Jolly Roger

Deputy Defense Secretary Roger Kyes's first piece of fan mail after he took over his broad oak desk in the Pentagon last February was a postcard from a Tennessean who, after seeing Kyes's picture in the paper, wrote: "You look to me as though you could spit in the devil's eye." Big (6 ft. 4 in., 225 Ibs.), craggy Roger Kyes* makes a similar impression on people who encounter him face to face. After meeting him for the first time, a Pentagonian remarked: "He looks like the kind of guy who'd say, 'Lay off 40,000 men.' " Kyes has not yet said, "Lay off 40,000 men," but he did order a cut in Defense Department replacement hiring, with the result that normal outflow has reduced employment by just about 40,000.

Kyes needs toughness for the job he has to do. Kyes, his boss, Charles Erwin Wilson, and Wilson's boss, Dwight Eisenhower, are all convinced that the nation needs to get more defense per dollar of expenditure. But the Defense Department is so vast, so complex and so procedure-ridden that to grab it and shake out some of its abundant water takes a man with both managerial talent and toughness. Kyes has both. He is calm and affable, but when Pentagonians call him "Jolly Roger" they mean not that he is jolly but that he is as tough as a pirate.

Roger Martin Kyes, 47, brought no military experience to Washington. But he did bring a lot of experience in managing men and expediting production. Farmborn, and still vaguely rustic despite Harvard ('28) and a high standard of living, he worked up to the presidency of Harry Ferguson, Inc. (tractors and farm implements), then moved to General Motors, became a vice president and the general manager of the Truck and Coach Division. When G.M. President Erwin Wilson was tabbed as Defense Secretary, he asked Kyes to be his No. 2 man. Kyes gave up his $85,000 salary (plus large bonuses), sold $200,000 worth of G.M. stock. When he learned that his new job would pay $20,000 and Wilson's $22,500, he remarked: "Well, I never thought I would get within $2,500 of C. E. Wilson."

Wilson, occupied with high-level huddles, left most of the Pentagon intramural work to Kyes. Some Kyes policies: tighter correlation of production schedules: use whenever possible of standard civilian goods (e.g., trucks) instead of specially-designed items; channeling production contracts to low-cost producers.

The new job keeps Kyes busy. He gets to the Pentagon before 8:30 a.m., seldom leaves before 10 p.m. When he went to Washington, he expected to be busy for a while, so he left his wife and four daughters behind in suburban Bloomfield Hills, Mich. They are still there.

*Who recently startled a woman at a cocktail party by saying cheerfully: "I'm Roger Kyes, the ugliest-looking man in Washington."

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