I have a bit of stock in State Farm Funds, and some months back I received two identical proxies for the same account. That was unusual so I wrote the president of the company, Ed Rust Jr., enclosing the extra copy. It was the first time I had written the president of a company; I don't believe that stuff about going to the top, but the problem raised seemed serious, and this was my father's company.
When I say "my father's company" I don't mean he owned it or had much say but that it was his in the way his garden was his, by dint of work and love. He'd worked at State Farm for 45 years, my mother for 41; they had devoted their lives to it, and it had repaid them in more than money.
She lasted a semester and then took a job in the bookkeeping department at State Farm. She always felt she had gotten from the company a recognition she could not get from the university.
After a couple of weeks, I got a letter back from a vice president of the company, to whom Mr. Rust had referred the matter. He reassured me that their computer was programmed to catch duplicate ballots. He remembered my father's red '68 Bonneville convertible and my father and mother walking into the company's home office, a building that housed a couple of thousand employees. He remembered because they were holding hands.
As a young man, my father wanted to be an artist. When he came to Bloomington, Ill., in 1940, he tried drawing ad copy for Livingston's Department Store, but the salary was so low he could barely live on it. His father suggested an old friend from the Masons, George Meherle, who had a small insurance company, one that occupied the second story of a building on Center Street. Dad called Mr. Meherle and was told to come in. They were not hiring at the time, but a Mr. Rust, the current president's grandfather, found room for him. Three years later, my father was fighting in the Philippines; when he returned home, he married my mother, and the company made room for both of them.
My mother grew up poor. Neither she nor her brother saw a dentist until they were teenagers. The first time my uncle went, the dentist removed half the teeth in his mouth; a few weeks later he removed the others. But both were good at mathematics. When my mother graduated from high school, she enrolled at Illinois State Normal University. At that time, you did not choose a major; you filled out a form requesting a major, and they gave you the one they thought appropriate. You were to list three in the order of preference; my mother chose mathematics, business and physical education. They gave her PE. She lasted a semester and then took a job in the bookkeeping department at State Farm. She always felt that she had gotten from the company a recognition she could not get from the university.
I grew up in the company. My first independent act as a child was to take the bus to summer day camp at the company park. I remember my feet dangling from my mother's desk as she worked. My first job was in the State Farm mailroom. I came in on Saturdays primarily because Mr. Ed Rust, the president and son of the man who had hired my father, came in on Saturdays and he wanted his mail.
Most of my parents' friends were State Farm people, and many of their attitudes on political and social issues reflected what they thought might be good for the company. Their devotion to the company came not because they did not have the imagination or the power to look elsewhere but because, outside the church, it was the most humane institution in their lives. They believed that it cared about their future, and they cared, passionately, about its future.
My father was a shy man, ill at ease socially, but if he liked you, you might find on your doorstep one morning produce from his garden or quarts of vegetable-beef soup sealed at the top with a thin layer of fat. As far as I know, my father never socialized with the upper echelons of the company; I remember only once when I was ever in the house of a company vice president. But when Ed Rust Sr. was dying of throat cancer, my father, then retired, put some of his soup through a blender and gave it to Mr. Rust.
I didn't send that letter because I worried about my investments. I sent it because, to my surprise, I discovered I still care about the company. And it, large lumbering creature though it has become, still remembers us.
In the world of stock scams and corporate greed and employees who jump ship at the whiff of a new offer, it is reassuring to know one can still feel that kind of connection to the place where we do our work. It is something to hold on to. If we lose it, I'm not sure that what we have left will be worth keeping.
