Up for auction RARE! "AT&T" H.D. Romnes Hand Signed TLS Dated 1966.
ES-0928
SARASOTA,
Fla., Nov. 20—H. I. Romnes, retired board chairman and chief executive officer
of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, died yesterday at Sarasota
Memorial Hospital. He was 66 years old. Mr. Romnes leaves his wife, the former
Aimee Champion; a daughter, Mrs. Albert Olenzak; two brothers, a sister and
three grandsons. Haakon Ingolf Romnes, who rarely used anything but the
initials for his given names, spent 44 years with the telephone company. His
career covered every area of telecommunications, from research and development,
where he held several patents, to the leadership of the nationwide Bell System.
Mr. Romnes's interest in electrical engineering began at the University of
Wisconsin, although he had considered concentrating on economics. His decision
led to a job in the summer of 1927 before his senior year with the Wisconsin
Telephone Company, where he was a phone Installer and worked with a
construction crew. With his newly earned diploma, he joined the Bell Telephone
Laboratories—then on West Street in lower Manhattan—as a circuit designer. In
the next seven years he was awarded six patents and, despite the Depression,
kept his job because of his ingenuity. When he joined the parent A.T.&T.
company's engineering department in 1935, he found his interest in economics
useful in working out the practical application of laboratory ideas. In 1950 he
was sent back to the Middle West as chief engineer of Illinois Bell Telephone
Company in Chicago. But a year later New York reclaimed him as operations
director for A.T.&T.'s Long Lines department. In 1953 he was made chief engineer,
and in 1955, vice president for operations and engineering. These were the
years when direct dialing became widespread and many telephone operators were
forced out of work. Mr. Romnes saw that the company had a problem—the loss of a
personal touch with the customers. It was his concern with the human side of
the huge corporation that made him favorite among his fellow employes. As
president of Western Electric, the manufacturing subsidiary, from 1959 through
1963, he introduced significant changes. On the technical side, he strengthened
links with Bell Telephone Laboratories at the factory level for smoother and
more efficient incorporation of new developments. Administratively, he
decentralized the management to improve coordination with the regional
companies it served. And in human relations, he made Western Electric one of
the first eight major defense contractors to pledge equal employment
opportunity for blacks on July 12, 1961, at the White House. On Jan. 1, 1964,
he became vice chairman of A. T. & T., and president a year later. In 1967
he was made chairman and chief executive officer. From 1970 until his
retirement on April 1, 1972—mandatory following his 65th birthday—he was both
president and chairman. Company employes commenting at the time agreed that Mr.
Romnes was the best chairman they had ever had. Among his favorite themes were
the ideas that even sudden change can be rationally managed; that taking time
to know the other person better and to listen to him tends to diminish
differences; that institutions have no rights except through performance; that
longterm consequences are more important than quick results; and that even in a
complex society, one man can make a difference. He was philosophical about
government regulation, observing: “If we in business can say of the bureaucrat
that ‘he never met a payroll’, it can also be said with equal justice that ‘we
never carried a precinct.’ We have a lot to learn from each other.” Mr. Romnes
was a director a favorite among his fellow emSteel, Cities Service,
ColgatePalmolive and other companies. His civic activities included the
presidency of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation and directorships of the
Council for Financial Aid to Education, Planned ParenthoodWorld Population and
a governorship of the Business Committee for the Arts. He held many honorary
degrees and had been scheduled to receive next year's John Fritz Medal for
scientific or industrial achievement awarded by the engineering community.