Doug Otto

My life after PHS—Doug Otto, Class of 58:

 

·      5 years at University of Cincinnati.  Graduated with a degree in accounting but don’t know how.  It was in doubt up to the last minute.  Pissed away all 5 years not going to class and generally being irresponsible.

·      A year out of school, I married my college sweetheart Carolyn.

·      We lived in Columbus, Ohio where I carved out an undistinguished career in which I had 4 jobs and 4 residences in 5 years.  I continued my reprobate approach to life even though I had a wife and two little kids.

·      Moved to Columbus, Indiana in 1969 to take an accounting job with a division of Reliance Electric.  I decided (with some negative motivation from Carolyn) that it was time for me to grow up.  I think she was one in a million who would have stuck with me, but she did.  She is responsible for whatever success I enjoyed in the rest of my life.  We had two more kids after moving to Indiana.

·      Spent 7 years at various accounting assignments at Reliance before being appointed plant manager.  This was on the heels of a violent 5-month strike during which we were shot at, cars trying to get onto the property were rolled over, and non-union employees who came to work were followed home and beaten.

·      This was my unintentional beginning of a life as a turnaround and crisis manager, which was to become my specialty for the next 34 years.  I was given six months to correct the labor/management and regain credibility with customers, or the plant would be closed and moved south.

·      Got that done and stayed in that job for 8 years when I took a job to lead the startup for a small plastics manufacturer located in western Massachusetts who was building a plant in Columbus (IN).  Later learned that, while we were successful at the new plant, the company was almost bankrupt from inept management.  Became COO and commuted about 30 times a year to western Mass, for 3 years.  Although the company was turned around, rather than bask in the joy of success, I became depressed to the point of considering suicide.  The regrets over the things one has to do in a turnaround had gotten to me.  The lonely life on the road plus spending every night on a barstool at Fitzwilly’s Pub in Northampton Mass. probably didn’t help.  My social circle was composed of bartenders and chronic barflies.

·      A friend in Columbus knew I was struggling and recommended that I take the job a president of the local United Way.  I had been on the board and had led an annual fund raising campaign, but I had never thought of turning pro.  He convinced me that UW needed a turnaround, as the campaign had stagnated and the organization had lost credibility in the community.  I told him I would take the job for one or two years to lead the turnaround, and then I would go back to manufacturing where I belonged.  I retired from that job last year after 17 years.  I never looked back.  In the morning, I was anxious to get to work and was never tempted to crawl back between the sheets.  On the way home in the evening, I was fulfilled with the thought that I hadn’t hurt anyone and had possibly made a positive difference in the lives of a struggling individual or family.

·      One of our accomplishments during my tenure was the establishment of a co-location of about fifty human services agencies and programs in three buildings on a six-acre campus with about140,000 square feet of office space under roof.  Most people in the “system” have more than one problem, and this concept gives them the ability to visit more than one agency in a single trip.  I retired as president last year but stayed on half-time to manage the three buildings. 

·      Carolyn and I are about to complete our 49^th year of marriage and are still each other’s best friends.  We encouraged our four kids to get educated and seek new horizons, which they did.  That might be the only advice from me that they ever followed, so now we have to chase our ten grandkids.  We have an 18-year-old girl and triplet girls who are almost 16 in Andover, Mass., Three boys, 12,10, and 9 in Amherst Mass., and three girls in Cincinnati who are 5 and 2-year-old twins.

 

That’s the good, the bad, and the ugly of my life.  Although there have been some bumps in the road,  overall it’s been a pretty damn good time.  If I haven’t bored you to death and you are still reading, I can be called at 812-371-1967 or emailed in reply to this message.  I can also be Googled by inputting “Doug Otto Columbus Indiana.”  I am in the process of completing a book I have written.  It is written as fictions as I changed the names of the characters, but it is the story of my life as a crisis manager.  It will be published soon and should be on Amazon by early August.

 

Please encourage others that you might be in contact with to email me.  If you are ever in southern Indiana, give me a call.                                                                

 

Doug