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Pete Conrad: The Right Stuff
ATC’s legendary co-founder Bill Daniels
surrounded himself with some equally
colorful characters over the years. None more
so than Charles “Pete” Conrad, Jr., who served
on ATC’s inaugural board of directors, and as
ATC’s chief operating officer, from 1973 to 1976.
Conrad, who met Daniels as a precision flyer
for the U.S. Navy, went on to achieve worldwide
fame as a U.S. astronaut and the third man to
walk on the moon. He was featured prominently
in The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe’s portrait
of the Mercury space program (even though
Conrad didn’t fly in space until he served as an
astronaut in the Gemini space program);
and in Rocketman: Astronaut Pete Conrad’s
Incredible Ride to the Moon and Beyond,
written by his second wife, Nancy Conrad,
and Howard Klausner. On his final mission in
space, Conrad used brute force during a
spacewalk to free a solar panel on Skylab 2,
thereby salvaging the mission.
36 Making Connections : Time Warner Cable and the Broadband Revolution
Astronaut Charles “Pete” Conrad Jr. served
on ATC’s inaugural board of directors and
was the company’s chief operating officer
from 1973 to 1976.
Conrad raised ATC’s national profile with
regulators and legislators in Washington,
and he was a magnet at industry and client
meetings. Standing a mere five-and-a-half
feet tall, it was nonetheless easy to find
Conrad in a crowd, recalled Jimmy Doolittle,
who had joined ATC as a system manager
a few years earlier than Conrad, because
Conrad was invariably in the center of it.
“You walk into a room and everybody’s
going to huddle around Pete,” Doolittle said,
“because Pete was the best storyteller you
ever heard. And he could talk your head off.” 11
Returning to his aviation and aerospace
roots, Conrad joined McDonnell Douglas
in 1976. Reuniting with Daniels in 1996, three
years before his death as a result of injuries
suffered in a motorcycle accident, Conrad
was a crew member on a Lear Jet owned by
Daniels that set a record for an around-theworld
flight.
“This Is a People Business”
Rifkin, setting a standard that has endured to the
present day, also placed great importance on
attracting and developing talented executives
and managers at all levels of the rapidly growing
company. While most of his rivals were still pro-
moting technicians who may have been splicing
cable in the 1960s to managers in the 1970s,
Rifkin was knocking on business school and
industry doors to attract the best and brightest.
At the same time, he was intent on developing the
skill levels of his existing technical staff. In 1970,
at company headquarters in Denver, he created
one of the industry’s first full-fledged engineering
departments to design and coordinate the con-
struction and maintenance of ATC’s systems
and franchises. 12
As Rifkin, then 41, told the Rocky Mountain News in
May 1971, “The key to our progress is our management
team. This is a people business, and the
people on our staff are the most valuable resource
we have. The most important aspect of this busi-
ness is what kind of creative talent you have got
in management.” 13
Following his recruiting of Doug Dittrick from
General Electric Cablevision Corp. on the eve of
taking ATC public, Rifkin over the next few years
added former FCC attorney Bruce. E. Lovett as
ATC’s vice president for corporate development
and its eyes and ears in Washington, D.C. Lovett
also served as general counsel for the NCTA,
the industry’s main trade group and lobby arm,
during this period. Another FCC staffer, David
Kinley, joined ATC in 1976 and played an important
role in helping the company gain urban
franchises around the country. 14