner, Salmon, and Edwards) and was sentenced to three life terms of imprisonment in Oregon State Penitentiary. Though he confessed to Howard’s murder, Brady was neither tried nor convicted for it because at the time DNA evidence was not available and he did not take photographs of the body, unlike in all the other cases, but only of her foot. The case had a relatively short shelf life and soon the media and the public forgot about the weird fetish-driven murderer named Jerry Brady. Mr. John had in the meantime flown to Salem and interviewed the remaining employees of the Paley Shoe Company and had put in an offer with the bankruptcy court which eventually was accepted.

Mr. John had been learning about profit sharing during the previous year. Up until this point he’d had no actual interaction with any profit-sharing companies; however, the Paley Shoe Company could be a perfect “trial balloon,” for him.” Cynthia stopped just long enough to take a sip of her coffee. I was busy scribbling as fast as I could. She was a fast talker and I was fearful I’d miss something important. “What exactly is profit sharing,” I asked which when Cynthia heard my question her eyes lit up. It was clearly a subject she loved.

“Profit sharing refers to various incentive plans introduced by businesses that provide direct or indirect payments to employees that depend on the company’s profitability plus employees’ regular salary and bonuses,” Cynthia explained. “In publicly traded firms these plans amount to the allocation of shares to employees. One of the earliest pioneers of profit sharing was a Brit named Theodore Cooke Taylor, who was known to have introduced the practice in his woolen mills during the late 1800s.”

I looked at my watch and realized it was lunchtime. As Cynthia paused I suggested that there was a charming café just down the street, and would she like to join me for a bite to eat? She nodded her head and replied, “I’d love to Ms. Jenny. As a matter of fact, you own that café.” I looked back at her in amazement, “Really are you joking? Jim and I have been eating at Celine’s forever and Uncle John never mentioned that he owned it.” “That was just how Mr. John was,” Cynthia replied, collecting her purse. “He was a very private man.” Over lunch sitting in a shady alcove on the sidewalk outside Celine’s, I asked Cynthia how she’d first started working for Uncle John? “Well it was simple really, but I never totally understood.” Cynthia rolled up her sleeve and showed me a tattoo that identified her as a survivor. “I was in Auschwitz. Mr. John read an article when I first came to Pensacola. I’d changed my name from Sophia Engelmann to Cynthia Hawkins when I came to America, but the reporter who did the story must have done a background check and put that in the newspaper. A few weeks after I arrived Mr. John called me and asked me if I would like a job? I went for an interview. We never discussed Auschwitz. He offered me a job and I’ve been working for him ever since. That’s really all there is to it.” It was clearly still a sensitive subject and so I decided to let Cynthia keep on talking. First, she told me about her time in Auschwitz, and then she moved with ease into her favorite subject.

That afternoon I learned why my Uncle John did what he did. He loved people. He was the original socialist seeing the good in everyone he met. His intentions were always pure when he was considering purchasing a new but distressed company. He learned that the company’s financial downfall was rarely the fault of the workforce but always of upper management. He devised a plan early in his career to make every company he bought one where the employees would have a say in the running of the company and would all own stocks in it as well. He’d worked out a way for Harriman Holdings to keep ownership of the company until the debt had been repaid. Then after all the running costs had been met, Mr. John would divide the profit between the employees, keeping a 20% management fee for himself. The profit incentive worked like a charm and before long every company that Harriman Holdings had purchased was turning a profit and putting money directly into the pockets of the people who deserved it the most. He initiated visits to each of his 107 different on a bi-yearly basis, and with the advent of technology he and Cynthia Hawkins were able to keep tabs on all the company’s that he owned at the click of a keystroke. His door was always open and Mr. John would always entertain a visit from any of his employees in his tiny office. Profit-sharing made perfect sense to a man like Mr. John.

On that day, Cynthia Hawkins told me the reason for his kindness was that he’d grown up in a home where his mother and father taught him to be kind to everyone. He was an only child whose parents had married for love and they both worshipped young Mr. John. When his parents met on Cape Cod MA on vacation, Peggy his mother, the Rockefeller heiress had been staying at a summer resort where John his father was employed as a busboy at the resorts only restaurant. It took John all summer to conjure up the nerve to invite young Peggy on a date. He finally asked her out on her last night at the resort and took her to the only drive-in in town. That night they fell in love for all the right reasons but it took them 2 more years of long-distance dating for John to summon up the nerve to ask Peggy to marry him. After what amounted to an act of congress, her parents allowed this “fine young man” to date their daughter, and a year later John and Peggy were married in the Presbyterian church in Chantilly VA. As a wedding present, Peggy’s parents gave the happy young couple a lovely 2 bedroom clapboard farmhouse just steps away from the home where Peggy grew up.

Although Uncle Johns’ mother was an heiress, Cynthia continued the family never flaunted it. He attended public school with the rest of the community children and when it came time to go to college he chose an in-state school William and Mary University where he took a bachelor’s degree in business. When he graduated four years later Uncle John joined his father’s firm, a local Virginia firm selling farm equipment, and put his education to the test. His father with a keen nose for business liked to dabble with the buying and selling of land. He’d never liked to raid his wife’s inheritance but when John graduated college she set up a land-buying budget for him to see if he was any good at it. The first few purchases went well, but the fourth purchase did very poorly. Sadly John was persuaded to buy into a collective purchase with 3 businessmen who went in together to buy a building in NW Washington DC. Within 2 years the building went bankrupt and John was left “holding the bag.” Unbeknownst to him, his partners had sold their shares without so much as a word to him. It was only after crafty negotiations that John’s father managed to extricate his son without too much damage being done. It was a lesson learned for young John; a mistake he never made again.

Five years later his father died leaving the farm equipment business to Mr. John. Just a year later his beloved mother tragically died leaving her estate to John, who had in the meantime met, dated, and married a lovely girl from upstate New York named Rachel Mandel.

John and Rachel originally lived in the two-bedroom clapboard farmhouse just steps away from his parents’ house until John went away to college. In his first year at William and Mary, they decided to move into the big house on the property since John’s parents and grandparents had died. The house sat on 15 acres of land and in his dotage, John’s grandfather Arthur liked to potter around the acreage building walls and fences. The land of course was worth a small fortune being located just a few miles from Washington DC. That left the smaller home vacant, and so when John married Rachel, John’s parents gave them the house as a wedding present.

Uncle John and Aunt Rachel finally moved to the big house many years after his parents had died. Sadly they were unable to have children and so Aunt Rachel concentrated on her charities and Uncle John his business. As a family, we would visit them almost every weekend as they had a lovely swimming pool on their property and as kids, we would swim all day while the adults would cook burgers and take us for rides on Uncle John’s golf cart. I remembered we’d spend every holiday with them, and because they didn’t have any kids we became their family. In 1970 Uncle John and Aunt Rachel moved to Florida. They kept the houses in Chantilly but decided to live in Pensacola in a house that had been in Aunt Rachel’s family since she’d been a little girl.

THANKS FOR READING CHAPTER 1 OF THE 30 CHAPTER NOVEL BY TIM BATTERSBY THE AUTOCRAT. TO BUY THIS BOOK IN EITHER DIGITAL OR PAPERBACK VERSIONS VISIT MY AUTHOR PAGE AT AMAZON BOOKS