Autobiography - The Galindo Group

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Ram Galindo THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN Page 98 My department at Brown & Root was, in my judgment, the best “graduate engineering business” school I could have attended. The beauty was that instead of me paying for my education, I was getting paid. My two immediate bosses, John Mackin and Delbert Johnson, were about as smart as any one I had ever met, and they often talked about establishing their own consulting firm. That talk interested me and I offered my support. As time went on and their plans never materialized, I began to dream about creating my own engineering firm. All this time my parents, but my mother more vocally, kept expressing their wish that I go back to Cochabamba, where they had recently returned from their Peruvian sojourn. Although I was well paid as an engineer, recently married and now expecting my first child, I felt that I still had some evenings free when I could generate extra income. In college I had been a member of the gymnastics team and now missed the sport. Always seeking the highest efficiency, I was looking for an opportunity that would allow me to practice gymnastics and at the same time generate some revenue. After some searching, I found a job at the Downtown Houston YMCA to run its gymnastics program. In a short time I built up a team of wonderful teenagers with whom I developed great friendships and for whom I became a role model. I felt that the value I was creating with them surpassed the monetary compensation I was receiving, but since I was already fulfilling my material needs, their respect and thankfulness were a significant added satisfaction to me. By the time I left to seek my new venture in South America, those kids had become an integral part of my life. My wife and brand new son would go to workouts with me and my team members would help us baby-sit. I experienced a non-monetary form of compensation for value created that, in my circumstances, became more important than money itself. I believe that seeing other human beings improve under our personal influence is an irreplaceable reward. It is the reward good teachers crave and the fuel that drives their superior achievements. While at Texas A&M, I made friendships with a range of school buddies that destiny threw my way. Two of them impacted my life for the rest of my years because it was with them that I would later combine forces to launch some of my value-creation efforts. One, Joseph A. Elliott, had a double major - electrical engineering and English. He was on the fencing team and I was, depending on the season, either on the diving or gymnastics team. As a way to help students that competed in varsity sports, the college provided us with the last meal of the day for free. Eating at “late tables,” many of us became good friends. Within a dozen years after graduation, Joe had become the national epee champion and was traveling all over the world representing the United States, including tournaments in Moscow and Havana during the height of the cold war. But, ignorant of the future at those late tables of 1960, we talked of adventure, travel and exploration. From the time I met him, I was inspired by Joe’s natural self-reliance, a quality that later would become supremely important to both our destinies. Autobiography.doc 98 of 239
Ram Galindo THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN Page 99 The other was Lee L. Lowery. I met Lee as a sophomore when, as part of our engineering education, we were both doing surveying field practices in the west Texas town of Junction, where I first encountered the critters I wrote about earlier. During the regular school year Lee earned his living as a waiter in the same student mess hall in which I ate. Lee and I had many classes together since we were both studying civil engineering. What impressed me most about Lee was his steadfastness at work and at school. I don’t think he ever missed a day on either one; nor do I think he had confused priorities for the use of his hard-earned money. After finishing undergraduate school he went right-on to get master and Ph.D. degrees in civil engineering, eventually becoming one of the most decorated professors in this department at his alma matter. Fifteen years later Lee would be the catalyst for my first real estate development project in Texas. As time passed, my work at Brown & Root continued to be exciting and challenging, but I was getting more and more impatient with the caution my admired bosses displayed at making a move to go on their own, with me in their wake. In the third quarter of 1963, my father suggested I apply for employment with a New York based consulting engineering company then under contract with the Bolivian government to design a system of roads throughout the country. It was funded by the U.S. government as part of President Kennedy’s “Partners of the Alliance” program. I was promptly offered a job and was told I would be the highest paid Bolivian engineer on their staff. Joe Elliott and I had talked about adventure for many months now and I thought this might be a good opportunity to start. By this time he was working in California for an aerospace company but was single and therefore easy to convince. Together we concocted a land trip from Houston, Texas, to Cochabamba, Bolivia. We sold everything we couldn’t pack and shared the purchase of a brand new International “Scout”, which I drove with my wife and baby son from Houston to Mexico City. Joe flew in from Los Angeles to meet me there. The next day Kirsten (my then wife and mother of all my children) and Cid (my first born and only son), left by air to Cochabamba, Bolivia, where my parents met them. When loaded with all our belongings, the Scout still had room to spare. Joe and I immediately continued by land on a 35-day trip worthy of a book by itself. Although not as extensively as it would be in a separate story, I make further comments about this odyssey in Adventure (Chapter 4 of this autobiography). We conceived a plan to document our trip with a diary and plenty of pictures prominently featuring the Scout, which was a brand new vehicle manufactured by International Harvester (IH). It was intended as competition to the Jeep, and to its manufacturer it represented a daring effort to stay in business. We thought that at the end of the trip we might be able to sell the rights to our saga to market the very reliable Scout. It was our hope to recoup some of our trip expenses. Autobiography.doc 99 of 239
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Bernard Bailyn, THE IDEOLOGICAL ORI
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George Fuermann, HOUSTON LAND OF TH
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Council for Natural Cooperation in
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Autobiography - The Galindo Group

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