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I was a graduate student, and I was supposed to be working on my masters’ thesis over the summer.  I was staying at my father’s house in Ohio, raiding the refrigerator, and restlessly trying to procrastinate as much as possible on my masters’ thesis.  So I’m leafing through a stack of mail on his kitchen counter, and see the announcement for the Champion Spark Plug annual meeting (the major source of the Stranahan family’s wealth), and I notice that one of the proxy votes is on a resolution that’s been put forth by the New York State employees union asking Champion to sign the Sullivan principles (non-discrimination protocols for employers in apartheid-era South Africa).  So I thought it was interesting, and asked my Dad about it, and he said, “Oh, it’s nothing, it’s just something that those activists from New York do, and it won’t pass, and it’s not interesting.”  And I said, “Well, I want to go to the meeting.” 

So I get my skirt on and comb my hair and I go to the board meeting, and I watch the whole thing, and I think I stood up and said, “I support this measure.”  And the guy from New York flew in and he was leaving the meeting so I walked out and I talked to him in the hallway, and I said, “I’m really excited about what you’re doing, and I’d like to help.” And he said, “Well, look, I have to catch a plane,” and I said, “I’ll give you a ride to the airport.”  So we’re driving out to the airport, and I’m picking his brain, and I ask, “Do you think you’d bring the same shareholder resolution next year?” And he said, “Yeah, I think we would.”  And I said, “I’m on the board of a foundation that owns quite a bit of Champion stock, and I’d like to see if I could get the foundation to vote in support of your resolution.”  And he said, “That’d be great.”

And I said, “Let me see what I can do.  If you promise to bring it back next year, I will do my utmost to at least get you some supporting votes.  It’s not a majority, but it would make an impact.” So then I go back and study up on this.  I’m trying to learn all about apartheid and the divestment movement when I should be writing my masters thesis.  And it’s much more fun to be doing the research on the divestment movement. And I ask around and I make a few phone calls, and people say, “You really ought to talk to the Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility.”  So I called and Tim Smith talked to me and he sent me this big box of reference materials.

I got onto the Needmor agenda and very nervously gave a presentation to the board.  You could have heard a pin drop, because it was not something that anybody really wanted to talk about.  At that time Steve and my Dad and my Grandfather were all three on the Needmor board, and they were all three on the Champion board.  And they felt Champion was perfectly capable of handling this issue, and did not need any advice from Needmor.  And almost all the rest of the board had to say, “Our mission is pretty clear.”

At this point we even had language about racism.  Clearly this was a conflict of interest, and nobody wanted to be disrespectful to those hardworking businessmen who were protecting everybody’s interest.  But nobody really felt comfortable holding the Champion stock, and it was almost an all-nighter.  There were side conversations, and the emotions started flowing, and it almost killed us. Looking back it was very impolitic thing to have done.  But we ended up deciding to vote in favor of the Sullivan principles. 

When it was all over and done with, Uncle Steve came up to me, and he had in his hands a list of all the stocks that Needmor held, and he said, “Why are you picking at Champion? Champion is a good company and we treat our employees well.  Look at what’s on your list!  You have Kerr-McGee here, you have 3M, you have Exxon.  These companies are so much worse, why don’t you go after them?”

And I looked at him and said, “You know, that’s a great idea.”

Reprinted from "The Needmor Fund, 50 years, 50 Stories."  The Needmor Fund, a Walden client, continues to utilize shareholder engagement to support its mission to work with others to bring about social justice.