Forbes - USA (2019-11-30)

FORBES.COM

112

NOVEMBER 30, 20 19

First came Bill and Alice. Then their son Bill Jr. as well

as his younger brother, Richard. More than 40 years

after Bill Sr. founded Marriott Corp., he and his nuclear

family still commanded the company from its top fl oors.

What had once been a lone Beltway root-beer parlor had

become a thriving, $315-million-in-sales collection (some

$2.1 billion in current dollars) of hotels and restaurants,

including Big Boy Coff ee Shops and Roy Rogers.

The Marriotts owed a great deal of their success to

their tight-knit family. “The principles of operations

remained the same: close family supervision of all

details, with Alice keeping the books; Bill running the

business; benevolent and paternalistic labor relations;

[and] a fl air for promotions.”

“The best you can really hope

for is a family where

everyone’s problems, big

and small, work together.

Kind of like an orchestra

where every instrument

is out of tune in exactly

the same way, so you don’t

really notice.”

Neal Shusterman

“When I walk, I walk with

you. Where I go, you’re with

me always.”

Alice Hoff man

“Think of your forefathers!

Think of your posterity!”

John Quincy Adams

“A family can be the bane of

one’s existence. A family can

also be most of the meaning

of one’s existence.”

Keri Hulme

“Start children off on the

way they should go, and

even when they are old

they will not turn from it.”

Proverbs 22:6

“Family: a unit composed not

only of children but of men,

women, an occasional animal

and the common cold.”

Ogden Nash

“Families are about love over-

coming emotional torture.”

Matt Groening

“They were a tense and

peculiar family, the

Oedipuses, weren’t they?”

Max Beerbohm

“I had underestimated this

place where I was born. I

knew it was a good place to

be from. I had no idea how

great a place it was to be.”

Rod Dreher

“The greatest gift a parent can

leave a child is that parent’s

own independence.”

Rosamunde Pilcher

“One day you will do things

for me that you hate. That is

what it means to be family.”

Jonathan Safran Foer

“Call it a clan, call it a network,

call it a tribe, call it a family.

Whatever you call it, whoever

you are, you need one.”

Jane Howard

“Parents learn a lot from

their children about coping

with life.”

Muriel Spark

“Imperturbability could be

depended upon. And from

her great and humble position

in the family she had taken

dignity and a clean calm

beauty.”

John Steinbeck

“The diff erence between a

‘man’ and a ‘father’ is that the

former shares his genes, but

the latter gives his life.”

Craig D. Lounsbrough

The Mighty Marriott s

February 1, 1971 FINAL THOUGHT

“Our Rockefellers, Carne-

gies, Fricks, Vanderbilts,

Goulds, Hills, Harrimans,

Astors, Eastmans, Still-

mans, Pullmans, Fields,

can bequeath enormous

fortunes, but they cannot

bequeath brains. Not one

Napoleonic son has sprung

from these titans.”

—B.C. Forbes

THOUGHTS ON

Family

SOURCES: THE LITTLE WAY OF RUTHIE LEMING, BY ROD DREHER; THE SHELL

SEEKERS, BY ROSAMUNDE PILCHER; EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED, BY JONATHAN

SAFRAN FOER; THE GRAPES OF WRATH, BY JOHN STEINBECK; THE COMFORTERS,

BY MURIEL SPARK; THE STORY SISTERS, BY ALICE HOFFMAN; ANTSY DOES TIME,

BY NEAL SHUSTERMAN; THE BONE PEOPLE, BY KERI HULME.