David Glass, a Successful Successor; Tumbling Tumbleweeds and a First Date

Successful Successor: You probably know the name Sam Walton. He’s the small town Arkansas retailer who turned a five-and-dime chain store operation—the largest Ben Franklin variety store franchise in 1962—into what is now the largest retail company in the world, Walmart. Sam (I’m entitled to call him by his first name because I knew him and, more importantly, he knew me) was as much a showman as a retailer. He knew how to get the most out of people, whether they were store managers, headquarters buyers, truck drivers or cashiers. 

Another aspect of Walton’s success was his ability to spot and employ talent. He chose David Glass years before Glass succumbed to the call from Bentonville, Ark., to become the chief financial officer of a chain with less than a billion dollars in sales. As flamboyant and media savvy as Walton was, Glass was the opposite. Glass was a numbers man. Though he had a dry sense of humor, he was mostly taciturn in public. He let the numbers do most of his talking. 

Glass (I could call him David, for we knew each other, as well) championed supercenters, the cavernous combination of discount stores with a full-fledged grocery, as he had worked for a supermarket chain prior to joining Walmart. His advocacy was spot on. Walmart today sells more grocery items than anyone else in the world. 

When Walton retired as CEO in 1988, Glass succeeded him. During his 12 years at the helm, Walmart sales grew from $16 billion to $165 billion. He pursued international expansion. 

News broke over the weekend that Glass died January 9 from complications from pneumonia. He was 84.

After his retirement in 2000, Glass indulged his passion for baseball by buying the Kansas City Royals. For years the Royals struggled under Glass’ Walmart-inspired low-cost creed. But in 2006 he reversed course, hired Dayton Moore as general manager and started investing in personnel. The Royals won the World Series in 2015. Last year Glass sold the franchise for about $1 billion. Not bad for his initial $96 million investment.

As much as Glass was instrumental for Walmart’s success, it was his time before the NBC Dateline television camera that sticks in my mind. He was not the most approachable of Walmart executives. Behind his resonant baritone voice and wry sense of humor, I always suspected he did not like sharing anything with the press. 

His signature moment with the media occurred in December 1992 on NBC Dateline. Glass was confronted with allegations Walmart suppliers in Bangladesh employed underage child laborers, that the company’s vaunted Made in America program was a sham.

At the time, Glass had bushy, dark eyebrows that slanted up his forehead. With the Dateline camera angled from below his seat, he was the picture of Mephistopheles. He was the picture of evil incarnate.

Glass stormed out of the interview. Though he returned to face the Dateline cameras weeks later, the damage to his and Walmart’s reputation was done. 

Shortly after that incident Walmart professionalized its media relations office. Camera angles were to be scrutinized as diligently as profit and loss statements. 

Tumbling Tumbleweeds: The national weather has been frustratingly crazy of late. Torrential rainstorms. Tornadoes in the heartland and south. Heat waves in the northeast followed by a massive snowstorm blasting across the continent. And earlier this month a mess of tumbleweeds in the Pacific Northwest that buried cars and stalled traffic on a state highway in Washington (https://www.livescience.com/tumbleweed-traps-cars-washington-highway.html).

Have you ever driven as a tumbleweed swirled into you? I have. It was a scary experience.

As I was motoring—okay, speeding—down an interstate outside Reno, NV, on my way to an interview at a JC Penney distribution center a wall of tumbleweeds three lanes wide was blowing towards me. There was no avoiding a collision. I braced for contact. 

When it happened I could do nothing more than smile at my naiveté. Had I not watched so many westerns to know tumbleweeds were mostly air? When my car penetrated the tumbleweed it was as if it evaporated before my eyes. 

It was a surreal experience. 

A Different Drummer: I just finished watching a CNN documentary recorded earlier this month about Linda Ronstadt. Like many I rank her as one of my all-time favorite singers. 

I first saw Ronstadt in concert at Brooklyn College in the fall of 1968. Linda Ronstadt and the Stone Poneys were the opening act for Country Joe and the Fish. I can’t remember much about Country Joe, but from the moment Ronstadt started her group’s set by wailing “Different Drum” EVERYONE knew hers was a voice that couldn’t be contained within the walls of a concert hall. 

As an associate- and eventual chief editor of a college newspaper I scored free tickets, always in good locations, to many concerts. Not that tickets cost a lot back then. For a Joni Mitchell-Tim Hardin concert a month later ticket prices were $3.50, $3.00 and $2.50. In today’s dollars that would be $25.71, $22.04, and $18.37, respectively. 

College concerts back then mostly featured folk musicians and comedians. Gilda’s and my first date was a Tom Paxton-Dick Gregory concert in December 1969. Gilda asked me to accompany her to a Christmas party one of her political science teachers was hosting in his Brooklyn Heights apartment. I said I would go only if she was my date for the Paxton-Gregory concert. The rest, as they say, is 50 years and running history. 

Lessons From Tariffs, Import Quotas and Walmart

Let the trade wars begin.

In an effort to resuscitate American industry, Donald Trump launched the first salvo Thursday in what may become a global trade war by imposing a 25% tariff on imported steel alongside a 10% tariff on imported aluminum. How the world will react, and if Trump has a counter-counterattack, remains unclear at this time.

It is not the first time America has sought to level off its unbalanced trade, particularly with China and other countries that flood—some would say, dump—cheaper alternatives to domestic U.S. production. In a global economy, manufacturers seek out the least expensive raw materials, labor and finished products. Too often, that means consumers at home and abroad think American made goods are overpriced. 

Heck, relocating supply lines has long been practiced by American industry. Textile companies fled the North to establish plants down South where non unionized workers earned less than their northern counterparts. But even lower southern wages could not compete with foreign laborers in Latin America and Asia. Executives fluent in global sourcing minutia shifted manufacturing from country to country to stay below import quotas established by the American government.

Trump champions America First, so it is not surprising he would favor steel and aluminum tariffs, particularly since underutilized plants are mostly located in Rust Belt states Trump won in 2016 and needs to win in 2020—Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Michigan, Wisconsin. It seemingly does not bother Trump that prices of many goods that include steel and aluminum components will rise and could cost more jobs in related industries than would be created by the metal makers.

Trump, who spoke out against Chinese dumping practices years before his presidential run, was not the first business titan to see the danger of a depleted American manufacturing base. Back in 1985, Sam Walton positioned Walmart as an advocate of “Buy America.” 

I went to the source—my bound copies of Chain Store Age—to review how the retail industry and I reacted to import quotas and to Mr. Sam’s defensive ploy to combat a growing criticism of his company, at $6.5 billion, the seventh largest general merchandise chain, a little less than a third the size of $21.7 billion Sears, Roebuck and Co. and Kmart’s $21.1 billion. (Today, Walmart is the largest retailer in the world with sales of $485.9 billion in the recently concluded fiscal year. Sears and its now-sister company Kmart have a combined volume of less than $17 billion). 

Not surprisingly, retailers, who normally supported Reagan administration policies, railed against quotas. Under the headline, “Protectionism: Policies leave chains vulnerable,” CSA reported in September 1984 that tighter import quotas fueled dramatic price increases in many merchandise categories. Kmart, for example, estimated the cost of goods from China increased 25%. 

Fast forward to Trump’s imposition of tariffs and the reaction is no less muted. Thursday, National Retail Federation president and CEO Matthew Shay said, “A tariff is a tax, plain and simple. In this case, it’s an unnecessary tax on every American family and a self-inflicted wound on the nation’s economy. Consumers are just beginning to see more money in their paychecks following tax reform, but those gains will soon be offset by higher prices for products ranging from canned goods to cars to electronics.

“The retail industry is extremely concerned by the administration’s apparent desire to ignite a trade war, where the net losers will be the very people the president wants to help. On top of steel and aluminum tariffs, retailers are troubled by the direction of the ongoing NAFTA negotiations and the threat of additional tariffs on consumer goods from China. The true greatness of America cannot be realized when we build walls blocking the free flow of commerce in today’s global economy.”

Importing helped catapult the Bentonville, Ark.-based company into a global powerhouse. To be sure, few if any of Walmart’s competitors disdained importing. But Walmart’s heralded logistical and technological efficiencies accelerated its growth.

When Sam Walton started speaking publicly about imported goods in August 1984, his company was a burgeoning juggernaut but still not near the size of Sears and Kmart. He framed the challenge as dual pronged—reduce the trade deficit by buying American made products, but if that is not possible, develop products and jobs in Mexico, Central America and South America to “improve the standard of living for the average citizen in Central and South America.” 

Within a year Walton launched a “Buy America” program. Skeptics abounded. The program persisted, but in December 1992, five months after Walton died, NBC Dateline confronted company CEO David Glass with allegations products marketed as Made in America really were imported from Bangladesh. The adverse publicity led to the program’s demise.

Several years ago, Walmart started a Made in America program. It proudly touts a claim that “two-thirds of what Walmart spends on products sold in U.S. stores is made, sourced, assembled or grown within the USA.” That is “according to our suppliers,” Walmart acknowledges.

That provides a wide definition of American made. (Sales last year in domestic Walmart stores and Sam’s Clubs totaled $365.2 billion.) It cannot be argued that Walmart’s expansion and buying practices did not gut many a small town of local retailing and small malls, as well as contribute to the closing of many domestic manufacturing plants supplanted by foreign suppliers. 

But it is equally indisputable that shopping at Walmart has stretched consumer dollars and helped keep inflation in check.

It’s too soon to say what lasting impact Trump’s tariffs will have on sales, on inflation, on employment. But it’s safe to say they will not markedly change our balance of trade with the rest of the world.

Crystal Bridges Was Worth the Trip But the Real Treat Was Revisiting Walmart's Bentonville

I returned to Bentonville, Ark., last week. Ostensibly, the impetus for the visit with Gilda to the hometown of Walmart, a side trip to our stay with our daughter Ellie’s family in Omaha, was to see Crystal Bridges, the magnificent museum of American art underwritten by Alice Walton, daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton. It was well worth the trip. 

But let’s not kid anybody. I was equally, if not more, interested in retracing my past as a chronicler of Walmart’s growth while editor and publisher of Chain Store Age than looking at other people’s artifacts, as splendid as they are.

With each landmark we drove or walked by as we entered Bentonville I informed Gilda of its pedigree. Inside a Walmart superstore Gilda marveled at the extensive crafts department. It was a remnant of Sam Walton’s devotion to his wife Helen’s interest in crafts, I told her, a dedication that at one time led to a small chain of craft stores named in her honor. Alas, Sam’s gesture had a bottom line requirement. Poor results shuttered the budding chain. The crafts department, though, has stayed within Walmart stores even as other discounters discontinued the merchandise and let chains like Hobby Lobby, Michaels or Jo-Ann Fabrics and Crafts take the business.

I first came to Bentonville in 1981 when Walmart had less than $3 billion in sales. The last time was 20 years ago. Bentonville was a typical sleepy southern town when I first visited as part of Walmart’s annual meeting weekend. Even back then Walmart was important to Wall Street, seen as a backwoods upstart to Kmart’s national dominance. 

Nothing like today, of course. For 2015, Walmart sales were $485.7 billion, Kmart’s a mere $10.2 billion. Bentonville has grown up with Walmart. Back in 1960, two years before the first Walmart opened, Walton’s Five and Dime store was a focal point on the town square. Bentonville boasted just 3,649 residents. Today there are more than 41,725.

The River Grille restaurant can match its aged steaks against any big city establishment. All forms of exotic fare can now be had along Bentonville’s and the surrounding towns’ byways.

For my first visit I flew into Tulsa, OK, to rendezvous with one of Walmart’s single propeller corporate planes that would ferry me and seven financial analysts to Bentonville. At Bentonville’s newer airport jet service is standard.

My first two visits centered around the company’s annual shareholders meeting. They were more like revival meetings than staid financial requirements for a public company. About a thousand shareholders and store associates attended the Friday morning meetings in an auditorium in the corporate office complex (these days some 18,000 gather in the field house of the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville). 

Officially, the meeting was called for 10 am but if you showed up then you’d have missed the show which began around seven with Sam regaling the audience with down home humor and anecdotes about his daily visits to stores. Often he would call out an attendee by name to welcome her or him to the meeting, to encourage them to bring the Walmart enthusiasm back to their comrades in the aisles.

When the official business ended around noon it was time for a box lunch. Buses took everyone to Sam’s house, a Fay Jones construction along a creek a mile or so from headquarters. (Fay Jones was a disciple of Frank Lloyd Wright.) The store associates would sit on a grassy knoll in front of the house and then gingerly walk through Sam’s residence, oohing and aahing at the architecture and their glimpse inside the home of Miss Helen and Mr. Sam, as they were known.

After lunch the press and analysts would go on a tour of stores with Sam and other executives. That evening Walmart would host a concert by a well known country western star. Tom T. Hall performed one year, I recall.

Every Saturday morning throughout the year Sam convened a managers meeting. Another 7 am start. A typical meeting could last well past noon unless an Arkansas Razorback football game was scheduled. 

For the annual meeting weekend the analysts, press and visiting store associates were invited to witness the Saturday session. Sam would review each store’s merchandise sales, highlighting weekly product winners. Most importantly, he stressed the payroll to sales ratio. No negative deviation from corporate standards went unnoticed and no further negative deviation would be tolerated.

After the abbreviated meeting ended at noon and the store associates were sent back home, it was time to play. For Sam, that meant leading a canoe trip down the Elk River (at least I think it was the Elk River along the Missouri border). As I don’t know how to swim I demurred the invitation to canoe that first year. Sam wouldn’t hear of it. I was dragooned into his navy. 

At the end of several hours on the river, which I fortunately never fell into during my two years attending the weekend festivities, all the participants dined on a mulligan stew prepared by Sam’s daughter, Alice.

Much has been written about the brilliance of Sam Walton. To me, his most telling trait was that he didn’t come off as a know-it-all. He constantly asked questions of customers, associates, the media. He had a knack of making everyone feel important, that he could learn something from them. 

That first trip to Bentonville I was flattered to hear him praise Chain Store Age during the Saturday morning executive meeting, saying he always learned something from its articles. The day before, during a bus tour of Walmart stores and their competitors, I sat near him. I was 32 and, though editor of CSA, had been reporting on the retail industry for less than five years. Sam kept asking for my opinion on how each store looked, how his competitors were doing, how he could make Walmart better. He did the same thing a few years later in San Diego after a cocktail party during a discount store industry conference. He asked me what I thought about Price Club (what we now know as Costco). I sheepishly admitted I hadn’t yet been to Price Club but went there the next day, sneaking in without a membership card. Sam, however, was thinking a lot about it. Two years later, Walmart launched Sam’s Club.

In the Walton 5-10 store that has been transformed into a Walmart Museum, Sam Walton’s red Ford-150 pickup truck has a prominent spot. The first time I saw that truck was early on a Sunday morning of an annual meeting weekend. My body aching from paddling the day before, I was awakened by a pounding at the door of my Bella Vista condominium unit arranged by Walmart. I opened the door to see Sam in tennis whites standing in front of his pickup. He had mistakenly knocked on my door instead of that of his tennis date, the owner of a Mexican retail chain he wound up buying a few years later. (FYI, Sam was a highly ranked tennis player in Arkansas.)

Also inside the Walmart Museum is Sam’s paneled corporate office, reassembled to look exactly as it appeared on the day he died in April 1992. On the floor next to his chair are two stacks of publications. Atop one stack is Discount Store News, a sister publication of Chain Store Age. Atop the second stack—Chain Store Age with a cover photo of Sam holding a cup of coffee while he listened to some store associates. Perhaps I’m dreaming, but I seem to recall taking that photo several years before, before illness sapped then silenced his vitality. 

From Wal-Mart CEO to Owner of the KC Royals

David Glass stood before exultant fans in Kauffman Stadium Wednesday evening. As television cameras recorded the scene, the 79-year-old owner and chief executive of the Kansas City Royals thanked the faithful for their support of his team that, by virtue of their four game sweep of the Baltimore Orioles, is headed to the World Series for the first time since 1985. Indeed, this is the first time in 28 years that the Royals had qualified for any post-season activity.

Glass has owned the Royals since he shelled out $96 million in 2000. For the seven years prior to his ownership he was the CEO of the baseball franchise founded by Ewing Kauffman, who died in 1993. During Glass’ tenure as head Royal, Kansas City was a model of ineptitude, setting records for annual futility. Fans were infuriated, believing the team was more concerned with fielding the lowest paid roster in the sport than with being competitive. This year’s payroll started at $92 million, 19th out of the 30 major league teams.

Paying low wages was something Glass was all too familiar with. You see, from 1988 to 2000, Glass was president and CEO of Wal-Mart. And that’s where my connection to David Glass lies. As head of Wal-Mart, succeeding founder Sam Walton, Glass oversaw its growth from $20.6 billion to $191.3 billion, from 1,381 domestic stores to 4,190 stores in countries as diverse as Great Britain, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, China and Germany. 

He has a wry sense of humor. He could be self-effacing. He would tell the story of the time Walton tried to recruit him in 1962 when he was invited to attend the opening of the second Wal-Mart, in Harrison, Ark. At the time Glass was a financial officer with a small drug store chain in Springfield, MO. As related by Vance H. Trimble in his biography of Walton, Glass said, 

“It was the worst retail store I had ever seen. Sam had brought a couple of trucks or watermelons in and stacked them on the sidewalk. He had a donkey ride out in the parking lot. It was 115 degrees, and the watermelons began to pop, and the donkey began to do what donkeys do, and it all mixed together and ran all over the parking lot. And when you went inside the store, the mess just continued, having been tracked in all over the floor. 

“He was a nice fellow, but I wrote him off. It was just terrible.”

Fourteen years later Glass joined Wal-Mart.

I met Glass about three years later. He was not the most approachable of Wal-Mart executives. Behind his resonant baritone voice I always suspected he did not like sharing anything with the press. And this was before his signature moment with the media. That occurred in December 1992 on NBC Dateline. Glass was confronted with allegations Wal-Mart suppliers in Bangladesh employed underage child laborers, that the company’s vaunted Made in America program was a sham.

Glass, at the time, had bushy, dark eyebrows that slanted up his forehead. With the Dateline camera angled from below his seat, he was the picture of Mephistopheles. He was the picture of evil incarnate.

Glass stormed out of the interview. Though he returned to face the Dateline cameras weeks later, the damage to his and Wal-Mart’s reputation was done.

Over the last five years the Royals have been more competitive. Their general manager, Dayton Moore, has made many shrewd roster moves. As he stood on the infield stage under a black League Champions hat, David Glass could only hope fans would be more appreciative of his management of their beloved, long-suffering Royals. It would help if they won the World Series. 

I Didn't Knock on Warren Buffett's Door But Sam Walton Knocked on Mine

We drove by Warren Buffett’s house in Omaha Saturday afternoon (that “we” is not the imperial pronoun. It included Gilda, Ellie, husband Donny and Rachel, Donny’s mother). Buffett doesn't live in a gated or secluded community. He resides in the Dundee neighborhood in a nice but not overly substantial structure. Nothing outlandish to make the neighbors self-conscious about his status as the second richest person in America. Just like any other house in the well-to-do Dundee neighborhood. We resisted the urge to knock on his door.

It wouldn't have phased me if we had knocked and he'd have opened the door. It would have reciprocated for the time the richest man in the world, at the time Sam Walton, woke me up one morning by banging on my condo door.

It was the Sunday of the annual meeting weekend in Bentonville, AR, back in 1981. Stock analysts, the press and Wal-Mart guests were housed in condominiums at nearby Lakes of Bella Vista. Dressed in his tennis whites—Sam had been ranked fifth in the state among amateurs—he mistook my front door for that of the chairman of a Mexican retailer, a company Wal-Mart eventually bought.

Sam profusely apologized for waking me up at 7 am and got back into his beat up pickup truck to search for his tennis partner. He, of course, had been up for several hours. His daily custom was to get into the office early and be out by 6:30 to pilot his small propeller plane to the far reaches of his growing empire of stores.

I consider myself fortunate to have known and even befriended many of the merchant princes of the last half of the 20th century, chief among them Sam Moore Walton.

How Superstitious Am I?

Only a crazed sports fan would relate to what I am about to write.

How superstitious should I be today? Should I adhere to my time-honored practice of sitting in our den to watch the NY Giants on our 35-inch, 21-year old Mitsubishi console television, a TV that has served me well during the recent playoff drive and previous Super Bowl contests (let’s forget, for now, the debacle in 2001), or should I tempt fate and lay on my bed to watch the Giants take on the Green Bay Packers on our wall-mounted 52-inch LCD, High Definition Sharp Aquos television?

Normally, Gilda prefers I seclude myself in the den, but she’ll be at the gym later. I lean towards going with what’s gotten me, and the Giants, to their present possibility of upsetting the Packers, but I am tempted by Saturday’s viewing of the Saints-49’ers game on the big screen. No doubt about it, everything popped brighter, more vibrantly upstairs. It was indeed sharper on the Sharp.

But if the Giants lose, will I blame myself for switching? Non-sports fans (if they’ve read this far) are no doubt shaking their heads at the absurdity of my thoughts. How infantile can I be?, they are saying. They just don’t understand sports superstitions. Never have. Never will.


From Sports to Politics: You don’t need a TV screen to follow the tussles within the Republican party presidential primary. I’ve got a passing (yes, pun intended) interest in Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich.

For Gingrich, my link is to his money-bagged buddy, Sheldon Adelson. As I wrote back in May, Adelson was not one of my favorite business contacts. He is transfixed on what he sees as right, and uses his money and influence to advance his causes. Here’s what I wrote eight months ago: http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2011/05/my-link-to-newt.html

Memory fails to confirm if I ever met Mitt Romney some 20 years ago when I interviewed several Bain Capital executives about their interest in retail companies, such as Staples. This much I do remember—the three men I did meet all dressed the same. They could have stepped out of a Brooks Brothers catalog with their blue suits, white buttoned down shirts, rep ties, and black oxford shoes. They were clean-shaven with short, dark hair, not one strand out of place.

No, I can’t say Romney was among them. I have met two presidents before they became our nation’s chief executive. Jimmy Carter crossed my path during his 1972 presidential campaign while I was covering an event attended by Rep. John Monaghan of Connecticut. Carter was testy that night, I recall.

Bill Clinton was a guest at an annual shareholders meeting of Wal-Mart about 30 years ago. Sam Walton always liked to have the governors of Arkansas make an appearance and talk about the business-friendly climate in the Razorback state and how Wal-Mart was good for the local economy. A few years later Walton solidified his ties to Clinton by appointing Hillary to Wal-Mart’s board of directors. She served from 1986 to 1992.

Art in the Hinterlands

For the second time this month the NY Times has reported on culture coming to northwest Arkansas, specifically on the opening of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville. For those not in the know, Bentonville is the corporate hometown of Wal-Mart, the largest retailer, indeed the largest company, in the world. Crystal Bridges is, in the words of the December 4 Times piece, “the ambitious pet project of Alice Walton, 62, who, as the daughter of Wal-Mart’s founder, Sam Walton, is the third-richest woman in the world, according to Forbes.”

Here are links to the two articles, in the order they appeared:
http://travel.nytimes.com/2011/12/04/travel/art-meets-leisure-in-bentonville-arkansas.html?scp=2&sq=alice%20walton&st=cse

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/27/arts/design/crystal-bridges-the-art-museum-walmart-money-built-review.html?hp

I met Alice Walton twice, in 1981 and 1982, if memory serves me right, each time at the conclusion of a canoe trip for stock analysts and journalists attending Wal-Mart’s annual meeting weekend. After the Saturday morning shareholders’ meeting, Sam Walton would command a flotilla of mostly New York-based numbers crunchers and Wal-Mart executives. We would end up at a campsite beside the river where Alice was busy preparing Mulligan Stew for the ragged pack. I can’t say it was the most savory meal I’ve eaten, but after you’ve been dipping an oar for more than three hours it was quite appreciated. The cold beer washing it down enhanced the flavor.

Alice didn’t get involved in the retail enterprise, so I didn’t really follow her career which included interests in finance.

I’m not sure where Alice got her penchant for art, but I’d bet it was from her mother, Helen. Before one of her parents’ vacations, a trip to Europe reminiscent of scenes depicted in many a book or movie about an American matron touring the Continent to soak up culture, Sam Walton called our office in a tizzy. Speaking to one of my former bosses, the late Dick Groberg, he pressed him for the names of retailers he could visit while Helen made her way through the galleries and museums of Europe. Sam Walton didn’t build an empire by poring over artifacts and paintings. He took inspiration from current enterprises, wherever they might be.

OMG, I'm Your Co-Pilot

Have you seen the film clip of the crash landing of a small FAA plane in Ft. Worth, TX, last week? In case you didn’t, here’s a link—http://www.thekathrynreport.com/2010/06/raw-video-beechcraft-king-air-gear.html. Chilling, but fortunately, no injuries.

I’ve always fantasized what I’d do if I found myself aboard a plane with no pilot able to fly the aircraft. Probably came from watching too many Grade B movies, or seeing Airplane! one too many times.

My opportunity to be ready and able at a moment’s notice came some 30 years ago, right after Airplane! hit the theaters. It happened during my first trip to Wal-Mart headquarters for its annual meeting weekend, the latest of which took place last Friday and Saturday.

I flew into Tulsa on a Thursday, to be picked up with nine Wall Street analysts for the one hour plane ride to Bentonville in northwest Arkansas. We’d be ferried in one of Wal-Mart’s five planes. Even back then, when Wal-Mart sales reached only $1.2 billion from 276 U.S. stores (today sales exceed $405 billion from more than 8,400 stores in 15 countries), Wal-Mart was known as an innovator, a company with its own air force.

Company founder Sam Walton was pilot #1. He’d fly out most days to survey site locations from the air and land almost anywhere to visit stores. You never knew where or when Sam would drop in on you.

I didn’t expect Sam to be our pilot that day.

Nor did I expect the plane would be an 11-seat prop. As the last one to board, I took the only vacant spot, the seat to the right of the pilot. Oh My God! I was in the co-pilot’s seat. I was both anxious and exhilarated. I masked my emotions, joking with the pilot I was ready to take over if needed. I was determined to study his every move, just in case.

And then it happened—in the middle of our conversation his voice went soft and he was talking with the tower. We slowly started taxiing. Wait a minute. I didn’t see him touch anything. His hands weren’t on the yoke. How could he be talking and moving the plane so...effortlessly? We just rolled to the top of the runway and zoomed into the air.

It was then I gave up any hope of being Ted Striker talked through a landing by Capt. Rex Kramer (those are Airplane! references, for the record).