Autobiography - The Galindo Group

Ram Galindo THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN Page 138
and after a couple of years she decided to work outside a family company, as Kim had
done earlier. However, she did not take this step before positioning Aerofit for the short
opportunity the marketplace would offer to achieve real financial success; success that
we experienced between 1991 and 1997.
Aerofit represented to me the one bright spot in an otherwise dismal period of the late
1980s. After Cid stabilized it, it was not making large profits but at least it was holding its
own. Conversely, my real estate and banking ventures were losing most of what I had
accumulated. Above all, Aerofit gave me the instrument to hold and grow my family
together, a place to work out and have fun while working, a healthy environment to
unwind and meet like-minded fit friends, office space for me and jobs for my children,
and eventually a small but predictable cash flow. At the community level I reveled at the
sight of how many people beamed about what Aerofit had done for them. I saw
customers curing themselves from many sedentary-life induced diseases just by
becoming active; gaining self-confidence with their new looks after some weight loss
and muscle gain; starting new relationships that often cured broken hearts and
sometimes ended in new marriages; fighting back degenerative maladies with great
doses of will power and some exercise; training for athletic competition; participating in
sports events held at the club; and many more worthwhile goals, each important to each
person.
In 1989, one of our members, Dr. Jessie Coon, a retired physics professor from Texas
A&M, went so far as to give Aerofit a $10,000 dollar gift as a token of what Aerofit
meant to him. We promptly set up a trust under his name and used the funds to improve
aquatic programs. Today, at age 91, Jessie, who barely looks 65, continues to break
world records for age-swimming championships. In another example, in memory of a
member who used to run with us and was killed by cancer, my brother Chris took it
upon himself to organize a yearly community-wide 5K race based at Aerofit to raise
funds for the fight against that disease. Over a period of thirteen years he raised close
to $70,000 for the Cancer Foundation. Aerofit holds events such as racquetball, tennis,
swimming, triathlons, weight lifting, basketball and other tournaments. It was, and still is,
a real joy to see the effect that Aerofit caused in the community. Without a doubt we had
raised the quality of life of not just the Bryan-College Station area but also of a larger
sector of the Brazos River valley, as we had many members from every neighboring
town.
On August 24, 1991, the Galindo Group of companies held a “Vision Horizon”
conference to look at vistas of what we could do in the next five years, which I perceived
would be a period of opportunity. The Aerofit staff and board, led by Cid, came up with
an expansion plan into other cities. In pursuit of that plan we opened a satellite facility in
College Station and purchased two gyms in Austin that had fallen onto hard times. The
College Station unit performed very well until TAMU drove it out of business. But,
despite our efforts and a good infusion of money, we were not able to turn the Austin
gyms around. Events demonstrated that a lot more capital was needed to reposition
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