DON RUMSFELD -- THE VIEW FROM THE COLD DORM

Quick, if I were to ask you to respond with the first image what comes to mind when I say "Howard Dean," how would you respond?

About a year ago, I attended a meeting with a handful of state utility regulatory commissioners, and got into a conversation with my colleague from Vermont, John Burke. The topic: the real Howard Dean, former Governor of Vermont, Democratic candidate for President and current chairman of the Democratic National Committee. I was struck by the how completely Dean had been defined and forever identified by the media with the "Dean scream," a sound byte lasting just a few seconds. In the conversation which followed, I learned from John that the Howard Dean he first knew as Governor was very different from the caricature shaped by the national media...indeed, had a reputation as a moderate during his years as Governor.

This is not about what you may think of Howard Dean or his politics. Although it is about how what you think about him and other public figures, and how our views are formed. It's about the real people behind the caricatures created of them by the national media.

Roger Thies, Wabash 1966, is in a position to speak to this question with authority. Recently, we got together for dinner, which gave me a chance to thank him for his participation in the Phi Psi Campaign for Leadership and to catch up on what he has been doing for most of the past 40 years.

After graduating, he went on to the University of Chicago School of Law, graduating in 1969. After knocking around for awhile (there were a lot of us doing a little of that back then), at the suggestion of his sister, he joined G. D. Searle & Co. as a staff attorney in 1970.

G.D. Searle & Co. was founded in Omaha, Nebraska in 1888 and was incorporated in Chicago in 1908, locating in suburban Chicago in 1941. Searle focused on pharmaceuticals and because of its success expanded into making complex medical devices and animal health products. The company is known for its release of Enovid, the first commercial oral contraceptive, in 1960. It is also known for its release of the first bulk laxative, Metamucil, in 1934; Dramamine, for motion sickness; the COX-2 inhibitor Celebrex; Ambien for insomnia; and NutraSweet, an artificial sweetener, in 1981.

By the mid-1970s, the company was struggling because of an absence of new patented pharmaceutical products and, in part due to the FDA's reluctance to approve aspartame (NutraSweet) because of alleged adverse effects on animals in testing. In 1977, after a two-year stint as the youngest Secretary of Defense in the nation's history, Donald Rumsfeld was named CEO at Searle. The turnaround proved to be challenging, as the number of employees in the company was cut by more than half as the company returned to its core strength in pharmaceuticals and NutraSweet. . One of the people Rumsfeld turned to was Brother Thies.

Getting Roger to talk about his experiences working with Rumsfeld was difficult, perhaps because Rumsfeld -- like Dean -- has been caricatured by the media. Opinions of both men tend to be polarized. As Roger opened up, however, a different picture of Rumsfeld emerged. During those challenging years, the portrait Brother Thies paints is of a businessman who focused on rebuilding a business based on the company’s core strengths. Roger’s stories described a leader who demanded preparation and timely advice from his staff, listened and made decisions based on the information he was provided. Rumsfeld’s concerns for ethical behavior and patient safety were critical in the decisions he made as he revitalized the company. Roger’s admiration for Rumsfeld was apparent in everything he said. While Roger didn't say so, as the outlines of Rumsfeld's portrait emerged, it was also apparent that Rumsfeld relied on Roger for input. Brother Thies' anecdotes focused on Rumsfeld but also revealed why Roger became a key adviser: he didn't sugar-coat his input and was direct, on occasion perhaps even brutally candid, in his advice on company practices. It is perhaps telling that Brother Thies was assigned the daunting task of getting NutraSweet approved, which was critical to the company’s success.

I suspect that Roger's initial hesitation to talk about Rumsfeld arises largely from a respect for his privacy and because the media portrait of Rumsfeld, like that of Dean, has been a polarizing one.

In 1985, after leading the term which turned around Searle, Rumsfeld guided the acquisition of G.D. Searle & Company by Monsanto. Monsanto Company and its G.D. Searle unit merged with Pharmacia & Upjohn (itself the result of the merger of Pharmacia and Upjohn) to become Pharmacia Corporation in April 2000. Pfizer in turn acquired Pharmacia in 2003.

In 1988, after serving as Searle’s Vice President and General Counsel, Brother Thies moved to Washington and joined a relatively small law firm, Hyman, Phelps & McNamara. The emerging firm quickly built a reputation and an impressive client list. Characterized by Roger as a "boutique firm," HPM has grown to become the largest dedicated food and drug law firm in the nation, although I had to go to the firm's Web site to learn that fact.

Roger has two adult sons, one of whom has followed him into the law; the other is a member of a young rock band which is seeking to translate local popularity into a sustainable breakthrough.

Despite Roger's considerable accomplishments, many of those who knew him at Wabash will recall his abilities at the bridge and ping pong tables. Those in the classes which came after the Class of 1966 will also recall Roger's very specific and colorful standards for freshmen tasked with making wakeup calls.

I don't know how the system works now, but back then, when a "red tag" was hung on the call board, it meant that the rhyne was to make three calls in the five minutes leading up to the hour or half hour. On the third call, the recipient was to be turned out of bed if necessary.

In Roger's case, the first call was to be delivered with a large (in those days, 12 oz.) bottled Coke; the second call was to be accompanied by a cigarette; and on the third call, typically the rhyne found Bro. Thies sitting in his "tighty whities" with his legs over the side of his bed, somewhere between half and fully awake, drinking his Coke and puffing on his Viceroy before making his way downstairs from the dorm to greet the day.

For those who don't know him, Brother Thies' road from that Phi Psi cold dorm to the executive offices of GD Searle and then on to senior (aging as he would describe it) partner/director of a low profile but highly respected specialty Washington law firms might seem somewhat improbable. But for those who knew him back then, it makes perfect sense. And as Secretary Rumsfeld himself might put it, the dorm story need not be shared with Roger's clients, since they have no "need to know."

To discuss a particularly memorable hand of bridge or reconnect with Bro. Thies, drop him an e-mail at <RCT@hpm.com> or e-mail me if you want to give him a call.