Autobiography - The Galindo Group

Ram Galindo THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN Page 136
Throughout the construction period I had employed a couple of Phys Ed teachers from
Texas A&M to prepare them for the direction of the company. The building was a
monument to exercise, beautifully but functionally laid-out and wrapped with a glass
curtain wall that brought the outdoors in. Sunlight bathes the swimming pool and grand
court areas and allows trees and sky to be seen from the inside while being totally
climate controlled. At night passersby can look into the building past the ample and
wooded perimeter yards and through the two-way mirrored curtain walls see people
engaged in all sorts of physical activities, from basketball, running, swimming or
weightlifting to gymnastics and other coached sports.
On opening day, September 24, 1984, the university professors got cold feet and were
nowhere to be found. I was left with all the challenges of receiving new members and
operating the facility without any trained managers. At the time Dawn Suehs was
working as my business manager. Upon seeing the bad fix I was in, she valiantly
volunteered to fill the void. Dawn had to contend not only with the problem of learning
what the service was all about, but also with implementing a business model that
experience began showing was significantly flawed. She presided for a one-year period
of heavy financial hemorrhaging that forced me to pour in monthly subsidies at a rate I
could barely afford. She kept the company and me going but at the end of the first year
she felt she had done all she could. And she certainly did more than the highly paid
university professors ever did. We hired a new manager but his tenure was more
detrimental than helpful. It was providential that at just about this time my son Cid was
completing his undergraduate college education and that he took notice of my bad
straits.
Cid Alfredo Galindo is the oldest of my three children. He started working for a family
company when he was eleven years old as a machete-man in a survey crew at
Westwood Estates. He learned early to deal with heat, thirst, briars, poison ivy, ticks,
snakes and other varmints. He now jokes that, under current laws, I could be accused
of child abuse, but I think he will do the same with his own children, for experience has
demonstrated that I could not have asked for, or received, a better son. By the time he
was in junior high school, he started managing the first residential rental properties I had
began building. On more than one occasion I remember receiving calls from skeptic
would-be renters who wanted reassurance that the kid who was trying to sign a lease
with them was empowered to do so.
Bryan high school is a 5A facility with a large student enrollment. Cid finished as
valedictorian of the class of 1981. He was also captain of the gymnastics team and was
involved in many student activities. He was heavily recruited by many universities
throughout the country with offers of generous scholarships, but decided to attend
Texas A&M. He never told me this but I am convinced he did so in solidarity with his
younger sisters and me, as we were all struggling to adjust to the rigors of a one-parent
family.
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