Читать книгу Designing a World-Class Architecture Firm - Patrick MacLeamy - Страница 49

The founders' last names were difficult to spell, so the firm became best known by the initials H-O-K. Years later, we shortened the name to just the initials for simplicity. But for now, people around the firm loved to poke gentle fun at the challenge of the founders' names.

Here's a Kassabaum story that took place in an era when HOK had established several offices, but receptionists still wrote phone messages by hand. The receptionists were all trained to answer the phone by saying, “Good morning, Hellmuth, Obata, and Kassabaum. How may I direct your call?” George Kassabaum called the Dallas office and asked to speak with King Graf. The receptionist replied, “I'm sorry, Mr. Graf is out of the office. Would you like to leave a message?” Kassabaum said, “Please have him call George Kassabaum when he returns.” The receptionist said, “How do you spell Kassabaum?” Kassabaum replied, “Young lady, look on your paycheck!”

King could tell and retell funny stories about Kassabaum—and Hellmuth and Obata— because he held a unique position of trust with all three founders. He never boasted about his special role. Instead, he made yet another joke about the firm name, saying “If Kassabaum retired and I became his replacement, the firm would be called Hellmuth, Obata & Graf, or HOG—and that would never do!”

Much later, in the 1980s, we all enjoyed another good laugh about the HOK name. Vernon Geisel, one of our architects, had previously worked in Moscow for the U.S. Embassy and wrote and spoke fluent Russian. Vernon subscribed to some Soviet magazines and brought one to the office. It contained an article about HOK, including our logo and pictures of some of our buildings. The article was titled “HOK: A Hawk in the Skies of Architecture.” The author claimed it was no mistake that the HOK initials sounded, phonetically, like “hawk,” because we were a big capitalist company intent on gobbling up our smaller competitors! It was still the Cold War era, and Soviet apparatchiks regularly instructed state journalists to slant stories against the United States and Western companies. We were oddly flattered, figuring we had really made it, if HOK was the subject of Soviet propaganda.

The HOK name was misconstrued—and misspelled. Over the years Chip Reay, the graphic designer in St. Louis, collected misspellings from mail that came into the HOK mailroom. When the office relocated to new space in downtown St. Louis, Chip created a humorous announcement containing the many misspellings of the firm name. Everyone had a good laugh over it, including the founders. My personal favorite is the last name on the list.