Sis-boom-bah! For Amalgamated Sponge

Ever since Sigmund Freud began to stew about what Oedipus did to Laius, paternalism has been a dirty word. Large corporations are particularly sensitive on this score, since social critics have so often leveled the charge at them. Lockheed is no exception, and Lockheed officials react sharply to any implication that the company plays Big Daddy to the recreation program. "This is definitely not a paternalistic company," asserts Mark Clevenger, the editor of the plant house organ. "We just don't like unnecessary friction." "The employees run their own recreation program," chips in Carroll Pettefer, Lockheed labor relations manager. "If you have recess and then tell people what they can do when school's out, it isn't recess, just more school."

In general, the Lockheed defense stands up. There is no pressure—as there still is in some companies—for Lockheedians to play, win trophies, attend uplifting functions and be everlastingly grateful for the opportunity to do so. Nevertheless, when grown men, like those of the recreation staff, spend their days giving out toys, arranging games and helping with hobbies, the family analogy comes strongly to mind—the Utopian, gargantuan family of a rich widower, where all is sweetness-and-light fellowship. Frank Davis is the wise, genial father, sometimes involved with the larger world of Lockheed management and the National Industrial Recreation Association but whose heart is always in the job of keeping the Lockheed family happy and amused. Nor is there the slightest indication that employees anywhere are resentful of all this. If the corporation wants them to be a big happy family, working together and playing together, then a big happy family they are jolly well willing to be.

"Look at this," says Davis, displaying a cable from 14 Lockheedians working on special assignment in Bonn, Germany. The group wanted help in staging a Christmas party for their 23 children. "It's not the $50 we send them—not one of those people earns less than $10,000 a year. They just want to be remembered, to be part of the Lockheed community. It's impressive, isn't it?"

If Davis plays father to 22,000 Lockheedians, two other LERC staffers can easily be cast in the roles of clever, infinitely patient older brothers. Tom Forrester, who runs the athletic program, has all the bats, balls, rackets, rule books and schedules any family could want. Kenny Prince, the club man, can do anything for the Lockheed hobbyists from prescribing a tonic for the aquarium club's sick swordtails to finding a boat mold for the sport fishermen.

The fourth regular member of the LERC staff, Varanese, is a man apparently born to be a recreation director and one for whom the job would have had to be invented if it did not exist. A big, Wallace Beery-faced fellow, Varanese grew up in Cleveland's tough Little Italy section. He looks and occasionally talks as if he might be a Cosa Nostra enforcer, but what he is at Lockheed is everyone's favorite uncle. Technically, Varanese's job is special events (getting a planeload of vacationing Lockheedians off for Europe each spring) and general troubleshooting (persuading two ex-collegians not to play on the same team, which would upset the delicate balance of power in the employee basketball league), but his real vocation is remembering the first name of what seems to be every Lockheedian, greenkeeper, bowling-alley operator and sports promoter between San Jose and La Jolla. Varanese is very much his own pungent man, but he speaks for a Dutch-uncle school of psychology which is part of the creed of the industrial recreation man. Illustrative Big Mikisms include:

"Everybody who wants to play gets to play, that's my motto. Like bowling, sometimes we get some little guy signed up that nobody wants on a team. He carries maybe a 125. He's a griper, an oddball. But I say it is not our job to judge. Our job is to get that oddball on a bowling team, and we do. We can always talk somebody into taking him, at least for one season."

"Free tickets? I sure can use them, but not for me. If Mike Varanese wants to go to Disneyland, he pays his way. But send them up here. We'll pass them out."

"We get some hotheads every now and then. Everybody gets their problems sometimes. I always tell them, 'You come in and talk to me and I promise you one thing.' They say, 'What?' sort of suspicious, and I say, 'You won't go away mad.'"

"All those wise guys have theories about how you get along with women. There is no big secret. Treat every gal, no matter what she is, like she is the world's greatest lady. They like that."

"This job is a lot PR. I mean it is people, true? I wouldn't get to first base except all over this shop there's plenty who think that Mike Varanese is a right guy."