I modernized the machinery.

I secured the major retail distributors.

I organized the books, which had been a shoebox of chaos, and I constructed a real corporate administrative structure where there had been none.

Sixteen years later, Vance Fine Furniture owned two manufacturing plants, employed more than a hundred and eighty people, and held distribution contracts across the country.

Legally, I owned forty-three percent of that company.

Arthur Sr. owned twenty-four.