Need a Rescue? Call Ross

By George Russell

He says he is the kind of guy who likes to "stir things up." No one who has marveled at the freewheeling and shrewdly eccentric career of H. (for Henry) Ross Perot will argue with that description. The blunt-spoken, impulsive founder of Electronic Data Systems, who managed last week both to goad mighty General Motors into an expensive estrangement and get his name involved in Washington's Iran-contra scandal, has been variously called a dictator, a superpatriot and an inspiring, unassuming employer-philanthropist. He is also one of America's wealthiest men. His scrappy individualism and spectacular feats of corporate derring-do are the stuff of John Wayne-style legend and its modern equivalent, a television mini-series (NBC's May On Wings of Eagles). Says a close Perot friend, Dallas Oilman Tom Meurer: "Ross likes to carry banners where nobody else will." Agrees Perot's sister Bette: "Ross feels you don't manage people, you lead them."

Perot (pronounced Puh-roe) was born in hardscrabble Texarkana, Texas, the son of a cotton broker and horse trader. He likes to relate that he began busting broncos for money at age eight. As a teenager, he delivered newspapers on horseback in Texarkana's black slums. In 1949 he enrolled at the U.S. Naval Academy, where he was inspired by the can-do regimentation of the military. But after a four-year minimum Navy hitch, he resigned to join a firm synonymous with the kind of corporate bureaucracy Perot now claims to disdain, IBM.

Perot says he knew so little about IBM that at first he thought it made only typewriters. Soon better informed, he became a Dallas-based computer supersalesman whose order books bulged so quickly that IBM put a cap on his commissions. In 1962, after five years, he founded EDS with $1,000 in capital as a company to process computerized data for other businesses. EDS quickly found a niche processing medical-insurance forms for Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas. In 1968, when Perot took his firm public, its revenues were $7.7 million. He managed to persuade underwriters to float less than 10% of the company's stock for a price that was 118 times earnings. He kept most of the rest of the shares and was deemed a billionaire, at least on paper, by age 39. Now he is believed to be worth at least $2.5 billion.

Perot instilled a version of military-influenced behavior at his Dallas EDS headquarters that prevails to this day. Says a Wall Street analyst: "Perot used to run the company like it was his own private militia." But Perot also fostered a spirit of no-frills egalitarianism that inspired high standards and fierce loyalty from his workers. Executive parking spaces and other perks were banned; Perot and the managers ate in the EDS cafeteria. Perot has described the EDS operation as a place where "people are treated as full partners." But he has also said, "I'm used to being able to say something once, in a whisper, and have committed guys around this country go make it happen."

Perot soon started trying to make big things happen. In 1969 he hired two Boeing 707s to carry Christmas gifts to American prisoners of war in North Viet Nam. The Communists did not cooperate, but Perot's reputation as a quixotic adventurer was born. The same year, he sent 152 spouses and children of missing servicemen to the Paris peace talks in a failed bid to parley with North Vietnamese negotiators. Starting in 1971, Perot launched a rescue bid on Wall Street by buying two failing brokerages and sinking $100 million into their revival. That effort failed in 1974. Perot, said a Dallas business associate, "enjoys a nightmare situation."

The biggest nightmare situation of all came after two EDS managers were jailed in Tehran amid the revolutionary chaos of 1978. While bargaining with the tottering regime of the Shah for his men's release, Perot organized a commando team from among his EDS employees and hired a former Green Beret colonel, Arthur ("Bull") Simons, to lead an improbable rescue mission. Incredibly, it succeeded. Perot's operatives persuaded a revolutionary mob to storm the jail where the EDS men were held, then spirited the Americans 500 miles to safety in Turkey. Perot's feat was popularized by Novelist Ken Follett in the best seller On Wings of Eagles and by the NBC mini-series of the same name. Perot was invited to serve (from 1982 to 1985) on President Reagan's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.

Perot has slain dragons closer to home. In 1979 Texas Governor Bill Clements asked him to lead a local campaign against drugs. Perot spent more than $1 million of his own money on the effort, which resulted in laws that permit seizure of drug runners' assets. In 1983 he was named head of the Texas Governor's Select Committee on Public Education. In a 1 1/2-year fight, Perot prodded the legislature to install teacher-competency tests and a "no pass, no play" rule for high school athletes. The chairman of the state board of education labeled Perot a "dangerous man."

Whatever else he is, Perot is a committed philanthropist. Through the Perot Foundation, he has donated more than $100 million, much of it to causes in the Dallas area. Substantial amounts of money have been targeted for education projects and other bootstrap programs for minorities. Meanwhile, Perot and his family (he and Wife Margot have five children, ages 15 to 28) live unassumingly in one of Dallas' affluent neighborhoods. Most of his evenings are spent quietly at home. To cut stuffy out-of-towners down to size, Perot has been known to take them for lunch to smoky, crowded barbecue joints populated by local good ole boys. Says Perot: "Positions and titles aren't important to me. Results are." More often than not, he seems to feel, a daring, decisive move is the best way to get those results.

With reporting by Reported by Richard Woodbury/Dallas