Patriots Versus Bureaucrats

by Thomas Temple

  By 1984 the founder and owner wanted to retire and offered Pete, now the Chief Operating Officer, the opportunity to buy the company. Since Pete did not have anywhere close to the amount of money required for the buyout, it seemed improbable that he could take advantage of the opportunity staring him in the face. It was then that, thanks to the owner who was also his mentor, Pete was introduced to venture capitalists. After months of negotiations and number crunching the deal went through. The owner would walk away with twenty million dollars and Pete would control the company through joint ownership with the venture capitalists. This partnership proved to be a perfect match for all involved. Under Pete’s leadership and technical expertise the firm had grown to a two hundred million dollar a year business. After just three years the venture capitalists cashed in for eighty million dollars, selling their interest to Peter Wallis. Wallis Technologies Inc. was now one hundred percent owned by Peter J. Wallis. The eighty million paid to the venture capitalists was financed by corporate debentures and was the only debt on the books of Wallis Technologies Inc. The debentures were paid off in just five years, five years before their maturity. The year was 1988 and Peter J. Wallis was the sole owner of a business that was now generating over three hundred million dollars in sales per year with an annual growth rate of over twenty percent. Investment bankers were drooling at the prospect of taking Wallis Technologies Inc. public. They would be disappointed because Pete and his senior staff did not want the hassle of being a public company. The compensation plan at Wallis Technologies Inc. rewarded performance very well and Pete was by no means the only multi-millionaire on the payroll.

  Wallis Technologies Inc. made most of their profits as a major subcontractor to the big defense firms. When Pete first entered college the term “miniaturization” was used. This concept had evolved into “micro-technology.” Much of the guidance technology involved in the production of the state of the art armaments used in the first gulf war came right from the laboratories of Wallis Technologies.

  By 1992 Wallis Technologies was generating nearly seven hundred and fifty million dollars in annual sales. Defense contracts accounted for over five hundred million in sales and the remaining sales came from a variety of industrial products such as high efficiency turbines and heat exchanger equipment. Pete personally held over sixty-five patents. Geothermal energy was one of Pete Wallis’ areas of great interest and he and his lead engineers kept plugging away at the possibilities. Little did they know in 1992 that events would unfold to make their efforts very rewarding.

  After the election of 1992 the country changed direction. Defense expenditures fell out of favor and the priorities were redirected to social programs. The profits at Wallis Technologies began to shrink almost overnight as promising projects were delayed, stretched out, and cancelled. The saving grace was the lack of debt on the corporate books. Peter was able to keep his staff and operate at almost a break even basis. Resources were reapplied to industrial goods and in particular to the emerging geothermal energy area. By 1995 the company was again making a nice profit of nearly fifty million per year on sales of over three hundred and fifty million. Wallis Technologies had a large plant in Illinois and two smaller plants in South Carolina.

  Business had consistently grown every year and by 2001 the company was back up to doing about seven hundred and fifty million in annual sales, mostly in industrial goods. Then everything changed on September 11, 2001. The two small plants in South Carolina were expanded to meet the demand for military goods. Defense contracts were bringing in an additional six hundred million in sales by 2004. Wallis Technologies was a billion dollar a year enterprise that employed over five thousand workers and Pete Wallis now had a net worth somewhere north of a billion dollars. Included in this substantial net worth was a Wyoming ranch that Pete and Beth had purchased in 1999 from a dot.com tycoon who had fallen upon hard times. In 2005 the company purchased a former Titan II missile site near Russell, Kansas, for the modest cost of five hundred thousand dollars. Wallis Technologies converted this site into a research facility that people in the company called “The Mole Works.”

  2006 was a year of personal tragedy for Pete Wallis. Beth was found to have pancreatic cancer in February and was gone by August. She had put up a courageous fight and Pete had engaged the best oncologists available, but in the end nothing could be done. A big part of Peter Wallis went to the grave with Beth. Thanks to the support of his children and his then neighbors, Bob and Mary Miller, he was able to cope with the suffocating grief of Beth’s passing. The ranch in Wyoming had become Pete’s refuge where he could work through his grief and heal his damaged emotions.

  Pete had considered retiring but had some misgivings about his being able to adjust to a life that didn’t present the challenges that running Willis Technologies offered. Sure, he had a net worth that now was several billions, but what would he do. Then events made the decision easy by late 2007. First the election of November of 2006 brought the uneasy feeling that he would see a replay of 1992 insofar as defense expenditures were concerned. Second, the plant in Illinois was becoming harder to maintain at a profit due to the rise in state corporate taxes and labor costs. Requests to the Governor’s office for a meeting on the costs of the new tax rates went unanswered and in September the employees voted to unionize. Pete was devastated by the employees’ decision to join a union. The Illinois plant had had labor peace since its opening and the wages and benefits were twenty percent higher than other similar operations.

  In October Pete decided to call it quits and called Jake Wasserman of Pike and Wasserman to sell the South Carolina plants. Negotiations proceeded very quickly and the plants were bought by a bigger competitor for 1.8 billion dollars. Since Pete was unsure of what he wanted to do with the rest of his life, he just put the money in the bank. When the financial panic hit in 2008 he was sitting on almost two billion of cash and no exposure to real estate or securities. Sometimes good luck will beat having brains.

  Pete decided to just close the Illinois plant and sell the equipment and real estate. He was advised that the plant could fetch upwards of two hundred million, but that negotiations would take some time. At this point in his career Wallis just wanted to be rid of headaches and another two hundred million just wasn’t worth the hassle.

  The longtime employees were given very generous severance packages which along with their vested 401k plans made over fifty people millionaires. The young people who had agitated for the union were left out in the cold as was the local government and the State of Illinois. Pete smiled when the newly elected union officials requested a meeting with management to begin discussing the new collective bargaining agreement. They presented him with a list of contract demands and he presented them with the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN) letters that constituted the sixty day notification that the law required before major layoffs or plant closings. Pete wished them all a Merry Christmas as he left them in their stunned silence and boarded his Gulfstream 450 and headed back to Wyoming. Upon returning to Wyoming the calls started coming in fast and furious. First the local mayor called, then the congressman called, then the governor called, then both senators called. They were advised that Mr. Wallis had gone backpacking in the high country and wouldn’t be available for several weeks but would get their messages as soon as he returned. Sure and while you’re at it go fuck yourself, mayor, congressman, governor, and senator.

  CHAPTER 2 - THE MOUNTAIN AND MEADOW RANCH

  In 1995 Pete and Beth were living in Moline, Illinois, near the original Wallis Technologies plant. Some friends had asked them that summer to come and visit with them near Jackson, Wyoming. Pete and Beth fell in love with the Grand Tetons and spent several summer vacations in the area. On one of these trips they decided that they would buy some property for a vacation home in the general area of Jackson. They were just about to make an offer on a beautiful A/ frame home that sat on five acres just off US Route 89 when the realtor called and asked if they
might be interested in something larger. More out of curiosity than desire they accompanied the realtor to a property in Lincoln County. The property they saw was over twenty-five thousand acres that was mostly forest and mountain. Constructed on the property was a huge house with eight bedrooms and five full baths. A recent dot.com millionaire had suffered some financial setbacks and wanted to sell quickly. Beth and Pete strolled along the path near the house and came to a decision almost immediately. The offering price was twenty-five million and the Wallis’ would pay cash. The realtor had just earned herself a commission of one million, five hundred thousand dollars for two hours of work. They closed the transaction in August, 1999. Informally they named the property the Mountain Ranch.

  Three years later, Pete and Beth moved to the Mountain Ranch as their permanent home and Pete ran his businesses out of an office at the ranch. It was easier than he imagined, thanks to the digital age. Beth and Pete Wallis were living in paradise as far as they were concerned and the frequent trips from the children and grandchildren made ample use of the big house and the essentially wilderness acreage of the property. The summers and holidays were happy times and the squealing of the five grandchildren was a testament to the excitement they all felt when they were at the ranch.

  Travel to the ranch was easily arranged because Pete would just order up the corporate jet that he kept at the Jackson airport which was only fifty minutes driving time from the Mountain Ranch. Daughter Sally, her husband Rick, and grandchildren Ellen, Tina, and Frankie lived in Phoenix. Son Jimmy, his wife Ida, and grandchildren Margaret and Billy lived in Louisville.

  Mountain Ranch could be reached by heading west on County Road 41 just north of the small town of Grover on US Route 89. The property bordered the Caribou National Forest on the north and west, the vast North American Land and Cattle Company ranch on the south, and County Road 41 on the east. Two miles of gravel road straight up the mountain from the main house was a stone cabin that overlooked a narrow and winding lake. The Wallis’ named this lake, “Fishhook Lake,” reflecting its general appearance and the fact that it was loaded with native brook trout, northern pike, and walleye.

  The view from the western border of the ranch was truly breathtaking due to a one thousand foot escarpment that fell to the Little Beaver Creek, a tributary of the Snake River. This escarpment, known to the locals as the “Shoshone Ridge” served also as the border between the States of Idaho and Wyoming. Standing at the top of Shoshone Ridge one could see the Grand Tetons to the north and the Caribou National Forest in Idaho to the west. The ranch was also blessed with several small streams that fed into Fishhook Lake.

  The Mountain Ranch had been largely unused for over forty years except for the main house and the stone cabin on Fishhook Lake. As a result the wildlife had flourished. There were elk, mule deer, and moose in abundance. Unknown to all but a few people there was also a small herd of bison that roamed between the northwestern quadrant of ranch and the Caribou National Forest. Nobody knew for sure how the bison arrived at this location, but the best guess was that several had wandered off National Park Service land and just survived and bred on their own. Bison had been flourishing in these parts long before the National Park Service had arrived. Occasionally one could hear the howl of wolves from the stone cabin as a reminder that this was very primitive country indeed.

  Pete and Beth spent most of their free time exploring and improving the property. The first thing that Pete accomplished upon buying the ranch was to drill a geothermal well and apply the Wallis Technologies expertise to make the entire property energy self-sufficient. The geothermal well provided all the necessary electricity to the main house and a transmission line was strung to the stone cabin, thereby providing all the comforts of home to what had been a rather Spartan habitat. Naturally, since Pete was an avid fisherman, a boathouse was constructed on Fishhook Lake that had space for several canoes, two small flat-bottomed boats, oars, lifejackets, and a couple of small outboard motors. A septic tank and a well added modern plumbing to the stone cabin and soon the grandchildren were clamoring for Grandpa Pete to take them up to the stone cabin for a campout. They really didn’t have to twist his arm too much since he had never given up his love of the great outdoors and felt very proud that his grandchildren, like his children, had developed a respect and love for all things in nature.

  The years from 1999 to 2006 were the happiest for Pete and Beth. Every day seemed to be a new adventure and business at Wallis Technologies was running smoothly and profitably. Then Beth was laid low with pancreatic cancer and everything changed. The stress of the illness and Beth’s passing cut the heart out of Pete. Nothing really seemed important anymore after Beth’s ashes were spread over her beloved Mountain Ranch.

  Pete was ready to basically give up on life and was saved by his family and his good neighbors, Bob and Mary Miller.

  In late 2008, the patriarch of the wealthy Calgary, Canada, family that owned the North American Land and Cattle Company ranch died in an automobile accident. The heirs had no interest in keeping the empire together. One night at dinner with Bob and Mary Miller, Pete found out that the huge ranch neighboring his own was going to be sold. The Millers were understandably concerned about their future and the future of the great ranch. Pete and the Millers had become close friends and spent many evenings together talking about ranching management and innovations that could improve operations.

  When Pete discovered that the Canadians were entertaining offers that started at seventy-five million dollars for the property he sent Jake Wasserman to Calgary with instructions to pay up to one hundred million. The deal closed in January, 2009, for a price of eighty million dollars.

  Bob and Mary Miller were having dinner at Pete’s house when he announced that he was the new owner and that the Millers were going to be much more than his neighbors from now on. Soon after the close, Pete and Bob were meeting on a daily basis to plan improvements for the ranching operations, finance, and marketing. The new entity would be called the Mountain and Meadow Ranch Company and Bob Miller would be the general manager. Bob and Mary were dumfounded when Pete offered Bob a salary that was twice what he had been making under the previous owners and added a nice performance bonus when certain goals had been achieved. Peter Wallis had amassed a fortune by hiring talented people and Bob Miller fit into that mold.

  Obtaining the additional one hundred thousand acres of the new ranch to go with the twenty-five thousand acres that he and Beth had purchased in 1999 gave Pete a new lease on life. He immersed himself in many projects with Bob Miller and the Mountain and Meadow Ranch quickly became a thirty million dollar a year enterprise. Financing of the projects was easy – Wallis simply wrote checks. The Mountain and Meadow Ranch became an amalgam of the old west and twenty-first century technology. Three more geothermal wells were drilled on the sprawling acreage and the whole enterprise was now energy self-sufficient. In fact, the energy needs of the Mountain and Meadow Ranch Company were so modest compared to the energy being produced that Pete sold the excess to the local power company. The citizens of Grover, Afton, and Smoot saw their electricity bills decline by sixty percent. Peter Wallis was becoming a very popular citizen in the local community.

  One of the first projects completed at the ranch was an airport. With an eight thousand foot runway the airport could now accommodate Wallis Technologies’ Gulfstream 450 and Pete would no longer need to drive the fifty minutes into Jackson. Money may not buy happiness but it sure creates convenience.

  The hanger housed not only the Gulfstream 450 but also a Lockheed C-130H and a Bell 204B helicopter. The Bell 204B, “Huey,” was used extensively to move people and equipment around the nearly two hundred square miles of ranch property. The C-130H would haul large amounts of materials and equipment from commercial depots to the ranch. Stored in the hanger next to the C-130H was a Modular Airborne Fire Fighting System unit, MAFFS II. This system could be inserted in the aircraft and deployed within minutes should a fire break out on
the ranch or nearby national forests.

  Two log cabins were built on the Mountain part of the ranch. One cabin was placed near the boundary of the Caribou National Forest in the northwestern section. This cabin was built on a rocky outcropping that provided a spectacular view to the north and west. It was built for more than just a great view. Attached to the cabin was a forty foot tower with powerful telescopic and ground location equipment. An observer could easily spot and precisely locate the outbreak of any forest fire within a one hundred square mile proximity to the ranch. Pete had this cabin staffed continuously with a two man team. Communications to the National Park Service and the ranch headquarters were provided by satellite phones and a land line directly to the main house and the ranch headquarters. Wallis employed three rotating two man teams who worked seven days on and fourteen days off. These men were Shoshone who lived on the Wind River Indian Reservation. The job paid well and the men had a strong dedication to preserving the forests and native wildlife. Horseback was the method of transportation except in the winter when snowmobiles and snowshoes were a more practical method of mobility. Each man carried a Winchester 30/30 in the saddle scabbard and a Smith and Wesson 50 caliber, Model 500, with a ten inch barrel, strapped to his leg. Trespassing and poaching were actively discouraged.

  The second log cabin was constructed on the southwestern quadrant of the Mountain part of the ranch. It was only a hundred feet from the Shoshone Ridge. It had the same communication capability as the cabin to the northwest, but had a different primary mission.