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FEATURE | |
Back to Facility Manager
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“Why not?” he says of continuing his brilliant career and influencing others, even as he approaches his 80th birthday. “I can remember looking up to Tom Bradley when he was the mayor of Los Angeles as he got into his 80s.He functioned well and still got the job done. I say hang in there as long as you feel good, have your health and want to work.” On those three counts, Walsh is batting a thousand, an apt analogy to use when talking about an upbringing and career that could have gone professional (baseball, that is), were it not for his service in World War II and subsequent introduction to the facility management industry: Walsh joined the front office of the Fort Worth Cats, a minor league farm club of the Brooklyn Dodgers, in 1948. The challenge of placing Walsh’s career in capsule form is daunting if only for his longevity in the industry, never mind the lives of hundreds in the business that he has touched with leadership practices that many have followed. Walsh is currently the general manager of the Ontario (CA) Convention Center, a position he took in August 2002 thinking he would be there for just a few months. Between Fort Worth and Ontario his career has zigzagged across the country, from Danville, IL and then on to Brooklyn. When the Dodgers moved west Walsh went with them and was instrumental in helping build Dodger Stadium on the Chavez Ravine property. From the stadium side of the business he moved over to the Los Angeles Convention Center and has also spent time at the Hawaii Convention Center and oversaw five SMG-managed facilities in Alaska. Regardless of location, Walsh is an epitome of consistency in his dealings with others, a quality he values in his own disposition as well as those who have been inspirational in his career. Leadership Lesson No.1: “I try to be very level,”Walsh says in a tone that is just that. “One of the things I think important for a leader is to be very consistent every day. I’ve worked with people who were high and low. You walk in and say to the secretary, ‘What’s he or she like today?’ I try to be very consistent so I can try and deal with things the same way every day. You have different relationships with people who work for you and work with you. You want to be as level as you can. You don’t want to fly off the handle.” Dick Walsh points the way to Los Angeles Dodgers' Vice President Fresco Thompson in showing the eight million cubic yards of dirt that was moved to build Dodger Stadium. The stadium in Chavez Ravine opened in 1962. An Early Leader Walsh was born in 1925 in South Bend, IN, and his family moved to California during his youth. By the time he graduated Los Angeles High School in 1943, Walsh was an all-city third baseman and was on the verge of being signed by Cincinnati in the National League. But with World War II in progress, Walsh ended up at military camp rather than baseball camp. He was in the Pacific for 32 months and was promoted to 1st Lieutenant, U.S. Army Infantry. At the tender age of 19, he was commissioned and leading people in the war who were much older than he. Walsh reflects on that time and how it left a mark on his style of management. Leadership Lesson No.2: “One trait of a leader is taking charge,” he says. “I was captain of the baseball team in high school and was then leading people in the war. You have to have confidence in yourself. You’ve got to be able to make a decision. You’ve got to weigh the facts. Once you understand and evaluate the situation, you make the decision and you move forward.”
True to his decisive nature, Walsh accepted the invitation from a Brooklyn scout for a baseball tryout. “I had really just gotten off the boat, and while I played ball in the service, I couldn’t really run well anymore,” he said. Walsh was offered a front office job, though, and thus came his first airplane flight to LaGrave Field in Fort Worth. Walsh earned a robust $200 a month with the Fort Worth Cats, and was given a $100 raise by the club when he married. “I did everything there,” he said. “I worked as a groundskeeper and on the concession side. I was in the office selling tickets … basically doing everything to learn the business from the ground floor up.” Walsh moved on in 1949 to become general manager of the farm club in Danville, and by 1951 he was the third man in the organization’s minor league department and had relocated to Brooklyn. He was also making money in the toney neighborhood of $5,000 a year, but one of his biggest breaks came in the impression he made upon team president Walter O’Malley. The team’s traveling secretary did not want to make a post-season trip to Japan in 1956, so Walsh served in that role. It helped that he spoke some Japanese. “That gave Walter O’Malley a look at me and brought me to his attention,” said Walsh. “It was a big break, because ultimately I became very involved in the move to LA.” Leadership Lesson No.3: “Walter was a businessman, not actually a baseball man,” said Walsh. “As we negotiated with the City of Los Angeles for the property of Chavez Ravine, I watched to see how he dealt with people and made decisions. When you work for someone, you observe how they accomplish what they are getting done. You can actually lead by paying attention to others.” As the owner’s representative in the negotiations, Walsh was instrumental in helping bring Dodger Stadium to fruition in 1962. When the club moved west in 1958, it called the Los Angeles Coliseum home, and Walsh can remember the team drawing 93,103 spectators when the New York Yankees came out to play a benefit game with proceeds going to the Dodgers’ Roy Campanella, who had been paralyzed in an auto accident. Still, the team needed its own signature stadium, and Dodger Stadium was that with a flair and a breathtaking view. After almost 20 years of service with the Dodgers, Walsh listened to an overture from the North American Soccer League in 1966 and became its commissioner, a position he held for two years. From 1968-71, he was back in baseball, this time as executive vice president and general manager of the California Angels. Like all good managers who are on Major League Baseball payrolls, the job is one of being hired to be fired, and so it was with Walsh. In his case, though, it was the opening to another door and fulfilling a promise he had made to his mom.
In looking back at a career at the LA Convention Center that lasted until 1997, Walsh takes pride in guiding a $500 million expansion of the facility, the largest public works job at the time that the city had ever done. His venue was also an event site during the 1984 Summer Olympic Games. Best of all for Walsh, his time there gave him an opportunity to mentor a staff during an expansion that produces the usual snags, bumps and bruises. “It was an accomplishment to get that expansion done, have the building open and to see it actually come to life,” he said. “It was aesthetically attractive and very functional.” It was also 800,000 square feet of exhibit space, and the city wanted to tear down one of the halls (about Walsh and his future wife, Bobbie, together on Occupation Duty in Japanin 1947. 100,000 square feet) to build the Staples Center, which Walsh was against. Walsh did not want the convention center to become secondary to the arena, and he also noted the parking and operational problems that the arena would bring. But with the city owning the land and wanting to build the arena, Walsh lost out and eventually left the facility. His deal with the city was that he would retire in January 1998 after 24 years at the building. Three facilities later, Walsh is obviously anything but the retiring type. Lessons On Leadership You don’t become the oldest active person of a 3,600- member association without loving what you do and learning as you go. Walsh became an IAAM member when he joined the LA Convention Center, and he was the Association’s president in 1991-92 when he was already well into his 60s. During his presidency he saw an industry that was changing before his eyes with younger and better educated people coming into the mix. Leadership Lesson No.4: “I had a theme for my presidential year and it’s really the way I conduct business,” said Walsh. “Anticipate. Communicate. Motivate. Three simple words. You have to anticipate when you make a decision … what impact it’s going to have on everybody else in the organization. They have all got to be looped so there are no surprises.
Walsh believes it is important for IAAM to always have strong leaders in the membership, which interestingly is part of the reason he faded into the background after his presidential term. “I didn’t feel it was my place to try and stay active in IAAM,” he said. “I had my time and it was time now for others to come on. I would be there to assist in any way, but I didn’t want to be active in the sense of doing something that might take a spot away from somebody else. “I came through the chairs late in my career, but that’s not always the case for people. My concern is the people who go through the chairs early in their careers, what’s left for them to do with IAAM? The Association has to keep some of those past presidents active, keep them in roles and I see that being done now.” As new faces and new leaders emerge in the industry, they would be wise to heed Walsh’s call to consistency. Leadership Lesson No. 5: “I worked with a man whose style was STC as we say … subject to change,” said Walsh. “Just say, ‘Hey, we’re going to do this and here is why. Explain your rationale for your decision. I have found over the years that some people will agree and some will disagree, but if they understand why, it helps them get through it. The future leaders of this business are going to be people who don’t have STC in their toolset.” The only thing subject to change in Dick Walsh’s life is that sunset will later become sunrise, and with it the promise of another day on the job in a business he has helped define. |
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While in Tokyo, Walsh met his wife, Roberta, who worked in a civilian capacity at General MacArthur’s headquarters. After Walsh separated from the service and Roberta’s contract was up with the government, the couple married in San Francisco in November 1948.
Off To School Dick Walsh was 47 years old in 1971 – and a first-time college student. His mother attended Northwestern and wanted her son to go to college, but the Army interrupted those plans. Walsh was still being paid by the Angels while he attended junior college; at the same time, he started law school and carried 28 units between the two. He moved on to Cal State- Fullerton and earned a bachelor’s degree in Russian studies (“I had been in business and wanted something more challenging,” said Walsh). He also received his law degree, although he never practiced law. Walsh also found a new kind of facility challenge in 1974 when he became the general manager of the Los Angeles Convention Center. It is interesting to note that his career is close to evenly split between stadiums and convention centers, a fact that Walsh waves off by noting that while the tenants between the venue types are different, most of the challenges faced by the building manager remain the same.
“That’s another thing . . . no surprises. I want the bad news. If it’s bad news, I want to hear it. Don’t try to tell me what you think I want to hear. Be factual and succinct. It’s really the only effective way to communicate to help get things done.”