Kate: Okay, I'm here today with my dad, Bill, and my stepmother, Lorie. Today we're going to talk about how they both worked for the company Marion Labs, which was a pharmaceutical company in Kansas City and they had long careers and did quite a bit. We’re going to cover a lot of that. But first, I'm going to start with Lorie and her background in math and how that all started.
Lorie: Hi.
Kate: Thank you for being here by the way.
Kate: You're welcome. It's fun to visit Tucson. So, you want to know how I got into math?
Kate: Yeah.
Lorie: Well, I went to an all-girl high school where I was only good at two things, languages and math. So, I thought, you know, maybe I'll just study math when I go to college. My mom was a teacher, so I figured I'd be a math teacher.
Kate: How did you deviate from being a math teacher, then? I'm curious. Well, let's go back to college first, because I know you went to college in Kentucky.
Lorie: Yes, I went to Eastern Kentucky University. It's maybe 20 miles south of Lexington, primarily because my best friend in high school went there and we each told our parents that the other one was going there. That's how we ended up both going there and being roommates. She was in accounting, and I was in math. It ended up that my background from high school prepared me really well, and so math was kind of easy. And I decided I would do math and biology. I was going to be a 7 through 12 grade math and biology teacher.
It was really interesting. Math usually went with physics and chemistry and computer science. It did not go with biology. So, I had no electives. Everything I took was required. When I got to senior year, I didn't have very many hours left to take so I could do student teaching in the fall and leave only about eight hours left to complete, which meant I could take graduate level classes and get graduate level credit. I thought, okay, that's a good way to do it. I student taught in the fall, math. And then when it came up to the spring, I took some graduate level math classes and realized I did not want to get a graduate degree in math. Too theoretical. I didn't like that. But, in order, to keep your teaching certificate active in Kentucky, you had to start a master's in five years and complete it within ten years.
Because of all these classes that were required, and how I had to take those, I didn't take a junior level statistics class until my final semester of my senior year. The teacher asked me, “What are you doing?”
And I said, “I just couldn't fit it in.”
He asked, “Why not?”
I said, “Well, because I had math, and I had biology, so it didn't fit.”
And he said, “Wait a second…you got math and biology? You need to go into biostatistics.”
I said, “I didn’t know what that was,” and so he explained.
I actually had to teach statistics, probability mainly, in the high school where I student taught. I was learning the lesson the day before I was teaching the students. That school was called the Model Lab School. It was attached to the university and all the university professors' children went to the school. If they had known I was learning the lesson the night before their students were, I don't know what they would have thought of that.
But, anyway, I said well, that's interesting. I had already applied to Iowa State in math. That's where my dad had gone to school. I was born in Ames, Iowa. That's where my mom and dad met while he was in school, and she was teaching elementary school. So, I wanted to go back to Iowa State. We had visited every year on our travels to my grandparents, sort of like how you guys knew OU because of all the history in your family.
I said well, I better switch my classes over to statistics, because I realized they had a statistics school. What I didn't realize was that it was one of the best statistics schools in the country. It wasn't biostatistics necessarily.
And a little side story kind of interesting, is about my roommate who was in accounting. We were both going to school in southern Kentucky. She was an accountant, very good, very smart, and she was trying to get a job with one of the big eight firms around the Cincinnati area. Because she went to a quote unquote “south” school, she was getting interviews, but she couldn't get a job. So, I asked my statistics teacher, when I was taking that junior level class, where had he gone to school? He had attended Southwest Louisiana State. And I said, “Okay, my roommate's having a lot of trouble. What about a statistics school in Louisiana versus Iowa State?”
And he said, “I think you better go to Iowa State.” So, I switched everything over to the statistics department. And to my surprise, I got a teaching assistantship, which paid my first year of grad school. So, it was like ‘woohoo’, and that's how I ended up getting a master's in stat.
Kate: Okay, so did you finish that in two years?
Lorie: Sort of, but not exactly. I was done with all my classwork. But to graduate you either had to do a thesis or you had to do a thing called a creative component. I hate to document all this, but I think he's passed away now. My major prof that was kind of guiding the stuff. He was number one, he was British, but he was not the best communicator in the world. He would change his mind a lot and trying to find a project under him that would stick was very frustrating.
So, I got this project lined up with another department and tried to do a creative component approach. If you did a creative component, you had to take a little bit more coursework. So, while I was doing that, I actually got a job at the University of Iowa on a grant for a year. It was pretty neat because it was biology related. If I can remember right, this is a long time ago. It was psychosocial intervention for cancers that would either functionally or physically debilitate you that people would withdraw from either relationships or society, because of these cancers. Would this intervention, psychosocial intervention, help them get back into society kind of thing. It was for a year. So, I did that and yeah, it was really interesting.
We used punch cards and had boxes of these punch cards. Wherever there was determined to be an error on the punch cards, what are punch cards? 132 character long, I think, something like that. You’d have these wide, long boxes about three inches high of these punch cards. You'd look down and see all these little black dots. Those were where a QA person was going over the data entry and would take actually a black magic marker and put a dot over whatever that character field was, like 80 or 130 or 12. Then I'd have to correct all those. There were case report forms and protocols and a whole kind of thing that was a lead into the career at Marion Labs.
Kate: So, what year did you graduate?
Lorie: 1977.
Kate: And how did you get the job at Marion Labs?
Lorie: Well, that was interesting too. I was so tired of applying for jobs, I would write a letter and mail it in an envelope with a stamp. You know, there were no...
Kate: Would you look in the want ads, or back of the journals?
Lorie: In the back of American Statistician, is that what it was called? Something like that. Anyway, there were these publications in statistics that would sometimes list the available jobs. It was paper, and it was what you could find. And I was just so tired of sending these applications out with a cover letter and a resume and all that kind of stuff. So that when it was determined that I was going to go to Kansas City, Missouri, I just I just took a phone book. I guess it was for pharmaceutical and maybe chemical companies pages out of the phone book. I dropped my finger, one on each, and said…those are the two I'm going to send. And one happened to be Marion Laboratories, if you can imagine.
And I was still in Iowa City at the time. And they called and said, “Can you come down?” And that's a funny story too, actually. They said, “Can you come down next Thursday at such and such a time?” And I said sure, and they said we'll mail you a confirmation letter. I said, okay fine. Well, they had already told me what day and what time so that's when I went. Their confirmation letter had a different day and time on it.
Kate: You didn’t get the letter in time?
Lorie: I don't think I looked at it. Because I knew what… I mean I just looked at it, oh that's a confirmation. I didn't pay any attention to it. Oh, the 13th was Tuesday, not Wednesday? or whatever and I was a day late.
Kate: Oh no.
Lorie: So, they called me. I was at my little office at University of Iowa, and they called and said, “Is there a problem?”
I said, what you talking about? And they said, “I thought you were coming for an interview.”
I said, “Yeah, I'll be there tomorrow.”
I mean it was only a few hours’ drive, and you know, they said, “Well, you're supposed to be here today.”
I go, “Oh no!”
And yeah, it was like really weird, because they said, “Okay, I guess we'll see you tomorrow.” So, I went, and they must have thought I was a real ditz, but they offered me the job.
Kate: So, what was your job title when you first started?
Lorie: Oh, that was interesting. Okay, so when I got there, Marion Labs, I mean it had quite a few products and whatever, but another person and I joined the department the same day and we made the department size five. Very small. There was a manager, a programmer, a data entry operator, and they called them secretaries then, the admin and I joined the same day. And I was called statistical programmer. Okay, it wasn't a statistician. They didn't quite have that job. So, I was a statistical programmer.
But it was all the same thing. And it was very interesting, because we had a little cubicle office, but to do any programming work or analysis work or whatever, you went to this little bank of computers and you had...
Kate: That were enormous?
Lorie: Well, the computer was enormous. The computer was like an entire room on one floor and the room under it, because it had to be cooled. It was so huge that the cooling mechanism was the floor under the computer room. So, you never saw that. This was like a terminal. Big, it wasn't like a laptop or a tablet. It was a big terminal.
And to do the kind of analysis that we did with this program called SAS, Statistical Analysis System. It wasn't located there at the company. We had to dial-in to Cleveland.
Kate: Oh wow.
Lorie: It was analog dial up or whatever. We had to do dial up and set the phone in the little cradle and all that kind of stuff. And we were actually programming this system that was in Cleveland, Ohio. And then you could look at it online. You could look at all your code and you could look at the results and all that kind of stuff, but when I could print out the results. It would print out on that computer paper with the holes all the way down the side that would feed through the printer like a foot and a half wide. But if I did a graph, and we did a lot of graphic stuff, I had to drive to downtown Kansas City to pick up the graph, because that's where the printer was that would print it out. And this was all I started there in ‘77.
Kate: How old was the company by then? Was it started in the ‘50s?
Lorie: I thought it started in the ‘50s basically, because Ewing Kaufman was really a salesman and he would find a product, a lot of times, in other countries like Japan or something and bring it in and develop it in his garage or basement pretty much to sell to the U.S. market. So, they were things like Oscal Calcium.
One that had to have a new drug application, Silvadene, was for burns, a burn cream. That one had to go through FDA approval. There were a whole bunch of others. But they had some other side companies at the time I joined. They had stair, what was it? It wasn't called stair glide, but stair lift, no, chair lift. You would sit in this chair, and it would push you up if you couldn't stand up. They had those. They had an eyeglass company attached to them and different stuff. But yeah, it started in his basement way back when with mainly marketing, sales and marketing.
Kate: Yeah, and so in those days he was around all the time, right?
Lorie: Oh yeah.
Kate: So what was he like? I know he became this famous philanthropist and was really big into Kansas City, but I wondered what he was like as a boss, I guess.
Lorie: Yeah, he was the owner, so he didn't have any contact as far as how you were doing your job or how well you were doing your job, but he cared deeply about the employees and the company. When I joined, I was NM00947, so I was number 947 into the company when I joined. I still remember my employee number.
He was a small man, actually, and he would walk around with his bodyguard named Blanchie Blevins. Blanchie was a real big burly guy, but he would come around and he would pop into your office or your cubicle or whatever and Blanchie would be standing there and introduce you and then Mr. Kaufman would sit down, and he'd say, “How's it going? What's going well with the company? What isn't? Is there anything I need to know about in terms of your liking to work here?” and what have you.
We were small enough that we'd have company meetings on the floor of one of the manufacturing areas. It wouldn't interfere with the sterility or anything like that. But they put donuts out in the parking lot. You'd pick up donuts and coffee as you came in and then we'd all just stand in the corner of this big warehouse-like area and listen to Mr. Kaufman and the different directors of the marketing and sales and R & D and all that kind of stuff. But yeah, he would drop around. He wanted to know what was going well and what wasn't going well. It was pretty cool.
Kate: That was really cool.
Lorie: Sorry, my phone is telling me ESPN stories.
Kate: So, what were the first things you worked on there when you first started?
Lorie: Okay, yeah, there were several things, because this was not just the clinical trials on people. It was also lab stuff, too. We had diagnostics. So sometimes I would work on something like maybe a blood test or something that could diagnose something. Also, there were animal labs there. I got to go down into the animal labs in the pre-clinical stuff and see how the experimenting units were actually set up, like cages on a wall and which animals could you categorize, older animals, younger animals, this kind of whatever. And so that was kind of interesting, as well as clinical trials.
Lots of different product, but the main thing was Cardizem. You know, that was a calcium channel blocker, mainly for blood pressure, but, you know, we actually looked at it, and Bill can talk about that later, for other indications, they call them, for things to treat. It was so fun, but it was so amazing, too, to think about it.
Like our little five people putting together a new drug application for a blockbuster drug was pretty amazing. And we were right next to what they call the regulatory department. So, that's who puts together the file that goes to the FDA. It was all paper. It would go up in like at least one or two semi-trucks. So, it was just volumes of paper we were putting together. And I remember for the original Cardizem application, cutting out pieces of graphs and regulatory would tell us, you know, what the margins had to be and how to stick that graph in and we would actually tape it down.
The word processing people would set it up to where they'd know where to leave what space for our little graph to go and we'd review everything and then they'd eventually print it all off and send it on up and then by the time we ever left the company, everything was electronic, you know, and the FDA would get all the data to do their own either spot analyses or whatever they wanted to do.
You know, it's not just accepting everything that the company says, but before that, there's a whole lot of interaction through other departments with the FDA. You would take a team up, there'd be statisticians, there'd be clinical people, there'd be marketing people, regulatory people, all talking to the FDA to make sure everybody was on the same page of what was needed and what was sort of practical to be able to see if the drug was going. And I mean, so many drugs you try to test and evaluate, and they don't pan out. Early on studies don't pan out. And so, I think what people in general that are against the cost of pharmaceuticals in the U.S. don't understand is one out of millions pops through as something that actually can be developed and sold.
Kate: It takes a lot of time.
Lorie: It takes a lot of time, and it takes a ton of money. And you only get a certain amount of patent life after you get on the market. You don't get the full 17 years. So, it's tough, and then it'll go generic. It's an interesting business. We always felt like we were really working for the good of mankind to tell you the truth.
You didn't ask, but you might want to know that at a certain point, I switched over to the regulatory department because your dad and I were in the same department once we got married, or actually, before we got married. It wasn't a good thing, but also wasn't probably going to work. So, I went to regulatory, which they were happy that they had a statistician amongst them. But statisticians were very happy that the regulatory and the marketing type people had a statistical voice they had to listen to, too. But when I did that, then I wasn't doing the statistics anymore. It was more leading the product through the regulatory process with the FDA and stuff. And my big claim to fame was Nicorette and NicoDerm over the counter.
Kate: That was a big deal, that in the 90s, right? Maybe early 2000’s?
Lorie: ’98? I'd have to think back. It could be ‘98, ‘99 that we got Nicorette over the counter, but to put Nicotine over the counter was a really big deal.
Kate: Yeah, I'm sure it was.
Lorie: And then NicoDerm followed. NicoDerm was a little tougher because of a transdermal patch. The other was gum.
Kate: Okay, so what were some of the things you really liked about working there in those first few years?
Lorie: Me, okay. What did I really like? I liked how small the company was. Everyone knew everybody, okay? And the departments were real teams. Nobody was better than somebody else, you know? And everybody was working to do what we needed to do, which was to write the best protocols to, I'll say at this stage, test the product in humans, okay? We'll leave the preclinical stuff behind. But say we were in phase two, three, whatever, and putting together the appropriate file for the FDA. Everybody's on the same page, everybody. I mean, working to a deadline and all that kind of stuff was the team spirit thing, it was really, really fun. I would say that was the coolest thing in the beginning.
Let's see, what else could I say? I could say that I didn't appreciate my 45-minute drive to the company from where I lived. But you get used to that too. You did a lot of thinking during your 45 minutes.
Kate: What about that, do you want to talk about, you got a raise at some point, right?
Lorie: I got a raise? I did get a raise.
Kate: You told me that story about how they said they got you for cheap.
Lorie: Yes, I did get a raise. Yeah, yeah, yeah, guess I can share about that. So, I can put this on here just to put, whoever listens to this, put it in some kind of perspective. Okay, so I was really excited that I was hired by this pharmaceutical company in Kansas City where I had been at the University of Iowa before on a grant project.
And I got hired for $12,500, no, I was making $12,500 a year for my one year in 1977 at University of Iowa. And Marion Labs hired me for $15,000. And I was like, woo-hoo! You know, I'm into big money now.
And it was good, it was good. And I worked real hard. I was their only statistician besides my manager, who was a statistician as well. Working really hard, primarily on all this project I talked about plus Cardizem. And then it was time for the annual review. And I ended up having a boss that really went to bat for me, believed that I was doing a good job. And so, I don't remember how much raise I got, but I got a good raise, and I was like, woo-hoo! I may have even gotten a bonus, okay, in addition. And, I said, “Wow, that's amazing.”
He goes, “Yeah, well, I'll admit, we got you for real cheap when you came here.” And so that was at the age of sort of women versus men's salaries. And men were the family breadwinner and what have you. And my boss, it was very interesting. That was ‘77 to ‘78.
In ‘79, I had my first child. My boss had never worked with somebody who went off and had a baby and then wanted to come back to work. He was like, “I don't know. I don't know what the rules are. I don't know.” And so, I ended up getting three months off, but only six weeks of it was paid. And I was allowed to have an additional six weeks, but it was at the risk that that job might not be there when I came back. So that was the, that was the 1979 era of women working in big pharma.
Kate: Yeah, okay. Well, Dad, why don't we talk about you started there in, was it, 1984? That sounds right. You were coming from an academic professor job. This is very different environment.
Bill: Well, I don't know. Maybe I've already told you, but I was so worried about getting tenure. You work at Oklahoma State. You work six years, and then you come to this point of getting tenure. And that would protect your job forever if you wanted to stay there. And so, I don't know, like maybe half the people would get tenure.
So, I thought, you know, this is crazy. If I don't get tenure, I better be ready to be fired and have another job. So, I started looking around, and lo and behold. Lorie was talking about how we would look in the American Statistician little magazine, and they would have ads in the back of jobs. So, Marion Lab had an ad there. And your mom's family lived practically in Kansas City. So, that was a pretty neat place to live for us.
So, I applied there. And I couldn't believe it because I think they were offering me something like $35,000 a year there and various kinds of breaks. They were helping me find a house, all kinds of stuff. In the meantime, I think my salary back in Oklahoma State had made it up to, like, $18,000 or something. So that was so much more. I went ahead and accepted it. It's like the day after I accepted it, the chairman of our statistics department walked in and offered me tenure. And I had to tell him, well, I'm not going to do it.
And I went off then to work at Marion Labs. And boy, was I lucky on that, because I think they had gotten approval for a, was it a tablet formulation or something like that?
Lorie: Probably twice a day tablet for Cardizem.
Bill: I think it had to be taken even more than that.
Lorie: It was probably three times a day.
Bill: Because when I came, they were working on a tablet, not a tablet, but a, what do call it?
Lorie: A capsule.
Bill: It was to be taken twice a day. That was a big deal in that time. If you could take the formulation in the morning, but when you went to bed, then that was real easy for people and so, man, I worked on that like crazy for everything. And like Lorie was saying, we had a team, and we planned out all the studies, and then I had my method of analyzing stuff that was was, in a way, was kind of simple compared to what I had gotten to teach at Oklahoma State, but it was fun. And it was nearly always successful with that drug.
Lorie: Yeah, I want to add something here that Kate may or may not know because it's pretty fun to this discussion, right here. But Bill was talking about applying to Marion Labs. Well, I was there, okay? So guess what? I interviewed Bill for his job.
Kate: Oh you did? I didn’t know that.
Lorie: I didn't think you knew that. Okay, so we were, you know, interviewing and again, it's a team thing for the interview. It was really neat. You know, we would have an agreed on sort of categories of questions, trying to figure out the best candidate.
And I remember we all heard that we were going to have this professor come in to interview. Most of the people weren't. And this is kind of a cute side story, but here comes this professor. And if I remember right, he came in in beige slacks and a navy-blue blazer, where almost everybody else came in in the dark suit, you know, kind of thing. But it was unbelievably refreshing when he got to me. It was my turn, he comes into the office, and almost all these other guys were like, “Well, now, much salary should I ask for? What's your salary?” You know? Like duh-duh-duh.
But I'm like, “No, we're not talking about that, you know.”
“But that's what I want to talk about.” Bill came in and we talked about stuff, and he wanted to know how these teams worked, what kind of a process was there for developing a protocol or doing an analysis and he was real into the analysis part.
And he said, and I just was so impressed, he said, “Well, like, if we're analyzing the data, do we have to do like little simple t-tests and stuff or can we, you know, do powerful statistics that will really show, you know, how the drug is performing and stuff like that?”
And we talked about how you had to gain trust with your team. You didn't want to overwhelm with the wow factor, you know, but once they trusted that we're all on the same page, yeah, do the right, do the best statistics you can for the way the protocol was written. He was the only person that asked that kind of thing. And I have no idea about the other people, what they kind of got out of that particular interview, but they ended up hiring him.
And then as we worked together, it was really funny, as we worked together, he would help me with my statistics. And I would help him with how he wrote up the report.
My brothers and I on a visit to Marion Labs, 1984. ©Mom
Bill: Our department was in this little corner room, large room of a building and the chairman had a great big corner office and Lorie had a great big corner office. And lo and behold, they gave me a corner office. And everybody else had their offices in between, which were nice.
Lorie: I had nothing to do with that decision.
Bill: They were nice, you know, but not like the corner offices. And then the fourth corner was the entrance into the place.
Lorie: I think we all went later down to cubicles as the company grew though.
Bill: The thing that I did my whole time was when I was thinking about something, the best way to do something, I would get up and go down and find the coffee pot, wherever it was, and drink coffee.
Kate: You had some machine, didn’t you, where you could. I remember you taking us to the office, and you had this big machine you were excited to show us the coffee machine.
Bill: I don’t know, they kept changing.
Lorie: You always got French Vanilla.
Bill: We had these little, tiny cups so you could drink your cup in two seconds, but at any rate it was …I don’t know, but when I first started I thought that there was an actual coffee pot somewhere.
Lorie: I don’t know, it may have been in somebody’s office, maybe illegally.
Kate: So, what was after Cardizem? What was what else did you work on?
Bill: I'll tell you I hardly worked on anything else for a long time because after we got the twice a day formulation approved, then lo and behold, they started working on one that was once a day.
Lorie: Was that 360 milligram?
Bill: Well…
Lorie: I don’t know. There was one where we put the application, wrote it, all locked in a room, the whole entire team. We had all this data, wrote it all in one day and then submitted it, it was like unbelievable. But I don’t know.
Bill: But then after that, somehow, I got to working with some people at the FDA about how to analyze drugs that were two different, capsules that had two different, capsules that had two different drugs in them.
Lorie: Combination.
Bill: And so that was a big deal for me because then we decided to do a formulation that had Cardizem and Hydrochlorothiazide was a really big, both of those were big drugs for high blood pressure. And so, I worked on that a lot. And I remember being so thankful. They made me, I think I was the actual team leader for that. And we did several different clinical trials and every one of them was a success.
And we had everything all set to send in. And at the same time, that once a day formulation was approved. And the marketing department finally decided they didn't want the combination to be submitted because it would cut down on the sales of the once-a-day formulation. So, I don't think it ever went in.
Lorie: No, it didn’t go in, and I have always thought of this you know in the Raiders of the Lost Ark, the last scene where they have the Ark boxed up, and it’s wheeled down to the lowest level of storage in the back corner, and I always feel like that’s where the Cardizem and Hydrochlorothiazide combination NDA, New Drug Application, might even be residing this day.
Bill: After we, our company Marion Labs combined with what was the other company? I've forgotten.
Lorie: Oh, we merged several times. Marion Labs first went with Merrell Dow, and we became Marion Merrell Dow.
Bill: Yeah. And they had some other drugs, so I kept working on different drugs afterwards. But none of them ever seemed to succeed. I'd work a long time on one, and then it would turn out it never came.
Kate: What was the one I remember you telling me about, for people who had cancer that helped their red blood cell count. Do remember that one?
Bill: No, no.
Kate: Okay.
Bill: Could be, I don't know.
Lorie: I don’t think we worked on cancer drugs.
Kate: Well, it was to help with the side effects, I guess, from cancer treatment, like from chemo.
Bill: Yeah, I don't remember.
Kate: Maybe I'm making that up.
Bill: There were some strange diseases that I had never heard of before that I worked on some drugs, but I've forgotten.
Lorie: Yeah, when I went over to regulatory, we had teams over there within regulatory that worked on different categories of products. And so, I had a group, and I love acronyms and so ours was CBDA. It was like Cardiovascular Biological Dermatologic Anti-Inflammatory. Let’s see, Anti-Inflammatory and Anti-Infective.
And then you were working from your side with some of those teams. There was a drug, a lot of our drugs started with A’s, and if I remember right it was trying to help against organ aging. They would show us a heart in a smoker, and it looked really like roast beef, like really cooked looking, and there was a drug, it started with an A, and so you worked with other things that had something to do with blood cells, red blood cells. I can’t remember the name either. I thought I’d never forget that stuff.
Kate: Well, how did, I guess when the company was bought out, how did that change things?
Bill: Well, when we were first merged, it was kind of like our Department of Statistics sort of was taken over by Merrill Dow's department. They had a couple of really good statisticians working there. And one guy became the, I've forgotten his name, became the, what is it? The chairman of the department.
And our chairman got another position, but I don't know what he was doing. He was always just trying to move up in the company, and I didn't see him much anyway.
Lorie: And I think the main statistics area, and I could be wrong. I might not be remembering this right, of Merrell Dow was around Indianapolis, because I had to Indianapolis several times. And there was a place up like Michigan or someplace that was where Dow was, Dow Chemical and what have you. So, all of a sudden we weren’t Marion Labs in this location. There were multiple locations, and we’d have to travel more, and stuff like that.
Bill: But they did make the R&D department where we were. So, all of a sudden, our statistics department was twice as big, really. Where we used to have the programming group in our department, it became another department. And so, they sort of did beginning programming to get everything entered into various data pieces that you could use. And we also had programmers, but everybody was involved in doing the analysis of different kinds of studies. There were other things going on.
Lorie: And then after Merrell Dow, we merged with Hoeschst and Roussel and we became Hoechst Marion Roussel. So, all of a sudden, now we're international French company and German company and again, many more locations. And then after that, it was gonna be Aventis Pharmaceuticals and I can't remember if it was Hoeschst Marion Roussel or Aventis, but I was thinking it was Aventis, that was really interesting was going to, and Bill can kind of talk about a bit how he left the company for a while and came back.
But while he was still at the company, before he had first left to try something else, I remember them really looking at how they were going to particularly regulatory set this up and they came and told me that they were considering moving me to New Jersey, that that they really wanted me there. And I said, “Well, we've got this family of six kids, and what have you, and I can't just tell you yes or no.”
“You can't mention this to your husband.” And I said, “Oh yeah? Yes, I have to. Don't you understand?” And it was so weird trying to convince them that he had to know that because they did not want this to leak out that they were looking at this merger thing or buyout or whatever you wanted to call it. It seemed like always mergers.
But finally, we were able to talk about it. I was able to pretty much say, “I don't want to do that.” And then after Aventis, or at the time of Aventis, I guess I should say, they actually sold the R&D component to a contract research organization called Quintiles. So, all of a sudden, we were part of a contract research organization, meaning that you're carrying out work for other companies that tell you what to do.
Bill: And so, when that happened, it was kind of like they always wanted me to stay, you know, I'd have some senior title but not be a manager. But once we became Quintiles, then there wasn't, we didn't have nearly the power for doing things. All that would happen is another company would plan everything out, and then it would be our job to conduct it as fast as possible.
Lorie: And he means mental power.
Bill: Right. And so, there was another company in town, I don't even remember what they were I can't remember the name.
Lorie: I can’t remember the name either.
Bill: That was a contract research company, and they were looking for a manager of the statistics department, so I took that. And for about a year I had this great time with that. I hired all these people that I knew all over the place and had this wonderful statistics department. At least I thought it was great. And we did stuff as fast as you could basically, had it all planned out in advance and so on. And then lo and behold, I reached this point where our best programmer was working on a really important study.
And it was supposed to come in with this about, I think it was about two weeks before he planned a vacation, okay? And I thought it was all beautiful that he could easily do this thing in probably in one week. So, this would work great. And then this was right in the middle of the summer. He could take his family to Disneyland. So, it was a really big deal for him to get this vacation. And I was so intent on it, that when we discovered that this company, in running the study, it was coming in two weeks late. So, we would get the data right when he, our best programmer, was headed out to Disneyland. Then the lead, the head of the team, that was working on this.
Lorie: It was your project manager, I think.
Bill: He came in and he just argued with me forever about how this couldn't happen. But you see, his wife had a job elsewhere and she had her vacation set at that time. And it was, I think it was at the end of August so that his kids would be back in school afterwards. I just refused and said, we'll put somebody else on it, but this guy wouldn't take it. And so, we finally figured out, I was forced to do this, was that the programmer could do it in a week. His family would go out to Disneyland. He would get this job done in a week and then he would go out and spend the last week with them. And I thought that was just terrible that we ended up with that. But I was kind of forced to by whoever I was reporting to. And then, lo and behold, they had me come in and gave me a review of how well I was doing as the manager. And because of this one fight I had with this guy about our programmer, they gave me this horrible review. It was the first time I ever met with the head of the, I guess…
Lorie: HR? Is that what you mean. Or your boss?
Bill: The boss.
Kate: Oh, That’s right. You said you never got to talk with him.
Bill: I guess. So now here I am, and everything was all focused in on that one horrible thing we had because that project was late. He didn't seem to understand all the people I had hired and everything else. So that just pissed me off. So, I found there was a department back in Quintiles that thought they could use me. And so, they hired me back. And I did that for about a year, but they didn't ever find a good thing for me. So after about a year, I went back to the same department, which had changed rather dramatically, and now I was reporting to people that used to report to me and stuff like that. But it was okay. I was alright with that, but again, they didn't find a very good use for me.
Lorie: Well, the most horrible part, in a way, was that he left for one year. Did all kinds of good stuff. But when he came back, they absolutely would not reinstate his seniority, so he was back to two weeks’ vacation. Instead of, you know, like 20 years of...
Kate: That’s too bad.
Lorie: Yeah, so anyway. So be it, so be it.
Bill: I lost some money as well, but that’s alright.
Kate: Alright, so to wrap up, I'm going to ask about what I considered the best part of your job, which was the fact that Ewing Kaufman, the owner of Marion Labs, also owned the Royals. And we went to quite a lot of Royals games growing up, so I wanted to ask, how did all that work? Getting tickets and all that. Yeah, let's start with you, since you were there in the early years,
Lorie: So, I joined there in August of ‘77 and what I recall is that, you know, there were less than a thousand employees and Mr. K, that's what we called him, Mr. K would provide to the company. He believed in if there were profits of the company, everybody got to share. So, he wanted to share the Royals as well. He was very proud of them. And we would get something like tickets once a month, and I don't remember if it was two or four or if your family was five, you'd get five. I don't quite remember, but when I first got tickets, I remember that they were up in the loge level which is, you know, above even above the good seats and right by the broadcast booth and all that kind of stuff and stretched out to each side, and they were really nice seats.
I don't remember if it was two four five tickets but they, you know, it wasn't like the whole company went at the same time. Different people would get tickets at different times so that home games had a few of Marion people at them, and it was really fun. And then as the company grew, we didn't get those loge seats, but we still got some tickets once a month for a while down in the lower level out to the sides.
And then sometimes, when the company got a lot bigger, there would be Marion Night at the ballpark. And of course, we were on the big screen and, all of that kind of stuff. And we would all be in a section that was kind of closed off to other people that had a little gate. And yeah, so it was really fun. But then we started, you know, growing too big, having mergers, and the complementary baseball tickets kind of went away. And then Mr. K died too. I didn't look up what year that was.
Kate: I think it was the early ‘90s.
Lorie: That was really sad when that happened. That's kind of the part I remember and there was opportunities as you moved up in the company if you got to certain level. Sometimes certain departments would have suite tickets and Kate remembers going to a game in a suite.
Kate: I do! We did that once. It was like very exciting.
Lorie: It was different to watch a game from a room.
Bill: Well, Lorie remembers how everything worked. I just have strange little spot memories. And the thing I remember the most is that somehow, we had tickets to be in one of those suites. And it was right at the start of the year. And we went out on a really cold night. There weren't very many people there at the game, but in our suite, we had heat and so it was really nice besides little things to eat and whatever and so for about two or three innings everything was great and then, somehow, the people out in front of us discovered that if they got up right next to our window that it was leaking heat and they would warm up and so we ended up with about 15 people all stacked up right in front of us to where we couldn't see anything but the outfield. So.
Kate: And you got to go to the World Series. 1985.
Bill: Yeah, we had two tickets. I think Lorie was saying I think we got to buy them which was wonderful because otherwise you couldn't get them, and I always remember that I decided that well, I'll take Nick. We went out to see a game. They were playing the Cardinals. It was a close, good game to see.
Kate: That was a really crazy game, wasn't that the...
Bill: The Cardinals ended up winning that particular game. I think the Royals won the World Series.
Kate: They came back the next night.
Lorie: Think they won on a really weird play. A really weird, questionable play
Kate: I was in bed, supposed to be asleep, but then I heard you screaming and cheering at whatever, 10 o'clock at night. We all got up.
Bill: Well, that was the thing. I mean, we became Royals fans, but I think it was more for watching TV, because you could see them play every night on TV in those days.
Kate: You didn't even have to have cable.
Lorie: I mean, everything was Royals, Royals, Royals, you know, and then, my gosh, ‘85, we did well.
Kate: It was a miraculous year.
Lorie: Super fun. And we're still Royals fans, that's why we're here with Kate.
Kate: We just went to some spring training games. Yup. In Phoenix.
Lorie: Yeah.
Kate: Alright, well, that was a treat. Well, thank you for doing this interview.
Lorie: You’re so welcome.
Kate: Okay.
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