My Uncle's Political and Economic Experiment

The lesions from my Uncle’s life should not be lost to history. Unfortunately, he is gone and can no longer tell his own story. Nor was he the type who would have blown his own horn. His success resulted in mostly a personal satisfaction that he kept to himself. It took many conversations to gradually get the story from him.

My Uncle believed that any community could prosper with the right leadership. He believed that a community needed four things to attract businesses and prosper:

1. Good education system. He believed someone looking to move an existing business or start a new one would choose a place where their children could get a good education. Without a good education system, most business leaders who could afford to move their family elsewhere, would. Interestingly, his theory was not about the need for an “educated workforce,” but instead focused on a good environment for the business person and other employees to raise their children. (Does any seriously believe, that Bill Gates and other Microsoft executives would ever send their children to the Detroit public schools?)

2. Good health care. Same reasoning as with education. If a business person could not get good health care for themselves, their family and their employees, they will go somewhere else if they can.

3. Good transportation. He believed that most businesses need efficient transpiration to succeed. They need to send and receive goods, meet with customers and suppliers, and communicate with distant plants and offices. (Remember, this was decades before the Internet.)

4. Entertainment/recreation. He believed that if a business had a choice between somewhere that had fun things to do on evenings and weekends, verses somewhere with nothing to do, they would choose the location with entertainment and recreation.

Fortunately, Uncle Rae was able to test his theory.

As background, he was born in 1924, graduated high school early, then was pushed through college and medical school during WWII so that he graduated from medical school in 1945 at the age of 21. My grandfather was a successful physician in St. Louis, Missouri so Uncle Rae could have settled down into a lucrative and comfortable practice there. But after an internship and two years in the Navy, he chose to settle in the late 1940's in the small town of Lebanon, Missouri.

At the time, Lebanon was a poor community in the Ozark Hills of Missouri with a population of about 6,000. There was one physician in town who was retiring, many of the children did not complete high school, let alone think about college, and the major source of income was agriculture.

Unbeknownst to the citizens of Lebanon, they were getting more than a new physician . . . they were getting someone who had a theory about how to transform a community and he put to the test. I don’t know the exact sequence of events, but over the next two decades my Aunt and Uncle worked to transform Lebanon Missouri:

• My Aunt was elected as School Board Chairwoman. She changed the education curriculum, fired some teacher and hired new teacher. Graduation rates went up, test scores when up, teenage pregnancy rates (and teenage marriages) went down, and college admissions went up.

• As the only physician in town, my Uncle went about improving the health care system. He drove constant improvements in the hospital . . . EKG machines, x-ray equipment, upgrades to the operating rooms . . . bringing it up to modern standards. In some cases, he bought new equipment for the hospital with his own money. He also aggressively recruited new physicians and nurses to the community. While it never become Johns Hopkins, after a decade of so, the medical care in Lebanon was as good as any small town in America. Infant mortality rates went down and life expectancy went up.

• My Uncle was elected Mayor and Chairman of the Airport Board. In addition to supporting the improvement in the schools, he also focused on transportation. Lebanon benefited from being right next to a new Interstate that ran from Oklahoma City to St. Louis. But Uncle Rae did not think that was enough. He convinced the community to build a 7000 runway at the small local airport. The runway was was long, wide and reinforced to handle the largest corporate jet. Lebanon now had one of the best runways in any rural community of its size. Many in the community thought he was nuts.

• Lebanon is located close to the Lake of the Ozarks which provided significant recreation opportunities. Uncle Rae also went about creating and/or supporting a number of other community clubs and activities. As examples, he was active in Rotary and helped fund a skeet shooting club.

So, did it work? Did businesses come to Lebanon Missouri?

My Aunt and Uncle left Lebanon in 1980 after he practiced medicine there for 32 years. When he left, Lebanon was the smallest town in America to have a Fortune 500 Company with its corporate headquarters in the community. And Lebanon had TWO!!! Detroit Tool and Empire Gas, both traded on the NYSE at the time. Neither company would have relocated to Lebanon without the Airport, the schools, the medical services, etc.

Were the changes irreversible? I would like to say that the changes brought about by my Aunt and Uncle were permanent and irreversible, but they weren’t. Creating a positive business environment takes constant work, attention and political support. Many of the children who graduated high school and went on the college, settled elsewhere.

But what I can say is that Uncle Ray’s experiment was a success and we should all learn from it. If we want to have prospering communities (or countries), we have to create environments that are inviting to and supporting of businesses. As Uncle Rae proved, if we do (if we build it), they will come.