Father & Son

At 5 p. m. last Friday the 48 office workers of L. L. Coryell & Son in Lincoln, Neb. pulled out their desk drawers, emptied them, packed typewriters, files and work-in-progress into large cardboard boxes on which their names were neatly stamped. The boxes were boosted into a moving van which rumbled out of town that evening. In the 6 a. m. quiet of Saturday morning the Coryell staff reassembled with their families, piled into 13 automobiles festooned with banners and wound off in a honking caravan toward Colorado Springs, 600 mi. away. A cameraman hired by L. L. Coryell & Son stood beside the road to film the spectacle --a whole business going away for the summer.

When the vacationists arrived in Colorado Springs they found desks and telephones installed in the high-school gymnasium. Before bedtime Sunday night the gym had been converted into a business office. Coryell workers and their families then retired to houses or apartments rented for them by the company. Bright & early Monday morning work began.

L. L. Coryell & Son is an oil marketing company with 486 cut-rate filling stations in about 400 towns and cities in 14 Midwest States. Its highly efficient exodus may have seemed remarkable to Colorado Springs, but in Lincoln people have learned to expect almost anything from a management whose self-advertising is continuous and unique. For 36 years Nebraskans have lacked no reminders of the beautiful friendship between Levi Leland Coryell Sr. and Levi Leland Coryell Jr., who are respectively president and general manager of the company. It started soon after the company did, in Auburn, Neb. when Junior Coryell was born. Father Coryell built a play pen in his office and took Junior to work. Every two hours he carried him home for feeding and a change. When Junior started to school, Father Coryell moved his office ten blocks to be nearby so Junior could drop in at recess and lunch periods. When Junior graduated from high school he was made a full partner in the business and given Checkbook No. 3 against the Coryell family account. Father Coryell and he then took a correspondence school course in law together.

It was not until about six years later, after they had moved to Lincoln, that Father & Son Coryell began to dress like twins. Somewhat tentative at first, this custom speedily became systematic with the Coryells. When one buys a suit the other goes along and gets an identical one. Neither ever buys a necktie, a shirt or a pair of socks without taking a duplicate home. The Coryell taste runs to costumes of some audacity and each ensemble is numbered to save time in the morning. Whichever Coryell wakes up first telephones the other and says, "I'm wearing the 23 suit, 16 tie, 11 shoes," as the case may be. Close friends of the Coryells have never known them to disagree on anything. When Junior married there was speculation in Lincoln as to how his wife would enter into the spirit of the thing. Mrs. Coryell Jr. approves the family arrangement entirely, but she and Mrs. Coryell Sr. have never taken up dressing alike.

Mrs. Coryell Jr. has Checkbook No. 4, and Checkbook No. 5 is waiting for her four-year-old daughter, Leland Lorraine Coryell (L. L. Coryell III). The two families live in ten-room houses on opposite corners with direct telephone connection, facing each other across nearly identical yards. Lorraine has an identical set of toys in each house. For several years the Coryells dined in each house on alternate weeks, but this custom has been discontinued for reasons undivulged. Every morning, however, Junior calls for his father at precisely 7:30 a. m. and they march in step to the Coryell Sr. garage, get in one of the two Coryell Packards, the Fierce-Arrow, the Cadillac or the Ford, and drive to work. They have a joint office and gold-plated telephones on the same wire. Whenever one receives a call the other picks up his receiver and listens in. It is a Coryell legend that while either Coryell is away on business a stenographer takes down all telephone conversations for him to read on his return. Whenever the Coryells part for any unusual length of time, they go into a standardized embrace.

Near the information desk in the Coryell offices hangs this "NOTICE TO SALESMEN: You are cordially welcome in these offices but please get to your point quickly, state your facts, get through and leave. We are very, very busy. Call again."

By this mixture of warmth and efficiency the company, started as a grain business on $100 of borrowed money, has prospered so greatly that the Coryell family, its sole owners, are now worth well over $1,000,000. In their business dealings the Coryells are shrewd, firm and virtually indistinguishable, father from son. Toward their employes they show a rather juicy paternalism. Six years ago Father Coryell instituted Monday morning chapel service for office workers whom he suspected of not going to Church on Sunday. A rumor denied by the Coryells is that there were penalties for nonattendance. Another exaggeration is that the office girls are fined if they go to the lavatory more often than once in the morning, once after lunch. Coryell service station men are encouraged to be proud of their bright orange uniforms and to swarm over each car as if it were a racer rolling into the pits. They are also under strict instructions "never to engage a lady in conversation only as she leads." During the two months that the Coryell offices will remain in Colorado Springs, each staff member will receive $50 extra pay "for their good times." But the office vacation takes the place of the usual two-weeks-off-with-pay.

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