Bill Schourup and John Underwood, Mentors

These two guys, especially John Underwood may not even realize I consider them mentors. I met Bill in a land deal. My father and I owned a plant soil and horticulture sales business. We packaged a high end potting soil we sold to retail stores under our own brand "Daisy Prep". Named after Daisy the cow.

We had purchased some 80 acres of land because of the business. About 40 acres were a dried up peat bog which made excellent product when processed properly and with the right ingredients added to the soil.

We had decided to sell the land and I discovered a larger neighboring portion had been purchased by Bill Schoroup for a housing development.

We arranged for Bill to buy our 80 acres and add it to his development: The Tree Farm.

Bill and I became friends. He introduced me to an attorney CPA friend of his, John Underwood.

 I learned many things from these two men.

What I refer to now is simple. They ran multi million dollar development businesses with virtually no staff. Bill was a land developer. John had a neat nitch in real estate development. John built small one story office warehouse projects and small office buildings. They were very successful.

Their styles were interesting. They had offices next door to each other. Neither would start or buy a project without consulting with the other. They were never partners, just friends and counselors to each other.

As I ended up working for Bill I saw him carry this to what was then, a frustrating level. My job for him was to bring in projects to develop. I was on salary. When I found what I thought was a suitable project Bill would drive me nuts phoning friends, like John Underwood asking their opinions, picking their brains.

Once he gathered in all sorts of opinions, if he were still interested he hired consultants to evaluate things.

My opinion then was overkill on Bills part. My opinion now has changed. I was young then and without experience. I only saw Bill make one mistake. I saw him make at least 10 correct major project decisions. Some surprised me a lot.

Low overhead - lots of input from people he trusted. Good lessons indeed.

From A Branch To A Stake In 1 Year

Shortly after I arrived in England as a missionary in October 1960 we had a special missionary conference. It was announced that a new chapel was to be built at 50 Princes Gate, Exhibition Road, London SW 7.

We were told that our small branch of about 40 members would be a ward in one year, the due date for the completion of the chapel. We would be a part of the first Stake in London.

That seemed like a mighty challenge, with so few members at the time. We had been meeting on Sundays up the road of the new to be chapel in the American Air Force School.

The next year was a year of miracle after miracle. We had so many people join the church that year, under so many great experiences that it truly converted me to the fact that this is the Lords work and will.

When the building was completed we had our Stake and Ward.

The chapel has a pipe organ and the church sent Alexander Schreiner, the Taberancle Organist to perform two concerts a day. This added to the missionary success and more miraculous experiences.

I worked in London the entire year, following an initial three week stint in Gravesend, Kent.

These were amazing times.