For a year we worked with
Michael Jackson
and his family, eventually producing an art auction at their home
in Southern California to benefit the Reverend Frank Chikane's
South African
Council of Churches and people displaced by apartheid.
One evening in the kitchen at
Michael Jackson's
I was talking with his father Joseph, his mother Katherine, his
brother Jermaine, and his sister Janet. I mentioned to Jermaine
that after working with his family we would be taking some time off
in Paris. He got so wistful and said: "Do you know how much I wish
I could go somewhere and just relax and be unrecognized?". That was
during the peak of the Jackson Five
fame.
Of all the Jacksons, I enjoyed Katherine most of all. She is a
beautiful, dignified, clear woman. She is a devout Jehovah's
Witness. As we talked and walked the acreage of their Encino
estate, she allowed me to carry her Bible.
After that, I created
Laurence Platt and
Associates,
a mainframe software training company.
"LP and A",
as it came to be known, enjoyed sudden and phenomenal success. In
short order I was presenting software seminars all over the United
States and Canada to many of the Fortune 500 group of companies.
From 1984 through my retirement in 2002 I had as many as five
requests a week from corporations to train their technical staff.
At that point I was arguably the most sought after and the most
hired software trainer in the world.
When I met Jolin's family I learned her Dad served as the President
of the Ford Motor Company in various cities around the world. He
was personally responsible for the acquisition of Jaguar by Ford, a
purchase he had to enroll the board to invest two and a half
billion dollars in. Interestingly enough given my background, he
was also personally responsible for the divestiture of Ford from
South Africa
as the Ford Motor Company's stand against apartheid. It
explained why his daughter was able to keep up with me. In almost
all my other relationships I eventually felt like a caged animal
and had to break out and be free. Jolin, however, based on
vast
travel and international experience herself, gave me all the
freedom I wanted, treating me like a wild horse who needed a lot of
room to move. And in the total freedom she gave me I could not get
enough of her. We have now been passionately happily married for
nearly sixteen years.
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