OJ - Prior to your being on the JMB Board, did you always come to stockholders meetings?

Dick - I've been coming for 29 years as a Board member and then before that, with my parents. I've been around a while.

OJ - I don't know anything about your mother, Lilla "Pat" Burguières Leike. Tell us about Pat.

Dick - Pat was the eldest of Charles Patout Burguières, Sr.'s kids. There were 8 children: Pat, Charles Patout, Jr., John, Marie Corinne, Gregory, Barat, William, and Pierre. Patout, her father, was born in 1888 and died at about age 99. He married Lilla Withnell from St. Louis, Missouri. Pat, or "Patsy" as my mother was called, was born on Midway Plantation. The family moved back to the city like everybody else did in those days.

OJ - Where did they move to?

Dick - I think they moved to Calhoun St. in uptown New Orleans.

Gertrude - Where did Pat go to school?

Dick - She went to Maryville University in St. Louis for her undergraduate degree and then to LSU in Baton Rouge for her master's degree in Library Science and English. Pat, her mother Lilla Withnell, and my sister Lillamaud are all Maryville graduates. She met my father at LSU. His name was Lee Munsell Leike.

OJ - Tell me about your dad.

Dick - He grew up in Oklahoma and got his undergraduate degree in accounting from the University of Oklahoma, then he went to LSU and he met my mother. He got a masters degree in accounting at LSU. When Pat was finishing her undergraduate work in St. Louis, they would meet up near Shreveport, La. He would take a train from Baton Rouge and she would take a train from St. Louis. They were eventually married here in New Orleans in 1936. There is a picture of them walking out of the church, off of St. Charles Ave.

OJ - Who did your dad work for?

Dick - He went to work for Standard Oil of New Jersey. He traveled a great deal. His first job was in Shreveport. Then he was sent to Atlanta, on loan, to another project. That's how I ended up being born in Atlanta. As children we called my dad, "Pop" and my mother, Pat. Dad was a natural athlete and I was close to him. We did a lot together in our backyard when he was home. We played baseball, badminton, pitch and catch. But the most remarkable thing about him was that he was also a natural pianist. He could hear any music and play it back. He didn't read music; it was all by ear. Classical, pop, ragtime, it didn't matter, he could play it all. He was ambidextrous and could write with both hands. He had two signatures, left-handed and righthanded.

Gertrude - Was he involved in WWII?

Dick - He was flat-footed and he was in the oil and gas business which, I guess, was an essential industry.

OJ - Let's talk about your education.

Dick - I was born November 1942 and went to Christ the King Catholic elementary school on Peachtree St. in Atlanta. My wife and I were married there at the church years later in 1963. Marie Corinne, my aunt, married Cornelius Thomas Ducey, Sr. there in the early 1940's during the war. I went to school there through the 7th grade, then Pop got transferred. The company's main office was at Rockefeller Center in New York. Pat, my sister Lillamaud, and I stayed in Atlanta and Dad travelled. We spent one summer in Harrisburg, Pa. when the company needed him up there. Then they asked him to go oversees to either Indonesia or Iran.

Pat and Pop studied on that for a while and they chose Iran. At that time Iran had the largest refinery in the world. The British owned it and they were told that they couldn't come back and run it unless they sold controlling interest to other countries. That's when Shell, Texaco, Standard Oil of New Jersey and others bought a part of that refinery. Pop was sent over there for the reopening of that refinery.

In 1954 we left for Iran. Pop had gone about four months earlier. We kept the house in Atlanta and the trip oversees was to be a two year stint. We cruised on the SS America across the North Atlantic. Pat took Lilla and I and we toured London, Paris, Rome, and all over. Then we got on a plane to meet my dad in Iran. My 8th grade was in Iran, but they didn't have a 9th grade in the school for foreign students. Pat being the educator she was, taught math, English, French, Spanish, and Geography in high school but she still made me go to a French, all boys' Catholic school in Geneva for my 9th grade. When we came back to the States, I didn't have to fallback or anything. In Geneva I was able to communicate with my buddies. I could speak French conversationally, so I got by. It was really neat and a wonderful experience.

OJ - So you're a teenager and you come back to the States after what was clearly a once-in-a-lifetime experience oversees. Now what?

Dick - I went to Marist School with the Marist Fathers in the old campus, downtown Atlanta. We were all military dress code. When we came back, my father had been offered a Vice President position with Standard Oil. They didn't give it to him so he quit after 23 years with the company. He was very upset! He could have retired in two years.

As it turned out, he and my mother had saved 10% of everything they made throughout their working life. My mother also had worked. She ended up her career working with the Fulton County School System in Atlanta. In my 10th grade, we moved out of our home into another one in Sandy Springs, Ga., just north of Atlanta. Pat and Pop went into business and within two years they had lost their entire life savings. They were in the hardwood pallet manufacturing business on Bankhead Hwy. in Atlanta. When I had time I would go out there and assemble pallets. When I was 16, I started selling pallets for my dad. I also sold industrial batteries for forklifts. By then Dad had lost his business and had become a manufacturer's rep for other companies.

OJ - Were your mother and dad able to keep the home your family lived in?

Dick - We were. My mother was back teaching but there wasn't money to send me to the colleges that had accepted me. I graduated high school at 17 and started going to Georgia State night school in downtown Atlanta. I was taking real estate classes. One of my fraternity brothers there came to me and said he wasn't interested in going to Vietnam so he had enlisted in the Coast Guard for six months active duty. He asked me if I would run his business while he was away at basic training. The business was maintaining apartments and doing work at hotels. When the rooms were vacated, we would make sure that they were cleaned. We also took care of swimming pools in the summer and winter.

OJ - Did that turn out to be your first job? And what about your susceptibility to being drafted?

Dick - I was always eligible for the draft but was never drafted. Anyhow, I took the job. While I was working, I met the guys who actually owned the apartment buildings. We got along fine. They eventually came to me and asked if I would start a construction company. The concept was to bring housing up to urban renewal standards in the blighted areas of Atlanta. I told them I thought I could do that and I became the President of Omega Construction Company. Shortly after, my buddy came back from Coast Guard training and took his business back. So, at age 19, I was running a construction business and I had past experience in the apartment and hotel maintenance field. Over a period of the next six or seven years, Omega Construction Company went from remodeling older houses to remodeling office buildings in downtown Atlanta and high-end apartments. It was a good ride!

Then we got this idea to build a Dairy Queen store. Dairy Queen was going great guns in Atlanta and one guy, Jim Crookshank, was the master franchisee for the entire state of Georgia. So, we bought a franchise from Dairy Queen. I built that store and opened it. The problem was that I didn't have anything in writing that gave me ownership or a part of ownership of that store or anything else. My daughter Carlton had been born by then and my wife and I had been married since December 1963 when we were 21. I was getting nervous.

Reluctantly, I went to see the sons of the guy I had been working for all those years. The sons had now taken over management. I asked for something in writing that would protect me and give me an ownership slice. I certainly deserved it! I gave the boys two weeks to come up with something.

Nothing happened so I walked out and went straight to Jim Crookshank, who was the master franchisee. He gave me a job on the spot and they put me in charge of 30 stores right away. I was District Manager and ended up also handling leases as they came up. I also remodeled the stores when that was necessary. One thing led to another and I was finally called up to Minneapolis and talked to Harris Cooper who was chairman of Dairy Queen. They wanted to put me over 300 stores in six-and-a-half states in a new region that was being formed. They wanted me to move to Tennessee and pick out a city for a regional office. I thought Memphis was the right city and I took the job.

Meanwhile, I was still in night school taking real estate courses. So between setting up a new office and moving to Memphis, I graduated from Georgia State University with a B.B.A. in real estate. We found a house in Germantown, Tennessee, and bought a horse that I had promised to JoAnne.

OJ - How long did you stay with Diary Queen?

Dick - It took me two years to figure out I didn't like the corporate world and that I wanted to control my own destiny and be my own boss. So I went into the real estate business with the Sterling Company. Harold Crye, my partner today, had started with Sterling three months before I started. Harold became their sales manager and I was the top producer. Three years later, in 1976, Harold and I got to talking and we decided we could run a real estate company better than the Sterling Company could. Harold and I have been at it 37 years since then, and its working great.

OJ - Dick, when you and Harold started your real estate business together, you moved into other markets pretty quickly didn't you?

Dick - That's right! It took us three years to become No. 1 in the Memphis market. Then we decided to take a run at the Nashville market. I stayed in Memphis and Harold went to Nashville. He built that market to the No. 1 position, and then went to Chattanooga. From that point, we started franchising in areas we did not want to establish a corporate office. Harold then went to Little Rock, Arkansas. He just loved going into markets and building the Crye-Leike name. Next, he went to northwest Arkansas and we became No. 1 there; then he went to Atlanta which was one of the toughest markets because of the commission splits. Currently, Crye-Leike is No. 1 in the Nashville, Memphis, Little Rock, and Chattanooga markets. We're also into northeast Georgia and we're growing.

OJ - Your business experience and the Crye-Leike Co. were strong reasons to have you on the Board of JMB. Ron and Philip must have quickly seen that. At that point, the Board had 3 powerhouse executives leading the company and a host of talent.

Dick - I don't know about me being a powerhouse, but certainly Ron and Philip were there with their corporate backgrounds.

OJ - My point is that for the first time in years, JMB had strong leadership on the Board from each family. And that family leadership has the responsibility of communicating issues of importance to family members. So if the Board meetings are civil and Board members are communicating that civility to the individual family members, why did we end up with rough-going when the shareholders got together? I've had other people describe it to me as an "undercurrent of mistrust." The years I'm talking about are 1981-2000.

Dick - The Board worked well together back then except when legal philosophy got in the way of common sense. Philip ran directors’ meetings the way he was accustomed to in the corporate world and the way he felt was most efficient. We did things that way and it worked well. That ran head-on into the positions that a minority of the Board members had. I remember a meeting that took place in Franklin. Philip, with the backing of Ron, asked all of us to sign a document. Two members of the Board wouldn't sign it. I signed it because I thought it was good for the benefit of the whole company after thinking about it. Other people also signed it and it ultimately passed. I guess the dissenting votes went back to their families and painted the story any way they wanted to. That leads to dissension.

Gertrude - When you were asked to join the Board in 1981 and represent the Patout family, I bet it felt good.

Dick - It did. It really meant a lot to me. The Patouts had a reputation then of being disruptive. Granddaddy certainly was. And I don't think the family wanted any more of that going on. Granddaddy is Charles Patout Burguières, Sr., of course, referred to as "Uncle Pat" by many family members. He was the youngest surviving child of Jules Sr. and Marie Corinne. His father may not have even thought of him as a child because of the differences in ages of the children.

Uncle Pat was 12 when his father died and felt like he had to fight for everything his entire life. At least he thought he did. Or maybe he was just a poor salesman and felt he was entitled to things he really wasn't.

OJ - What was happening about the time you joined the Board in 1981?

Dick - I remember my cousin, Cornelius "Tom" Ducey, Jr. (Marie Corinne's oldest son) was brought on the Board about the same time I was. He was a lawyer. Then another cousin Richard K. Leefe joined the Board. In those days, Philip wanted a Board in complete agreement. He didn't want disagreement or any dissention. Everybody knew that. That's how Philip was and that approach really worked for the Company. We all knew that. He had seen all the dissention he could tolerate through those early years and he wanted a smooth running Board. That's not to say everybody couldn't have their individual opinions.

Gertrude - Was there vision back then or was it an effort to save what could be saved and to release what was beyond repair?

Dick - There was vision. We knew where decisions had to be made and we didn't hide from those decisions. This was a matter of slowly but surely adjusting the make-up of a Board that both Ron and Philip felt needed adjusting. And remember this, all of us were running our own companies. It wasn't as if we could drop everything in our lives to address the minutia of JMB. We needed a totally committed Board and a Board with a long-range vision. In the Southern States negotiations, Richard felt that Philip had prior knowledge of the condemnation that was soon to follow. Ron says he did not and I say he did not. That should have been the end of it, but it wasn't. I did a careful analysis of everything and I felt we had to move on that deal for the good of the family and JMB. The way Southern States was being run was not in lockstep with how JMB could ultimately manage and run it. They were not running it for the good of the stockholders and that was perfectly evident in the way we ultimately ran the company. What it means is that we had the right to put up a rig and drill for oil on anyone's front yard. That's powerful control and control not to be abused. It's called exploration rights and that's what we had. I called Richard this week and asked him to come back to the meetings but I haven't heard back from him. The days of holding grudges are over. JMB is a different company than it was 20 years ago. Richard was an important part of this Company years ago and we could benefit from his assistance.

OJ - Going into our shareholders meeting tomorrow morning, what is your impression of the Board?

Dick - It's neat to have the young folks involved and they have a tremendous responsibility. And we haven't messed with it since they took over. As long as they realize that they've got to keep dividends coming into the stockholders and at the same time grow the new business units, all will be fine. What I'm saying is that they have to grow the Company carefully.

OJ - I think it's necessary that Board members stay up to speed with all of our operations, down to the smallest detail.

Dick - I do too. I could sit in on meetings and sometimes I do. I'm on calls and I stay abreast with what's going on. I read all the material and make it a point to be on the quarterly phone calls.

OJ - That brings up a point I wanted to talk about. Since the quarterly phone calls were instituted, we have had consistently low participation. The number of participants hardly ever changes. This was from a shareholder group that complained about "not enough communication."

Dick - I think that people just don't care enough to be a part of the calls. In many ways it's a vote of confidence. They think the Company is being run correctly and are happy with the way things are. Glenn is a great operations guy who has the responsibility to bring his direction to the Board for approval and the Board has the responsibility to know the details of those things that Glenn brings. Take Dale Pfost for instance. He brings a newness to the Board in what is being thought about and how to think about it. But if the Board doesn't know at what level Dale has taken the discussion, then the newness of what Dale brings to the table is lost.

OJ - Is Dale an agitator? I say that with fondness.

Dick - No, not at all. He's doing his job as an impartial Board member. I think Robert is also that way. All in all, I think we are well set to face the challenges that economies and business throw at us.

Gertrude - You were on the Board for 29 years. Highlight those two or three things that stand out in your mind as being critical to what JMB is today.

Dick - Certainly the C Corp. to S Corp. change was critical. The Southern States Land and Timber acquisition was a major growing time for us. The change in management from Cliff LeBlanc to ultimately Glenn Vice was a game-changer, and the Texas land purchase was a big deal. Philip went way out on a limb on that one, but I believe it turned out in the best interest for the Company. We have a tremendous water opportunity in Texas, not to mention oil and gas possibilities and, of course, the appreciation of the asset itself.

OJ - Looking back, what kind of score do Philip Burguières and Ron Cambre get?

Dick - High scores! These guys had things that they wanted to get done and things that they knew had to get done. I think their leadership strength comes from both guys being in related careers. They knew what it would take to make things happen. They had seen what had taken place in the past and knew it was wrong. They had connections and had a nose for where the money was. That ability is extraordinary. Dale brings that same ability.

We were talking earlier about a certain "undercurrent of mistrust" that exists within the Burguières family. Maybe it's the French blood! It's a suspicion that's there. From my perspective, I just don't hang around negative people. I just don't want any part of negative feelings. It's not healthy, but within a family, particularly of the size of ours, dissension exists, and you just have to do everything in your power to fix it. Meetings, quarterly papers, quarterly telephone calls all help. But the big correction is when the people from that past generation of doubt slowly move on. Then attitudes change. It's slow, but it will happen. The sitting Board has to demonstrate leadership. If a Board member is not committed, then move the member off the Board. It's not a slap in the face. People are busy with their own lives and people need time to address their own problems. There will be some changes in Board structure in the not too distant future, good changes and well thought out changes. And that's good. JMB has come so far. We know our weaknesses and I think we know our strengths. We're into things that are new and different and things that set us up for the future.

OJ - Last buy very important is JoAnne. Tell us about her.

Dick - She is the youngest of three girls. She lost her middle sister recently to cancer. Her older sister lives in Atlanta and is 81 years old. JoAnne and I have been married for fifty years this December 2014. We have only had a housekeeper three days of our fifty-one years of marriage. JoAnne does it all. She takes care of both houses that we own. That's how she is. Both of us are like that.

We like to do things, not look at other people doing things. Our first get-away was a 57-foot Chris Craft aluminum Roamer we owned for over twenty-four years. We finally sold that boat. The second get-away was the house in Columbus, Mississippi, named "White Arches." We've been there twelve years and are still working on it. We started furnishing it when we got the house. We bought it with period furniture that was fitting to the time the house was originally built. We kept adding and putting American period furniture from the same time frame. We've got things that were made in New York, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Cincinnati, and other cities. We started going to auctions and had a lot of fun doing it. We met a lot of nice people and probably have the house pretty well furnished the way we want it. And God bless Pepper Brown, as he called us and had found a Mallard bedroom set which now sits in our Columbus home.