Dan O'Dowd
& Amy Chang
Insert text here.
When Craig first went to work at Green Hills I realized there were undercurrents at the place and decided not to be there any more often than necessary. This was easy to justify because the company was then based in Glendale and we lived in North Hills, a long drive in rush hour traffic.
The rush hour traffic was an issue because Craig habitually had had his driver's license suspended for reckless driving and I would not let him drive himself. So, every day I drove the kids to three different schools and came home to make Craig breakfast as he rose late and threw himself into the tub to wallow and relieve himself. Yes, he routinely defecated in the tub, to my consternation.
Although I avoided the office Craig always came home with stories he was eager to share with me. This is how I heard Dan's parents, both professors of psychology, raised him in a Skinner Box. I was curious so looked into these innovations. Some did not seem particularly bad, but the use of the term allows for multiple different experiments. Skinner was all about behavior control and I preferred to raise my children very differently, as I, myself, was raised. For Dan, think Pavlovian Behavior Conditioning.
However, I can tell you for sure Dan had to be right and Craig became YesMan extraordinaire when ever we did something social with Dan and Amy. You could pop Dan into your glass as ice. One discussion we had on Archologies, before the company moved to Santa Barbara forced me to listen to a long dissertation on why people were going to live in Archologies in every area of the world. I had encountered the concept but Dan failed to answer any of my questions on why this would be preferable in an area like Santa Barbara of San Luis Obispo where even today people enjoy the small town ambiance of shopping and meeting each other and the weather is generally mild. Dan clammed up and looked stormy so I changed the subject - but Craig lectured me all the way home about questioning anything Dan said. He certainly had not.
But the reason Dan had bent over backwards to have Craig work at GHS was that Dan was about to be forced to go back to Glenn Hightower for more capital and this would have diluted his stock share in the company, making him a minority partner, according to Craig.
Craig's recommendation of GHS products, given only because he ignored the marketing Dan, himself, wrote, was the reason Dan did not have to have more capital and so preserved his position as an equal partner in the company, according to Craig.
It took Craig three years from the time he was hired but then the company made solid upward progress.
Only later did I realize how symbiotic the relationship between the two men was.
Amy was friendly and called me occasionally to chat or to persuade me on some expense she wanted to reduce or eliminate. One of these was getting Craig to fly at the cheapest possible price to Japan. I knew that would not work because Craig was 6'2" and rather rotund. He would not be comfortable in the seats provided in tourist class and would arrive exhausted and crabby. I told her this frankly and Craig continued to travel First Class on long flights.
Craig told me Amy was raised in a refugee camp and as a luxury she received one egg all for herself on each birthday. She was very thrifty, which showed when she did the planning for any company event. But I did not feel this was my concern and always reserved comment.
No one from GHS called me to inquire when I had my heart attack or when they thought Arthur had died in March of 1998, though I called to let Craig know the prognosis was not good when the physicians recommended I end life support but not what I had decided. I stayed by Arthur's bed all the time I was permitted and was there when his eyes came alive and he looked at me. I teared up in a surge of gratitude.
Neither Amy or Dan are people I would trust to care for my cat.
Dan ran for US Senate in 1992 against Diane Feinstein in the Democratic Primary. Of course he lost but he spent $250,000 doing so.
Naturally, I was angry Dan, Amy and Craig tried to destroy me financially and wanted me dead. I thought this was very inappropriate. In 2011 I put up a website about GHS. It is still available on the WayBack Machine
Simulation of Amy
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