Knockout

Tough, tyrannical Sewell Lee Avery had lost "the first round, but he did not seem to know it; although Montgomery Ward's board of directors had knocked him down a peg and made President Wilbur Norton day-to-day boss (TIME, May 31), Chairman Avery went on as if nothing had happened. Last week the second-round bell sounded.

While Norton was on the West Coast on business, Avery suddenly called a special meeting of the board in Chicago. Norton rushed back, only to find that Avery had just as suddenly postponed the meeting for three days. Anyway, Norton was assured, the meeting would be a routine one. So Norton decided to pass it up for his daughter's graduation at a private school in Maine.

Directors George Whitney and Harry Davison of J. P. Morgan & Co. also thought they could skip the "routine meeting." Though Morgan interests had helped put Avery in as Ward's chairman 17 years ago, Whitney and Davison are now reportedly pro-Norton. When the meeting was finally held, it turned out to be anything but routine--and still another Norton man, Director Lawrence Appley, was among those missing.

A grim-faced Sewell Avery served the nine directors with an ultimatum: choose him or Norton. The directors, most of them old cronies of Avery who had seen him pull "Monkey Ward" out of the red and up to the second biggest merchandising business in the country, soon made their choice. The secretary of the company then phoned Norton at a Boston hotel; he "requested"--and got--Norton's resignation from his $100,000-a-year job.

Ward's vice presidents were stunned. When they and Norton had threatened to quit last month if Avery's power was not clipped, Avery had suspected that it was a bluff to scare him off his high horse. Now he learned better. Vice Presidents Oswald Higgins, Laurence Odell, Charles Odorizzi and Earl Ward promptly resigned. By week's end, Avery was reportedly talking fast to persuade the other three vice presidents to stay.

Avery had scored a clean K.O., but it had left Monkey Ward punch drunk. As one bigwig said, with vast understatement: "This is just no way to run a business. It's a question of how long Avery can get away with it--a big question."

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