Lester Crown

The second interview that I’ve processed was conducted by Professor Gilfoyle with businessman and philanthropist Lester Crown. Lester Crown, a native of Evanston, is the son of Henry Crown, an enormously successful financier and businessman who, amongst other things, owned the Empire State Building, founded Material Service, and was on the board of General Dynamics. The Crown Foundation, run by the family, is an influential charitable organization that supports the arts, sciences, and Jewish causes.

Processing this interview was quite difficult! Somehow, presumably through different formatting changes over the years, a substantial portion of the punctuation within the word document was replaced with a “ÿ” symbol. Essentially, this meant that roughly 4-5 times a paragraph (and sometimes more) I had to delete the extraneous symbol and then try to analyze the syntax and grammar of the sentence. Sometimes the “ÿ” symbol would replace commas, sometimes “–“, sometimes “…”, and sometimes nothing at all! It was then up to me to reshape the punctuation of the sentence to best convey the meaning and conversational style of Mr. Crown. Consequently, this interview was extremely time consuming. For example, my first interview with Ray Meyer had 28 changes when I submitted it. The Lester Crown interview clocked in at 436 changes!

I did find the interview interesting– Henry Crown and his sons were at the center of the rise of merged, conglomerate corporations in the 20th century. The stories about board room maneuvering and politics were quite fascinating. And, of course, I got to learn a little more about the family that payed for Loyola University’s own Crown Center for the Humanities! About time, considering that I’ve taken classes there for two years.

Ray Meyer

Last week I finished processing my first interview, which was exciting and exhausting all at once. In 2005 Professor Gilfoyle sat down with Ray Meyer, the former coach of the DePaul Men’s Basketball team. Meyer played and coached for over 50 years, and he oversaw nearly every evolution in the sport of basketball: two handed shots, the rise of “big men,” the three point line, and numerous other changes in the game.

He was directly responsible for one major change, the evolution of “big men,” when he took DePaul freshman George Mikan and turned him into a bona fide star. Standing at 6’10”, the gangly, awkward young player was trained by Meyer, who even hired dance instructors to help Mikan with his footwork. At the time, nobody believed that a player as tall as Mikan could play with skill or finesse. George Mikan lead the nation in scoring at DePaul, and eventually organized basketball began to institute rule changes to accommodate larger center and frontcourt players. One of the drills that Meyer created for Mikan is still in use today: the Mikan Drill.

As an avid sports fan and fan of basketball in particular, I found the interview engaging. Hearing stories about the early days of basketball, before the one-handed shot and the jump shot, was a lot of fun. As a Golden State Warriors fan, the idea of a 22-20 final score in a game was bizarre. Meyer was full of stories about the Globetrotters, other legendary college coaches, and details about collegiate sports before it became the money-making behemot it is today.