By the end of the 1950s, it was clear to almost everyone that if United Fruit was going to survive, it would have to change. The Boston Brahmins and tropical swashbucklers who had been defining the company’s tone for decades would have to give way to modern management and innovative thinking. That change happened, ironically, due to the efforts of a Brahmin—George Peabody Gardner. Gardner took over as chairman of the board in 1954, just as United Fruit’s lack of vision was catching up with it. From 1957 to 1960, the company’s sales dropped by $40 million, and the share price fell from $3.59 to under a dollar. Unlike the previous chairman, Thomas Jefferson Coolidge, Gardner was young and more contemporary in his business thinking.

Gardner disliked how United Fruit promoted career employees and made it a priority to find a new president who would hire other top executives skilled in management, research, law, and finance. In 1959 he hired Tom Sunderland, who had been vice president and general counsel of Standard Oil of Indiana. Sunderland immediately got to work on Gardner’s agenda, replacing most of the top management. He was unpopular from the beginning. He was seen as impatient, rude, indecisive, and humorless. He treated everyone like a servant. I didn’t think he liked me. He knew my background and was not impressed. I could sense that. Perhaps it was not so much that he didn’t like me as it was that he didn’t pay me much attention. I had the feeling he didn’t value what I could do. Nothing l said or did seemed to interest him.

By this time, I was well established in what was now called the public relations department, under Whit. But Sunderland’s arrival didn’t just change the company—it had a big impact on my career and personal life. In the year that followed, 1960, Sunderland, as part of a sweeping cost-cutting exercise, virtually eliminated our department, letting go most of our twenty-eight staff. Whit and I were the only ones to survive from the New York office. Then Sunderland moved the department to Boston.

The move suited me personally. Joan and I had two little girls by then, and we weren’t looking forward to raising them in New York City. But Whit wasn’t happy. He didn’t like a shift in the department’s focus from—let’s call it propaganda—to the handling of annual reports, writing shareholder letters, and coming up with creative ideas on how the company could advance its position and sell its products. Whit also had some personal problems. Within nine months of the move to Boston, he’d retired.

Whit’s departure created a big problem for me. Who was going to be my new boss? I knew that Sunderland didn’t like me, and the feeling was mutual. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to report to him full time. Part-time assignments for him were painful enough. But Sunderland knew that I was the only one in the company at that time who could do what he needed to have done: handling the press, writing shareholder communications, and writing speeches for him, among other tasks.

One day Sunderland summoned me to his office and said that he had a problem. Who should I and my department report to? He told me that nobody below the level of vice president could report to him, so he was putting me and my department under a vice president in charge of several other staff and administrative functions. This was not good news. I knew the guy. He had a reputation for being very difficult to deal with, with a hair trigger. He was also Sunderland’s hatchet man. His nickname was Mr. Big. There was no discussion; Sunderland had made up his mind. He said my new boss was expecting me.

Mr. Big started out by renaming me. No more Tom. I was “Mac.” Now I am not a Mac. Never have been. I didn’t like the name Mac, but if that’s what Mr. Big wanted to call me, I would answer to it. He established the fact that he was the top dog and made it clear he knew everything about everything, including my field of public relations and communications. He was the opposite of Ed Whitman. He was loud, crude, brash, profane, and a bully. And not that bright. But he appealed to Sunderland.

I worked for Mr. Big for a year. It was not a happy time for me. Everything I did was subject to his scrutiny, and he corrected me constantly. Mostly what he suggested was of no consequence and sometimes even wrong. But I had bought a house in Boston and Joan was pregnant with our third daughter. I had few options.

Mr. Big was a macho man. He loved hunting, fishing, and camping. He claimed to be an experienced hunter who had bagged wild animals weighing thousands of pounds in Africa. I am from Brooklyn. We don’t fish, hunt, or swim. We do not play golf or tennis or do sailboats. We do other things. He was relentless in trying to get me to join him on his hunting and fishing expeditions in Maine and Vermont, though I had absolutely no interest.

One day he insisted I come bird shooting with him in Vermont. I felt I could no longer say no. The first day we went out—me with a borrowed shotgun and him with his Abercrombie and Fitch outfit—the birds had all the luck. They lived. He blamed it on the noise I made and the jacket I wore. We shared a room in a motel. We had dinner that first night and went back to the room. As we were preparing for bed, he said, “Mac, what kind of underwear do you wear?” I remember thinking, What the hell is going on here? I stumbled around for an answer and finally told him I wore boxers. “Aha,” he said. “White, I presume. I said that was right. With that he unbuckled his pants and showed me a pair of Tartan plaid boxers. “You got to get yourself some of these, Mac. The girls today love them.”

That was a Saturday night. We went shooting again on Sunday, and again the birds were spared.  On Monday I got a pair of Tartan plaid boxers in my office mail, with a note saying, “Good luck.” I brought them home, and Joan just looked at me and asked what that was about. I told her she wouldn’t believe it.

At about the six-month mark, Mr. Big and I had to attend a financial analysts’ meeting at Lehman Brothers in New York. Arriving at about six p.m., we were met at the airport by a woman who Mr. Big introduced me to as Carol, his cousin who lived on Long Island. They were going to have dinner that night at the airport and I would meet him at the meeting the next morning. We met as planned. On the way back to Boston that afternoon, he told me that Carol was not his cousin but his longtime girlfriend. They were madly in love, he said, but could not get married because both of them were married and had children.

Who was this guy? I wondered. And why is he telling me these things? I was desperate to get a new boss, and fortunately, within the year, Tom Sunderland hired Jack Fox, an excellent manager who would become my boss and rescue me from Mr. Big. My life would change for the better. 

But I did have a memorable follow-up with my old boss.

About a year later, on Christmas Eve morning, I got a call from Mr. Big asking me to come to his office for a Christmas drink. I arrived about noon. He had his feet on the desk, tilted back in his chair, eyes looking at the ceiling and with a satisfied look on his face. He was smoking a big cigar and was attempting to blow smoke rings. He pointed to a bottle of Dewars on his desk and told me to pour myself a drink and top off his while I was at it.

“Well,” he said, “she should be receiving it just about now.” I asked him who she was and what she was receiving. “Carol. I bought her one of those new Ford Mustangs. The dealer is going to deliver it with a six-inch red ribbon from bumper to bumper and from door to door. He’s leaving the keys and the registration on the front seat, and he’ll ring the bell and drive off. She will love it. Red is her favorite color. And she loves surprises.” He took another pull on the Dewars and another drag on the cigar. He was a happy man.

I was shocked. I didn’t know what to say. Finally, I asked, “Is she divorced?” Annoyed, he said she wasn’t. I said, “Well isn’t her husband going to wonder who gave his wife this brand-new car wrapped with a red ribbon with the keys on the seat?” Mr. Big looked at me for a long time with a strange expression on his face. He abruptly took his feet off the desk and said, “Goddamn you, Mac, you just spoiled my Christmas. You are a wet blanket. Always negative.” I told him I didn’t mean to spoil his Christmas, but what about Carol’s Christmas? I couldn’t help but wonder how Carol was going to handle that. He thought for a minute and said, “Well, I guess that’s her problem isn’t it, Mac?”

I left his office. All I could think of was how glad I was that I didn’t work for him anymore.