Bill’s Extraordinary Adventure: Introduction
Sunday, August 15, 2010. 6:00PM. The adventure starts here. Or maybe not. On a Continental 50 passenger commuter jet. Bound for Houston, and then on to Buenos Aries (though that leg is on a 767). The crow would never take this route. It appears that I will be flying about 2 hours West to have to turn around and fly even more of that back to the East, while going a very longs ways South. But such are the vagaries of the airline hub system. Shortly after takeoff, we fly over Davidson, NC, and I view the Charlotte airport out of my left side window. Several beginnings happened in those places. Davidson gave me the opportunity to begin work for Blue Bell in 1978, which has subsequently, though the not least bit directly, led to this point in my life. And the Charlotte airport, into which the sole time I flew as pilot in command was to take the check ride for my Private Pilot certificate. And I was successful, by the way.
But maybe the real beginning to this story is Friday, March 5, 2010, at about 9:00 in the morning. I had been asked the afternoon before to join in a teleconference with my boss, who was on an extended trip in Hong Kong, and the VP of Operations for VF Jeanswear. It did not occur to me until I was driving into work that morning that this call might be anything out of the ordinary, but what extraordinary things it has led to, including this adventure. You see, the gist of the call that morning was that my department, Purchasing for VF Jeanswear, was being moved to Panama, and that my job would be relocated there without me. The plan was for my Purchasing job to end June 31, and that was the way it worked out. Not the best of news on any Friday morning after 32 years with a company. But Randy Fortenberry, the VP of Operations, had already come up with some ideas on what he might be able to do with me after the Purchasing gig ran out, and the story that unfolds in these pages is the result of those thoughts. So, for making this adventure possible, I want to dedicate this blog to Randy. What a chance of a lifetime he has given me!!!!
My assignment for the month of July was to assist the various US companies with Process Flow documentation in conjunction with a Speed to Market team that Randy is heading for VF. This led to trips to New York City to work with Nautica, Kansas City to work with Lee Jeans, Nashville to work with our Imagewear group, San Francisco for North Face and Jansport, and finally to Los Angeles wit 7 For All Mankind and Van’s. This all seems a good introduction for the travel to come, and I think we got some pretty good work out of it too.
And after a week’s vacation in early August, I arrive at this point; 36,000 feet and 500 miles per hour in a pressurized aluminum tube, headed West before heading South and East, on my way to this extraordinary adventure........
