Wednesday, April 29, 2015
My relationship with Bill Cameron began as a working one, but soon evolved into much more.
I was an Olympic Manager for the AT&T sponsorship working on the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta. My chief responsibility was design and installation of ultimately 33 telephone systems and 12,000 telephones. At one point, I had to design the maintenance and technical support during the Games which was well outside our day to day capability. And since 3 billion people around the world were watching, it was a high visibility issue. Everyone in the business unit I questioned about high level support said, ‘You need to talk with Bill Cameron.” When I called him he said he had been looking forward to talking with me. As I found out, he always knew who was doing what in our business unit. Bill brought his team to Atlanta and coordinated our local efforts with the national labs and technical support so that AT&T had all our forces focused on the 12 days of the games 24/7. His team had that quiet confidence that comes from having done a good job before and knowing they could do it again. As we prepared, Bill and I found we “fed off each other,” as he said and whenever I had a call scheduled with him, I started to block out two hours for a great conversation.
As it happened, a bomb exploded one night during the Games in the Centennial Olympic Park. At 5am the next morning Bill and I and Eddie Pruitt, our Operations Manager were talking in a fluorescent lite hallway. Well, really just staring until Bill’s eyes grew large and a huge grin came over his face. He said, “How can we give a Gold Medal performance here?” He quickly rose out of the shock of the moment and went on to focus not just our business unit but all of AT&T on the needs of the world to reach out for information or contacting friends or family. It was an awesome effort that I realized only he could do. He was very proud of the fact that his senior management trusted him and working across business units with executive level management was his element. See, one thing that gave him great joy, was helping the business and people succeed. His performance certainly helped me succeed as well as AT&T and the Atlantic Committee for the Olympic Games.
But it did not stop there. I was in Bill’s office at Mt. Airy Road and saw his many pictures of his family. He told me all about them and it was plain that he was not only proud of their accomplishments but also of what kind of people they were. There was one picture, of a quarterback in an idyllic small town stadium that really caught my attention. Bill proceeded to tell me about Mountain Lakes, his home. When my wife, Claudia, and I decided it was time to leave the big city of Atlanta for a smaller and more family friendly town, Bill’s description led us to Mountain Lakes. We drove through Mountain Lakes and as we passed the Community Church, we turned to each other and said “this place is wonderful, we have to live here!” So it was that our three children had the benefit of the growing up around great people, in an exceptional school environment and in an exciting area of the country. We also made lifelong friends and we thank Bill Cameron for helping us give our family such a great opportunity in life.
And I thank Bill for so many wonderful conversations and for being a good friend.
