Ralston Purina

i've got a name that lends itself to puns and i'm the first one to pun on it Some of my friends at Purdue University sent me that sign the other day.

He was a professor at Purdue and executive with Ralston Purina.

And when he became secretary of the Department of Agriculture, he very much bought into this idea of farming as a way to create cheap food.

For 40 years, my philosophy has been on the side of the private sector.

I'll meet you for coffee at Mimi's." So I drove to Mimi's on 17th, which in those days was a great place for people to meet, and I met this man, John Gorman, who indeed had built Jack in the Box.

He sold Jack in the Box to Ralston Purina.

Um, they ran it down.

He bought it back and took it public, and that was Jack in the Box, and he's the one that blew up Jack when he was a clown at which-

Well, I was living in Virginia in 1973 or four, something like that.

And we were doing full demonstrations for the company I worked for, which was Ralston Purina at the time.

And one of the sales people said, there are some horses down here in Petersburg and you need to go see them because they look different and they have different sizes than the normal quarter horses.

So make a long story short, I went there and I'd never seen anything like that before.

Uh, I was a manager at Coke by the age of 24.

I worked for the Ralston Purina Company, Nestle Purina today, and their patent cereal businesses.

Spent most of my formative years there with lots of accomplishments, achieving vice president level there.

moved to the Gillette company with senior vice president, one of the most senior executives at the Gillette company, uh, moved from there to, uh, Safeway stores all prior to me, uh, you know, moving to them, the CEO, uh, It was senior vice president, general manager at Safeway, ran 30 factories, thousands of employees, and about an $8 billion business.

But now we're peers and sit on a board together, which is, you know, kind of a beautiful kind of culmination of a, uh, career.

Those are two that I'd highlight, but there are all kinds of people, um, uh, on the path.

I had two fantastic, uh, mentors, coaches, and more importantly, kind of friends, uh, a gentleman, Warner Davis, who was one of the most senior African-American, uh, leaders when I was at Ralston Purina, um, And we just developed a really, really special bond.

At the end of his career, he ended up working for me.

And then we would go see the cards at the Keele Auditorium and then once or twice a year at the Checkerdome.

Most people know it as the arena, but when Ralston Purina owned it and owned the St. Louis Blues, It was called the Checker Dome.

And Jerry Oates was a regular in Central States and St. Louis around that 79 to 84 time frame where I really became a serious professional wrestling fan.

That's why I research professional wrestling history today is because during that time frame when I became a big fan of professional wrestling, I was listening to Larry Madison call the matches and his references to history and professional wrestling history really early on back with Dan O'Mahoney and wrestlers of the, you know, 20s and 30s.

Do you like to have your watch when you go to work? No.

Where do you work? I work for the Ralston Purina company.

Ralston Purina, huh? And what time do you work? Eight hours a day? Well, I travel a lot.

What time do you get off? Well, I quit about 4.30.

Well, maybe your watch would like that.

Namely, Aladdin brand Mario lunch boxes, Springs Industries bed sheets, sleeping bags, water games, school supplies, iron-on patches, and a cereal.

Ralston Purina's Nintendo cereal system was one of Nintendo's earliest North American merchandise food products.

Ralston had already been in business with Nintendo making cereal branded with both Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr.

The new product featured two separate bags in one box, one Mario themed and one linked themed.

GE CEO John Welch, CFR, and Vice Chairman of the Board Lawrence Bossidy, T.C., brought a majority of stake in Hungary's lightning industry.

Ralston Purina, Dow Chemical, Eastman Kodak, SC Johnson & Son, Xerox, American Express, Procter & Gamble, Woolworth, Philip Morris, Ford, Compaq Computer, hardly a single American brand name was missing.

Man, this is why when we talk with Colonel Towner about how infiltrated corporate America is with either spies or globalists that are acting as the quote-unquote economic hitmen, this is case in point right here.

All of these entities are led by people that are in the club.