He might as well have landed a fist on my chin. What he meant was that having come out of the Navy, and escaped the early personal rivalries, I was freed of a handicap. Even as Jim had talked, orderlies had entered the room and begun shifting chairs, lining them up in an arc around the secretary’s desk. Through the open door I caught glimpses of the uniforms and gray thatches of ranking department heads, standing by for a council meeting. As Fred and I stood up to leave, Jim walked us to the door. “Why not stay for the council meeting?” he asked me, as we shook hands. “You’ll see a lot of old shipmates.” “Thanks,” I replied, “I guess we’d better go home and digest what you’ve just told us.” Back in Hartford, the four members of United’s war council gathered around the long table in the board room where Fred Rentschler had his office. On the walls hung the portraits of men who had helped make the company—men like Chance Vought, George Wheat, George Mead, and Don Brown. After discussing the problem Jim Forrestal had put up to us, we agreed that this new responsibility would require rearrangement of our own topside organization. An effort to organize the aircraft industry for a public relations effort just didn’t fit in with the detailed administration of any single company. I would have to relinquish my job as chief executive. And so I came face to face with the decision that I had known to be inevitable the moment Jim Forrestal put the finger on me. I had been in at the inception of Pratt and Whitney and United Aircraft. I had managed three of its four divisions and participated in vital decisions as to the other. I had helped hold it together in the trying days following the Black and Nye investigations, and had been its chief executive through the critical phases of the war expansion. Now that we were over the hump, I would have to give up my cherished title of president in order to try to help the company to survive. As a matter of fact, we had long discussed the possibilities of a reorganization following the war. We well knew that the reconversion job would try the nervous and physical capacity of a man younger than any of us four seniors, and that our duty to the company demanded that we start bringing juniors along. We four would graduate into the category of elder statesman while my successor took over the reins. The logical man was Jack Horner, of Pratt and Whitney. Ray Walsh and I would fleet up to vice-chairmen and Jack in due course would become president. Meanwhile I would assume responsibility for “general-industry” matters and retain supervision of research. Jack would take over operations, and Fred would continue to exercise authority over the business affairs of the company. Ray Walsh, who had a unique capacity for handling policy, personnel, and legal matters, would continue on his course.