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AWB Legends: Luke Williams |
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Written On: May/June 2004 |
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Written By: by Don C. Brunell |
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Writer’s Note: During the weekend of April 3-4, I read Luke’s autobiography and wrote the initial draft of this piece. I knew Luke was not well and on Monday, April 5, I learned of his passing. He was a great friend and we will miss him greatly.
People who have been around the Association of Washington Business (AWB) will tell you that, throughout AWB’s 100-year history, there was one man whose legendary status stands above all others. That man was Luke G. Williams of Spokane.
Williams was a formidable man who remained an unabashed capitalist until his death in April at the age of 80. In fact, he called his biography, “An American Entrepreneur.” Williams was the only Washingtonian to chair the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), and although he rubbed elbows with captains of industry and world leaders like Barry Goldwater, Henry J. “Scoop” Jackson and Ronald Reagan, he remained “as common as an old shoe.”
Unlike those political and corporate heavyweights, Williams didn’t graduate from MIT, Harvard or Stanford; he wasn’t an engineer or an MBA. In fact, he struggled to graduate from Central Valley High School. Luke was elected student body president, but only after his buddy got the school’s constitution amended to allow a C-student to serve.
Williams was a friendly family man who loved people. Luke made you feel like you were the most important person in the world and that you’d known him for years. He was a good listener, a keen observer, and had a smile that could melt cold, hard steel.
The Luke Williams Formula for Success
Throughout his life, Williams believed that the key to success was hard work, quality products, a money-back guarantee, treating people right, and American capitalism.
Luke put that formula to work in Spokane after World War II when he and his brother scraped together $640 and started a sign business in their father’s garage. What began as the Williams Brothers Neon Display Co. eventually grew into the multi-million American Sign and Indicator Co. (AS&I).
AS&I made its mark developing their patented electronic time and temperature signs, dubbed “Double-T,” that adorn most banks today.
The first sign was a 5- by 12-foot box that anchored a branch of the Seattle-First National Bank in Spokane. It flashed the time and temperature every few seconds, unless the temperature fell below minus 41º or rose above 110º.
The Williams brothers eventually branched out into electronic scoreboards for sports arenas, the most famous of which gave those attending the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles instant event results.
When the Williams brothers sold AS&I for $20 million in 1981, the company had $300 million in sales and 2,000 workers — not bad in those days.
Williams Backed Barry Goldwater
Over time, Williams discovered one exception to his private-sector formula for success: Politics. In fact, he’d tell people, “If you’re in business, you’re in politics!”
As an employer, Williams believed business, not government, creates wealth. He cut his teeth in grassroots politics as Washington state chair of Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential campaign. When the Republican Party establishment in Seattle refused to back Goldwater, Williams organized the 900 precinct chairs around the state, and Washington ultimately cast its votes for Goldwater at the Republican Convention in San Francisco.
After watching his conservative friend Lloyd Andrews ruthlessly smeared by labor bosses during the 1960 governor’s race, he decided “enough was enough,” and vowed that good people should not be demonized. He became active in AWB and linked up with Dave Gordon, AWB’s president for 22 years.
Gordon-Williams Team Puts Dent in Democratic Machine
Gordon and Williams joined forces against the powerful union bosses and their Democrat allies who controlled Olympia. They formed United for Washington, a political action committee that still exists today, although not under AWB. They set out to elect business-friendly Republicans and Democrats and encouraged them to form coalitions to break the unions’ grip on the state capitol.
“Luke wrote the manual on state politics,” said Dennis McLaughlin, a former AWB counsel. “He gave the manual to me to read and edit and I didn’t change a word. Luke was right on!”
“We found that manual and are having it reprinted,” AWB President Don Brunell said. “It is as good today as it was 35 years ago.”
Luke’s Enthusiasm Helped Bring Expo 74 to Spokane
The final ingredient that made Luke Williams the “legend of all AWB legends” was his enthusiasm. When he sank his teeth into a project, it succeeded. Nowhere was that more evident than his successful campaign to bring the 1974 World’s Fair to Spokane.
Williams and his partners even snookered Ford Motor Company’s President Lee Iacocca into building a mainstay exhibit. When Iacocca’s team came to Spokane on a hot August day, Williams had Washington Water Power release a block of water from its Post Falls dam so that they would see the spectacle of Spokane Falls during lunch.
When visiting the fair, Iacocca laughed about the scheme with Williams over dinner. “He bit and Expo 74 became a reality,” Luke chuckled. As a result, Spokane now has Riverfront Park, a convention center, and an opera house, and Williams even got Gov. Dixy Lee Ray to sell the opera house to the city for a buck.
Spokane Congressman George Nethercutt said it best: “Luke Williams has earned success in life the old fashioned way — through honesty, integrity, hard work and the support of a loving family and loyal friends. His remarkable life story should be studied and enjoyed by all who love freedom, enterprise and the American system.”
Well said, Mr. Nethercutt. And well done, Luke.
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