Even though I had carved out my empire, I had come
from money, so I had few of the problems the
nouveaux riches face - the insecurities, the over
indulgences the brazenness. Also I had few of the
manipulative characteristics of those born rich. I
had my name in the Social Register; yet, I always
realized that did not make me a dime.
To me, having money merely meant being flexible
to invest, to develop, to (quite frankly) make more
money. If anything, I worked harder as my wealth
grew. It wasn't some fear-of-losing-everything
obsession; instead, I truly loved helping people.
Even as a child, I had always been a giving person.
That hadn't changed even though I had developed
four multimillion dollar corporations.
By 1970, however, carving out that empire had
gotten to be a round-the-clock job. Although I had
sold my interest in three corporations - Niamco
(therapeutic equipment), Herbagere (hydroponic
grass-growing machines), and Menotti (cold-wave
permanents) - I still owned five buildings on a block
in one of Houston's nicer areas. One of the buildings
4500 sq. ft., contained my penthouse apartment, my
Maritronics offices, and a kitchen which fed five
hundred people taking part (at that time) in a double-
blind study in the field of diet control. In the next
block, I also owned a large medical clinic doing double-
blind studies for five major drug companies which
were seeking to obtain new drug labeling from the
FDA.
A fourth of my day was spent in supervising the
medical projects. The rest of the time, I worked on
furthuring my long-term pet endeavor - Maritronics
International. After 23 years, Maritronics had been
responsible for more than 150,000 marriages, only
seven of which were known to have ended in divorce.
During that same period of time, Houston had plunged
from its unenviable position as the city with the high-
est divorce rate to fifteenth place in the country.
At 55, I could look back with much pleasure. All along
I had believed that if I helped enough people get
what they wanted, then I would also be blessed. All
my projects were continuing to succeed, and every
thing in my life seemed to be running smoothly.
I enjoyed my work immensely, but it left me virtually
no time to relax. A lifetime of overwork began to
take its toll.
Quite frankly, I felt I deserved a rest. Both of my
children were in school (Kimberli in San Antonio,
and I had enrolled Peter in Houston's St. Thomas
University). Even in the midst of my career as a
businesswoman, I had already spent as much time
as possible with my two children.
But I wanted to start enjoying life for myself.
Retirement began to sound appealing. I decided,
over a period of time, to start streamlining my
interests, to reduce my responsibilities so that I
could dust off my golf clubs. I wanted to play the
horses more, to travel without so many time
restrictions, to sip drinks beside the pool in lazy
country club afternoons.
As I set my sights on semi-retiring, I also started to
distribute some of my assets. Through several well-
known friends, I was able to make college scholar-
ships available. Eventually, those grants helped four
hundred students in different prestigious schools.
It wasn't something I did to boost my ego, but what
I relished doing merely to help young people.
I had also made provisions for Peter and Kimberli to
receive the pre-planned inheritance to start their
own business enterprises after they graduated.
Once I had made that decision to semi-retire, my
mind exploded with creative thoughts. Happy
memories surfaced of the times in my life when I
had been less driven, when I had excelled at such
things as golf.
I couldn't have asked for more. Everything was going
well - my business, my personal life, my plans.
Everything.
"Then why," I asked myself "do I feel such a vague
uneasiness about my business affairs?" Something
mysterious, indefinable, almost ominous seemed
fomenting in the undercurrent.
"It's only my imagination," I tried to convince myself.
"It's just that I've been working even more overtime
since I've made up my mind to retire."
Yet, I knew it had to be more than that. To be
honest, I had been less and less involved with the
"nuts and bolts" of my business. Of my employees in
the medical clinic, I mainly came in contact with the
nurses, five doctors, psychologist, and research
head. I spent half my day there, but I had delegated
most of the administrative responsibilities to Zelda,
my assistant.
Then, I normally spent the other half of my day in my
Maritronics Corporation office, concentrating on the
giant task of helping people and counseling soon-to-
be-married couples.
Despite being busily involved with the counseling
and research, I had, nevertheless, noticed a rapid,
inexplicable turnover among the office workers on my
staff - the people who worked closely with Zelda.
The accountant who had been with me 15 years had
suddenly left without a word to me - just moved
away to another state, or so Zelda and his brother
related.
Other trusted employees had been leaving, too. In
fact, the turnover had reached 16 within the last
months of 1970. One by one, however, they were
replaced by new personnel sent by and employment
agency about which I knew nothing. The agency
contacted Zelda each time; she helped screen the
new workers and came with glowing reports about
certain ones.
It was especially disturbing that my offices had ex-
perienced such turnover, since I wanted to reduce
my energies expended toward running my businesses.
I hardly wanted to be involved in training new people.
Thankfully, Zelda helped in that account, too.
Deep down, I sensed something was very wrong. What
was it? I couldn't figure it out.
I just figured that if there was any reason to be sus-
picious about anything, Zelda would have to know.
Zelda had come to me highly recommended during
1970. She was an ideal administrative assistant, as I
soon found out. She was pleasant, in her mid-forties,
had an attractive figure and blue eyes. Underneath,
however, there was a hardness. She didn't have a
real compassion for all the people with whom we
worked. But what she lacked in understanding, she
redeemed herself with hard, dedicated work. She
definitely lived up to her credentials. From her curly
red hair to her stylish shoes, she was the epitome of
an administrator.
During the first three months she was with me, Zelda
really took a load off my shoulders. She always
followed through with little details, so I put her in-
creasingly in charge. She even got Peter enrolled in
college and encouraged him to get his own "pad" (I
let him use one of my apartments).
She was a calm whirlwind, making things run smoothly
in my business and home. When I started a new
research program with 500 diet volunteers, she was
more than willing to make sure that I was fed a similar
menu from our large kitchen that was a part of the
office complex. Little touches like that made her a
valuable employee, especially since I could turn even
more of my attention to making the transition toward
curtailing my business interests.
I even let Zelda write out all my checks - everything
but signing them - and keep me posted on all account-
ing matters. As mentioned before, she was invaluable
to me.
And since she was such a trusted and capable employ-
ee, I felt sure she would have called my attention to
anything seriously wrong in the businesses. It didn't
relieve the nagging feeling, however. I kept waver-
ing back and forth between confidence and doubt.
I made Zelda manager of my medical clinic, just two
doors up the street from my Maritronics operation.
With her heavy responsibilities went additional salary
and authority. I felt like I could count on her for any
thing.
She was a whiz with the clinic. Each day the partici-
pants in the diet-control study came in to be weighed,
to have vital signs and mood scales tabulated, to have
blood pressure checked, and to pick up two styrofoam
containers holding that day's food supply.
Zelda was so thoughtful. Before the diet-kitchen
employees left for the Christmas holidays, she had
extra meals prepared for me and stored in my freezer
at home so that I would not be troubled with the
necessity of meal preparation. That was typical of her
concern about small details.
Truthfully, I wasn't pleased with the meals I had been
receiving from the kitchen. I felt I should participate
in the program, but it had seemed to me that all my
food tasted peculiar - as if it had meat tenderizer in
it. When I asked Zelda to look into the matter, she
reported back to me that the flavor was simply the
special blend of spices used in the diet.
"You will get used to it in time," she assured me.
Before the Christmas season, I felt increasingly
sluggish. However, with holiday activities - dining
with friends and going to parties - I became so
caught up in festivities that I didn't bother to follow
the clinic diet. It seemed strange to me , but in
spite of my irregular holiday eating patterns, I felt
considerably better. I threw Zelda's frozen meals
into the garbage.
After New Year's Day, the employees returned, and
our diet kitchen reopened. Zelda began seeing that
I got the freshly-cooked, diet meals again. Almost
immediately I became aware of my pre-holiday
symptoms - nausea and a viselike squeezing sensation
on my chest - which were impossible to ignore.
Those symptoms became so severse on Saturday,
March 6, that I went to see Dr. McGuire, a dear friend
to whom I had once been engaged. He treated me for
food poisoning, gave me a friendly take-care-of-your
self lecture, prescribed plenty of rest, and sent me
home.
The nagging apprehension remained that something
was very, very wrong, but I kept trying to talk myself
out of that fear, thinking that I was overtired.
It was early 1971 when I received a disturbing letter
from the relative of a close friend.
Petti,
Something is going to happen to you during the next
few months. but don"t worry - everything is going to
to come out all right eventually.
God has me doing intercessory prayer for you.
Do you remember several years ago when you
in the hospital and a specialist was going to
take out your larynx? You had cancer of the
throat and had not talked for months. God sent
me to Houston to pray for you. . . .
Well, God is having me pray for you. . . .
I never met the writer who penned the letter, but I
understood from my friend that she was involved in
some peculiar religious pursuits. I had run into some
of those "holy rollers," as we called them in Iowa,
when I was a teenager (during a service, two women
had taken me to a back room and prayed over me in
a strange sounding language). Looking back, I began
to realize my "fortunate" string of successes had
started when those two women prayed over me, but
I had felt so uncomfortable. The writer of the letter
made me feel the same way. It was hard for me to
comprehend the purpose of her brief message. Was
it encouragement? Was it a warning? Was she going
to come to Houston again to pray for me? Whatever
it was, the letter was so strange that I dismissed it
from my mind.
Even though I felt like something was wrong, there
was little reason to be suspicious of anything. Every
thing was going too well. I was on top of the world,
business-wise, and with my upcoming retirement, I
was facing the most glorious years of my life.
Sunday, March 7, 1971, would have been an exquisite
day of golf and brunch at Ruby's. Ruby and her husband
John were dear friends who always had open house
around their pool on Sundays. It was one of my favor-
ite places to go. There was always spicy conversation,
laughter, and occasional well-known faces dropping
in. Ordinarily, I'd have gone there that day.
Instead, I decided to go to the seven o'clock Mass at
St. Vincent DePaul. I had never done this on my own.
I only went when my children were home, since it was
a routine I wanted them to continue.
Yet, there I was, alone, wanting to pray for the first
time in many years. I didn't really know how to begin,
and I certainly didn't think I was entitled to expect
any results. I mean, despite the fact that I had a
giving heart and had helped many people, I wasn't
religious. However, praying seemed to be the thing
to do, especially since I felt so uneasy about the
insidious undercurrent or whatever-it-was at work.
"Lord," I said. My words sounded dry and mechanical -
"I feel like there is something wrong, something
horrible trying to take hold of my life. I don't know
what it is. Please send me Your help."
The words weren't very spiritually sounding. At least,
I didn't think they were. It was the best I could man-
age. I just hoped the prayer got through.
I rose from my knees and left the church. When I
researched the street, someone in a passing car
waved to me, then pulling over to the curb. It was
Lana, a young woman who had worked for me four
years earlier as a clerk and administrative assistant.
She had been forced to resign when her invalid
mother had come to live with her. Her mother had
since passed away, and she was just getting off her
11-7 shift at the Ben Taub County Hospital.
I wondered if Lana was an answer to my prayer,
and I decided to confide in her.
"Do me a favor," I said. "Come over to the office
tomorrow about two o'clock and stay until closing
time. Something peculiar is going on. Keep your
eyes open and see if you can discover what it is -
or if you think it's only my imagination. We can
have dinner afterward and talk about it."
When Lana readily accepted my invitation, I knew
that God had heard my call for help.
As promised, Lana came in the next day. She was
still there when the telephone call came about my
Aunt Anna, about the heart attack, about the
Southwest General Hospital.
"Don't leave until I get back," I yelled, rushing
toward my car.
But Lana and I would never talk about what was going
on in my office. We would never share that late dinner.
My comfortable, wonderful rewarding world was about
to be shattered into a living hell.