Author: Chris Przybyszewski

Friends and relatives of Gary Paul Hooten, 24, are hoping that the missing man will make it home in time for the holidays. They are asking Memphians and any others with information on Hooten to assist them in their search.

Hooten was last seen on Wednesday, December 13th. He had telephoned his fiancee, Natasha Tejwani, at the home they share in Midtown to tell her that he would be going to attend a class at ITT Technical Institute and then returning home. No one has heard from Hooten since .

Police searches of the Memphis area have not discovered anything, not even Hooten’s vehicle.

Tejwani and Hooten are planning to be married in July and she says that at first she thought that maybe he was just “taking some time off,” to work off a case of prenuptial jitters. But as days went by Tejwani began to worry, especially when Hooten’s friends and relatives had not been contacted by him.

Tejwani and members of Hooten’s family ask that anyone who has seen the missing man or his vehicle contact the Memphis Police Department.

Name: Gary Paul Hooten

Age: 24

Race: White

Height: 5’9″

Weight: 160 – 170 pounds

Hair: Brown, curly and thinning

Eyes: Change from blue to gray; always wears prescription glasses with brown, oval frames

Other: Has a tongue piercing, also has a medical condition which causes the veins in the thumb and index finger of his right hand to always be swollen. Last seen wearing black jeans and a blue denim short-sleeved button-down shirt.

Hooten drives a 1997 metallic teal green, two-door, Chevy Cavalier with tinted windows and a rear spoiler. His car has a specialty Tennessee license plate with a purple cat and the license number is D4052.

As council chair, while I sit

I’ll make the changes I see fit.

I’m in charge and I can do

Whatever it is that I want to.

I’ll put a phone right by my loo

I’ll put it there ‘cause I want to.

It will cost the city lots of dough

But no one’s harmed if they don’t know.

I’ll stick to my guns like gum to a shoe

I’ll spend your money, ‘cause I want to.

I’ll change the policies, yes sir and mam

I’ll change the policies, council chair I am.

If it’s steak and potatoes that I lack

I’ll raise the per diem and take the flack.

We council need more money to eat

So up goes the budget, now bring on the meat!

And if I want to take a “business” trip

The city will pay, I don’t give a flip!

I sign off on my own receipts

It’s all in the records, so there’s no deceit.

If someone asks why I do what I do

I’ll let them know, because

She always leans in when she talks about people’s money and it’s usually just after they’ve left the room. “You know that’s so-and-so’s daughter.” She looks at me expectantly. I look at the closed door, enlightenment pending. I look back and jump: She’s leaned in closer and is now officially in my personal space, eyebrows raised suggestively. She’s waiting, ready to burst with her secret news, but needing the go-ahead from me, lest she be a lone gossip. After a subtle but essential body shift, I give her all I can muster, and that grudgingly.

“So?” (In retrospect, I realize I must be a terribly disappointing player in the Who’s Who game.)

“‘So?’” She’s mocking me now. “So, don’t you know what they own? They’re the ones who did the thing back a few years ago that made them all that money.” More tangible disinterest by me.

“And?”

“And, they’re set for life on a bad day.” I’m still not biting.

She harrumphs, dealing with my ignorance but unable to forgive my indifference toward one of the single hallmarks of her life: knowing who has money, how they got it, and how they spend it. To assume that my neighbor just has more time on her hands than I do might be missing the point. It’s certainly a generational difference as well, in this day of Internet riches and millions for the making the way they are in our culture. She lived through the Depression; I went snow-skiing every spring break. She packs everything away; I spring clean four times a year. She loves to talk about money; I prefer to dream about it.

My generation looks at money nonchalantly, the way we look at each other in bars — over our shoulder before we turn back to our drink. We know it can’t buy us love, we’ve forgotten Emily Post, and if we ever were Material Girls, most of us are over it. We’re jaded; we hunger for inspiration, “and everything else that money just can’t buy,” like Mr. Lovett says. We’re not so much uninterested with money as we are just bored with it. It’s just not news anymore; every third person we know comes from lots of money, makes a decent amount, or gets a quarterly check from the trust fund. One must either have a grand, undeniable fortune or have gotten whatever they have in some extraordinary fashion to be considered true grist for the rumor mill these days.

Growing up in an upper-middle-class suburb of Little Rock, I lived a charmed and sheltered life in which my biggest concern was not air-balling free-throws (which, to my dismay, I did quite regularly and publicly) and getting a date to the homecoming dance. I couldn’t distinguish between who had money and who didn’t, since everyone just did. As I’ve grown, I’ve learned that not only are there people out there with very little money, but I am one of them. The years since I waved Dad’s ticket goodbye have been startling and ugly, but I have a sneaking suspicion that this has more to do with money management than the money itself. Even through my “hard years,” there has still been money around, out there for the taking and the giving away. The years I spent at The Charitable Institute of Mississippi (some call it Ole Miss) only reinforced the everyday-ness of other people’s big money because folks there give money away in rather large chunks to avoid any number of taxable debacles in April; free parking anywhere on campus and/or building dedications merely a bonus.

So while my relationship with money has changed as I’ve gotten older, my view of it will never compare with my neighbor’s. My generation has never seen widespread poverty; we can’t even imagine it. That’s something for other countries and other times to deal with. Our parents say we don’t appreciate the value of a dollar, and they’re right. We haven’t been forced to appreciate it as their generation was, and we haven’t been taught to, either. TV shows give away millions for the right answer to a trivia question and our political leaders talk in the lingo of “surplus billions.” How could we possibly understand the notion of working for 20 cents an hour?

What we have been taught is that money means freedom: to do what we want, when we want. We fantasize about money — not our parents’ or our friends’, but our own, by our own success, and most of us search for it even today in our jobs, our life choices. The question my generation asks isn’t what would it be like without money, but what would it be like with even more?

My own fantasies are pretty basic, centering around the small, currently useless piece of plastic in my purse, which becomes a powerful, svelte Supercard, able to go places and not be declined. I hand it boldly to the car salesman when my ‘91 Mazda — with no washer fluid these three months and an unidentifiable squeaking noise — becomes more than I can bear, and I say, “Ya got anything with washer fluid and no squeak?” (I am an easy sell.) I use it at dinner with friends who’ve come through for me when I can’t pay my phone bill, and I say, “Kids, it’s on me,” and my friends cheer me. These are the dreams I have of money, and of financial freedom — from counting every penny, from staying on a budget, from making responsible choices — but they are likely no more accurate than my nightmares of having none.

Money brings requirements with it, likely the least of which is less responsibility. Be it by a church, a family, or a nosy neighbor, expectations and judgments of the wealthy in our society run rampant. I dream that I could live in seclusion with my money, inviting only nice people to my private island, but while the path of great money isn’t heavily trodden, it certainly is watched.

I know a young wealthy fellow with nary a higher education degree who made his fortune on a good idea and lucky timing, and if his small business ever goes public, he’ll count his success by the millions before he turns 25. But when I see him berate his employees — most of whom are twice his age with twice his degrees — I wonder what forces cause the pendulum of fortune to swing in his direction; I think he’s not worthy of the opportunity he’s been given to live in a society where success doesn’t stand in proportion to degrees framed on a wall. I expect things of him I wouldn’t expect of other people, as if his money somehow requires him to be a better person than I am. Does this come from seeing so many wealthy people give their money to “a good cause”? Is it the view of the American-churched, that like heaven, wealth is a reward for some good deed? Maybe it’s just the view of my generation: We don’t talk as much about money as older generations, but we expect more from those who have it.

Whatever has created this moolah-la land I’m not sure, but it may be the one place where my generation and my neighbor’s meet — we both pluck people with money out of the masses and find them different from us because of what they have. We find them worthy of our judgment or our conversation, and we quickly offer both. What we both miss when we do that is how they’re like us, which is in every other way. I believe that having money is like having an extra window in your home — right in the front with no blinds. Some people look in as they run by at night, glancing at each house; others set up camp in the yard and cook out, sending in notes about the dust on the mantel. Thus, the window, if we look in it right, reflects our curious faces, our outrageous expectations, and our clumsy feet, always tripping on the same crack in the sidewalk because we’re watching someone else’s path and not our own. May-be there are better days ahead, and the next generation will be the balance between the packrats and the simplifiers, the gawkers and the judgers, the view of our parents and the view of our peers. How much our children have or don’t have isn’t as important as someone near them who leans in and says, “See that girl over there? The one from that wealthy family? She looks exactly like you.”

[This originally appeared in the November issue of Memphis magazine.]

First Tennessee chairman Ralph Horn says his company had a typical buttoned-down approach to banking before shifting their focus to empowering employees. During the early 1990s, company executives were encouraging their employees to get involved in the community, but soon discovered, “we weren’t practicing what we were preaching,” says Horn. “Internally, we had all these strict rules and regulations for attendance, which hindered workers taking care of personal business on company time.”

So in 1993, the top executives at First Tennessee set out to reshape their corporate culture, something akin to making a U-turn in a battleship. Horn and his senior staff were convinced that by putting employees first – rather than stockholders – and making their company a great place to work, they’d be better able to tackle nagging problems like employee absenteeism and retention.

Making Changes from the Top Down

The executive staff met with several thousand employees during 1993, training managers on how to create a flexible work environment, and

spreading the word. “Training to change the culture of the company . . . got great buy-in from the majority of our employees,” notes Horn. “It showed them that we were serious about it, and it wasn’t just some new flavor of the month – we were going to put our money where our mouth was.”

But it wasn’t easy, says Horn, particularly since some new policies were a radical departure from the way the company had traditionally been

managed. For example, the adoption of flex-time, which gave employees more control over their work hours. “People were afraid to try it at first,” observes Horn, “because it was so different from the way we’d always operated.” But within the first year of its implementation, absenteeism began to drop, as did the use of sick time. Now 90 percent of employees are on flexible schedules.

“We saw a lot of companies offering flex-time, but not a lot of companies getting great utilization. Maybe about five to 10 percent of their employees were using it,” notes Pat Brown, senior vice president of performance development. “The fact that we have 90-plus percent is really record setting, according to Working Mother magazine. A lot of that comes back to the fact that I think we’ve made it okay, that’s it’s not a career-limiting move if you use flextime, [rather] it’s a tool and a resource for our employees.”

Not to mention a recruiting tool as well.

Family-friendly benefits like flex-time are what prompted Gwen Clark to come to work for First Tennessee. A corporate trainer, Clark opts to

work a compressed 40-hour week, freeing up Fridays to spend time with her two children. “My husband loves it because I come home happy from

work, like I’m appreciated, and I’m going someplace with this company,” she says.

Through their “Prime Time” program, First Tennessee also allows full-time employees to reduce their hours to as low as 20 hours a week while retaining full benefits. Brown says many working mothers take advantage of the program, enabling them to be home with their children

after school.

Listening to Employees

Perhaps most importantly, the company listens to employees to find out what they need to make the balancing act easier. Staff are randomly surveyed once a quarter to determine how they feel about the company and what prevents them from taking care of customers. “We’ll pick up family issues there,” notes Brown, “workplace stress, new benefits needed. And we have a history of taking action based on what our employees have said.”

From that feedback has come such benefits as assistance for dependent care, Sniffles ‘n’ Snuggles, a sick child care program available to workers at a reduced rate and run through Baptist Childcare Services, as well as family counseling support. Staffing specialist Amy Jenkins likens the employee assistance and referral program, to “my own Yellow Pages.” Jenkins used the referral service to shop for an MBA program, and found it particularly helpful when she needed ways of reducing stress.

These types of work/life benefits not only make good sense managerially, they make good sense economically. Early in the process, bank executives recognized a correlation between employee retention and customer retention. Since becoming more employee-focused, Brown says customer retention has jumped from 92 to 97 percent and employee retention is up from 77 percent to 83 percent.

Brown says she typically receives calls from other corporate peers who are looking for the silver bullet when it comes to work/life issues, but she always advises, “Lead with the power of your people.” It’s that kind of thinking that has put First Tennessee out front.

Tracking the Work/Life Trend at Schering-Plough

The notion of becoming more “family friendly” began percolating among the nation’s largest companies during the early ’90s, with the growing demand for quality child care. Executives at Schering-Plough Healthcare Products were aware of the need from their workers as well and decided to make child care a top priority. In 1993, they opened the doors to A Children’s Place at Schering-Plough HealthCare Products. It remains one of the only on-site child care centers in the city and one of seven day cares in Memphis accredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC).

Nationwide, only 10 percent of U.S. companies offer on- site or near-site child care, according to a survey by Hewitt Associates, a benefits consulting firm. But Pam Criddle believes the creation of the center was simply a logical extension for a company that’s long been employee-focused.

“There has always been an awareness and emphasis on human resources and what matters in the workplace,” notes Criddle, manager of human

resources at Schering-Plough. “We constantly evaluate programs we make available to make certain they’re still on target and still add value.” For Marcia Shea, having child care so near by “was very comforting to me, as a new mother.” All three of Shea’s children have been cared for at the center (which is subsidized by the company, but also open to the public), and she likens the staff to “extended family.” Having just returned from a six-month maternity leave (the company offers up to 28 weeks), Shea says Schering-Plough has been “extremely supportive” throughout her pregnancies. But Shea also did her part to ensure smooth transitions.

“I provided the company with a comprehensive plan that outlined who was going to do my job while I was away,” points out Shea, the director of customer support. When working mothers return to work, the company also allows them to phase back if needed, something Shea took advantage of with her second child.

“We learned several years ago that it’s not the money that’s keeping people here, it’s the day care center, the other things that create the

work/life balance that motivates them,” says senior communications specialist Gina Kamler.

Like First Tennessee, Schering-Plough has a corporate task force that discusses issues like work/life policies and employee retention on a

regular basis to stay abreast of what’s going on with employees. The company offers up to $3,000 in adoption assistance, an employee assistance program, and emphasizes wellness prevention with programs coordinated by a full-time nurse practitioner and an R.N. Included are on-site mammography and prostrate screenings, as well as a lactation program, complete with breast pumps, storage facilities for milk, and a private room for nursing mothers. Criddle says her department targets expectant mothers to make sure they know such benefits exist before going out on maternity.

“A company can duplicate anything we have,” says Criddle. “But the one thing they can’t duplicate are human resources and our corporate values.

So it’s really important that we stay focused on that – that employees recognize not only that the company values them but respects them.”

[This story was first published in Memphis Parent]

The name of FedEx founder and CEO Fred Smith — thanks wholly or in part to Tennessee Gov. Don Sundquist — has surfaced as a possible cabinet nominee of President-elect George W. Bush‘s; in particular, the legendary Memphis entrepreneur may be under consideration for the job of Secretary of Defense.

“I think he’d make a fine Secretary of Defense,” said U.S. Senator Bill Frist, acknowledging the possibility in a conference call with Tennessee reporters Monday. Frist, Senate liaison with the Bush campaign organization and the newly named chairman of the Republican Senate Campaign Committee, was fresh from a meeting on Capitol Hill between Bush and congressional leaders of both parties.

Frist’s statement came in response to a reporter’s suggestion that Governor Sundquist, chairman of Bush’s Tennessee campaign, had urged Smith’s name upon the president-elect.

FedEx spokesperson Jess Bunn said he had fielded several press inquiries about the prospect Monday morning but that, to his knowledge, Smith — who has recently had heart-bypass surgery — was not interested in taking a cabinet job, nor had he been offered one.

“That could change as I get more information, but as of now I can’t confirm that there’s anything to it,” said Bunn, when first asked about the speculation.

Later, Bunn supplied this as the company’s formal statement on the matter: “Mr. Smith would be honored to be considered for a cabinet position. However, he is completely focused on the growth and success of FedEx and has a passion for continuing to lead one of the premiere companies in the world.”

The Wednesday morning ice nicely complemented my anger. The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling(s) reflected a vote of 7-2 or 5-4 against Al Gore,

depending on which side of the bed they were trying to crawl into late on Tuesday night. My frustration is no longer hot. It is now frosty cold.

Convoluted. Confusing. Technical. These seem to be the buzzwords from the early morning TV pundits and hastily written news analyses pulled

from Internet.

In other words, Democrats lost on a technicality (Democrats, not Gore . . . this is about us, not him).

Sorry, sir, it looks like you are innocent, but we’re still sentencing your party to 4-8 years for stupidity. You could appeal, sir, but since you were executed ten minutes ago it’s kind of useless now. And anyway, it didn’t appear that King George had any interest in staying the execution, even if he had agreed to hear your appeal personally. So, please go away and leave us alone. We need to get our beauty sleep for the coronation in January.

In best Repugnant Party form, they chanted the mantra over and over for weeks. “We’ve counted three times already.” Say anything loudly and sarcastically enough, it becomes a truth. Republicans are good at it. Democrats are not. That’s because truths are seldom simple, and our genetic predisposition to actually, God forbid, delve into the details of trivial subjects, such as economics, bores the public to death. Good lord, the NFL playoffs are looming, we better wrap this up now.

We tried to simplify. Count the vote. That’s not complicated. The only votes counted “three times” were the ones run through the machines. The

40,000 uncounted, uninspected, unchecked, unwanted ballots that the “machines” said were non-votes were never counted, except in West Palm

Beach and Broward Counties, and that was more a matter of luck than anything else. Even yesterday morning, as free lunch tickets were being handed out to the faithful who made it to work in a mild ice storm (who said there is no such thing as a free lunch), one of the office young Republicans in-waiting is arguing with my party committeeman (who also happens to be a neighbor and coworker) that Al Baby was “manufacturing” votes in South Florida with the hand recounts. Even though he watched it on TV himself, saw the Republican monitors, saw the TV cameras recording every move. Despite all the attention and oversight, he was certain that alchemy was being performed: ballots were being created out of whiteout and toilet paper.

Excuse me, sir, is there any hope of you meeting reality on a face-to-face basis anytime in the near future?

I’m a little man. I don’t get to sit in on high-level political teas, where $5,000 contributors to both parties hash the details of sell-out sweetheart political deals in nice and polite double-talk. I do my work in the trenches where the rhetoric is hot, and it stinks down here.

Trust the machines. Trust a Republican to say that without laughing out loud. What a nice Germanic thought. Machines can’t be wrong. Machines don’t make mistakes. Ignore the fact that machines are made by humans, maintained by humans, operated by humans. GIGO: Garbage in, garbage out. Anyone who has seen the Windows operating system freeze and crash for no apparent reason understands the depth of human error, and why it can only be a human that can catch and fix it. If you are missing a $1,000 deposit on your bank statement, you better not count on an adding machine to discover the problem (see how tape keeps coming up the same every time!). You better direct your complaint to the customer service office, where a human being can actually view your deposit slip and say: “Sorry, we’ll fix the balance.”

We went to the courts, and we thought the courts were composed of human beings. But they were just machines, and the court machinery was rusty. . .it ground to a halt.

If Gore wants to leave a legacy, I would recommend that he found a non-profit organization to aggressively monitor voting irregularities, fight with vigor against minority voter intimidation and lobby endlessly for the complete removal of all mechanical, paper ballot voting machines in the entire United States of America.

I’ll even contribute.

Trying to find the point to this election “protest” reminds me of the movie Midnight Express, where the hero ends up in the prison insane asylum. Going to the “wheel” to take his exercise, the other prisoners all walk counter-clockwise. Our hero walks clockwise, and is assailed by wailing inmates. He is told he is in the asylum because he is a “bad machine.” In order to get better, he must become a “good machine” and walk in the right direction.

Al Gore conceded Tuesday night. He will become a good machine.

Me. . .I only walk to the left. I guess I’m still a bad machine.

The City of Memphis awarded a $42.1 million contract for outsourcing the Division of Information Systems to Systems and Computer Technology Corporation (SCT), ending a ten-month search.

Mayor Willie Herenton announced the decision to City Council members Tuesday in a session marked by unusual secrecy plus some heated remarks from Councilman Janet Hooks.

SCT, a publicly traded company headquartered in Malvern, Pa., won the bid over Electonic Data Systems and Affiliated Computer Services. Herenton said a key factor was SCT’s commitment to award 10 percent of professional services contracts and 50 percent of vendor contracts to “certified minority vendors.”

The seven-year contract should be finalized next month, according to City Finance and Administration Director Roland McElrath.

Herenton had told the city council during a planning session in January that he planned to outsource the Division of Information Systems, which handles telephones and computers. He said Tuesday that it had already been outsourced Òfor all practical

The mayor acknowledged that there has been intense interest in the contract award, which featured lots of lobbying of both the mayor and council members. He said that was one reason he took the unusual step of asking to be placed on the council agenda without specifying his reason.

“It’s almost like this needed to be a secret,” complained Hooks, who said she needed more information to respond to queries from her constituents.

“I’m glad to hear that,” Herenton repeated several times as Hooks continued to vent.

Herenton said the contract will cost a bit more than the city had been spending in the short run but should save money in the long run. All employees in the division — approximately 40 people — will be hired by SCT if they desire jobs.

Herenton went to unusual lengths to vouch for the integrity of the selection process.

“I know the various groups (that were interested), I know the rumors going around,” he said.

Originally there were 18 firms that expressed interest in the job.

“Evidently there is a lot of money on the line here,” said Councilman Tom Marshall, who said the selection committee, of which he was a member, was fair.

The city hired a Germantown firm, SCB Computer Technology, for $467,000 to help it evaluate the contenders.

SCT, the winning firm, has nearly 3,400 employees and serves more than 2500 clients worldwide.