Larry VonderHaar Vice President, Labor Relations Courier-Journal

Bowen:     Larry, tell us a little bit about Standard Gravure and it's relationship to the Courier-Journal back in 1986.

VonderHaar:     Well, when '86, when the year began, we had common ownership. We were owned by the Bingham family--Standard Gravure and the Courier-Journal and WHAS Radio and Television and a lot of other entities. And Mr. Bingham announced early in '86 that he was going to sell all of the various entities that they owned and that they would all probably end up with separate ownership. And about midyear in July is when he announced that he had reached an agreement with the Gannett Corporation to buy the newspaper. And, I believe, it was, perhaps, in September that he announced that he had reached an agreement to sell the Standard Gravure and WHAS to separate owners. And so we all began the process of separating.

Bowen:    What exactly was Standard Gravure?

VonderHaar:      Standard Gravure is printing facility that prints, basically, Sunday supplements and Sunday magazines that used to exist but the Sunday supplements like that you get in your Sunday paper now, the KMart, the Wal-Mart, Walgreens, all those kinds of supplemental ads.

Bowen:    Still in business?

VonderHaar:     No, Standard Gravure's gone out of business.

Bowen:    When did it go out?

VonderHaar:     Oh, gee. I'm gonna say it's been, the final part of it closed at least two years ago.

Bowen:     So let's begin by focusing on the situation, the occasion, the mass murders. Tell us what happened.

VonderHaar:     Well, no one, I think, knows really for sure what caused Mr. Wesbecker to come into the plant that day and do what he did but...

Bowen:     He was an employee...

VonderHaar:      Right. He was an employee who was on what they call long-term disability and, which means that his pay was not at the full rate but at a reduced rate, that all of his benefits continued. But, evidently, he had some concerns or some misunderstandings about that because there had been meetings with him. I don't know the extent of all those. I was not a party to those. But that was part of the process that they went through.

Bowen:    And his job was?

VonderHaar:     He was a press operator. And, actually, what we came to find out later, that was the, I guess, the catalyst that upset him. As a press operator, there's a piece of equipment on the presses called a "folder" and the folder is a mechanical piece that takes quite a bit of knowledge and skill in how to adjust them for various pieces. And as any piece of equipment, as they get older and the more they operate, the more adjustments, the more fine tuning they take, and sometimes they can be quite challenging. And as I understand it, he wanted to be assigned to a job that did not include the folder. He did not want to have to make those adjustments, I guess, and do that kind of work.

Well, in 1989, the thought processes were, among managers, that a press operator is a press operator. You have to do the, all the pieces of work that go with that and part of that includes operating a folder. And so that the general consensus was, "No, you're not going to get a separate assignment that does not include the folder." That would obviously not be the case today, that if somebody wanted an accommodation then something would be done today differently. But at that time, they took the position, "No, you have to operate the folder." And that, evidently, was one of the pieces of the problem that led to his eventually being on long-term disability.

Bowen:     Let's see, as I recall this was in the summertime that this happened?

VonderHaar:     It was the middle of September, September 14th.

Bowen:    Tell us what happened on September 14 in 1989.

VonderHaar: Well, as I recall, the police later put together the scenario. Wesbecker came to the Sixth Street entrance of the Standard Gravure building and parked his car on a parking meter there. This was probably just near 8 or before 8 in the morning. He took, I think, some duffel bags out of his car.

And there was, the entrance at that Sixth Street side was merely just a stairwell kind of an arrangement with an elevator. And visitors would get on the elevator and it automatically took you to the Third Floor and, when you got off on the Third Floor, you were in the waiting area for the Executive Offices of Standard Gravure.

And that's what he did, he got on the elevator, got off on the Third Floor. And, I guess, in the process of while he was on the elevator, he assembled his weapon. And when the elevator doors opened and the receptionist was right there, basically, and she was shot immediately. Another lady came out too, because of the commotion and she was shot, she survived. The initial receptionist didn't.

And then with that, he started working his way down a hallway and just randomly shooting into offices. And some people were shot because they were in their offices. Some were shot because they came out to see what in the world was going on. Some offices were shot up that were empty because the Executives weren't there yet.

And then there was a doorway that led from the Executive area into a Production area and just as he opened that door, he shot a number of people. Most of those were people who, were folks, Maintenance personnel, hourly-paid people that would have been his peers.

Then from there, he went down into the Press Room via, I think, a stairway and just began to randomly shoot people until he got to an area which is called a "Break Room" or the Foreman's Office. And he, I guess, opened the door there, shot some people in there. And then with that, turned around and shot himself.

So, it, that's a short version of what that probably took quite a while.

Bowen:    Who was he looking for?

VonderHaar:     I think he was looking for the Supervisor. The Supervisor's Office was right there and, obviously, the Supervisor was the focal point of his unhappiness about the assignment to the folder. And the guess of many of us is that that's who he intended to get revenge on.

Bowen:    Do you remember what the, your first indication was on that day that something was wrong, that something was happening?

VonderHaar:       Our Executive parking lot is, what we call Armory Street, just across Armory Street from the side entrance to the building. And I was doing my normal thing. I got out of the car and I'm walking in. And I got there just as he, evidently, shot himself. And, uh, because there was no police around or anything yet.

And just as I got there, the security guard told me, "There's a man in the building with a gun." And, so I said, "Well, bring me up to speed about what's going on." Well, the two-way radio system, that the security officers have, was just ablaze with conversation. I mean, it would have taken some Phi Beta Kappa with extraordinary abilities to decipher what was going on.

And with that, a SWAT team member for the Louisville Police Department came up behind me with a rifle and said he needed to get to the basement and could I tell him how to get to the basement. And, I guess, the weapon just took me back and then this guy's not in uniform. He's just in civilian-type clothes. And I said, "Well, I can take you there a heck of a lot easier than I can show you." My wife has given me hell to this day about that.

Then I took him down into the basement and it's a series of, you know, it's like a catacomb, old basement. And when we were down there, that's when we found several bodies down there and we called for help. But I don't recall now whatever happened to that policeman but that's, that was the first thing that I had to encounter. And it wasn't long after that that all the ambulances and all the emergency personnel were there. Just seemed pretty, it happened pretty quickly.

Bowen:    After the shooting, what happened? Describe the day.

VonderHaar:     It's one of those kinds of situations where, you know, you're at a funeral or a wedding or something like that and everything is trying to continue on and you're trying to keep track of a number of different things at one time.

The initial thing that I remember was many of the shell casings had pierced utilities. We had broken water lines all over the place. Water was just running everywhere.

I can remember the Mayor of Louisville. He was in the Press Room standing there with a, just shirt sleeves and his wing-tip shoes were in water up to above the tops of his shoes. And a number of people laying on the floor. Blood mixed in the water that was on the floor.

When I walked over to where Wesbecker was the Chief of Police at the time was standing just above him or over his body and I could see the tissue from his skull laying out on the floor there. Kind of chokes you up to just think about. It was a heck of a sight.

A lot of employees, long-term employees, with a kind of a glazed look about them. They would look at you as if, "I don't know what to say. I don't know what I'm supposed to do." You know, "Help me," kind of thing.

A lot of people chipped in and helped us get the injured out of the building. It reminded me in some ways of some of the movie scenes from the Vietnam War, how you had a lot of EMS people, a lot of stretchers, a lot of emergency first aid going on. That was pretty much under control. And the police had control of the rest of it, for the most part.

We had to figure out a way to help our employees through this. And it became pretty evident then pretty quickly, we were going to have to do something to try to help them out. We had a meeting, got everyone together and pretty much agreed that that's what we were going to have to do. So we called our EAP, we had one under contract at that time, told him we needed him down here quickly. Obviously, he came in but it was an overwhelming task for him.

And so we called a number of different social services in town. They were also trying to reach us. And so we got a good response. We got a lot of help. We got our employees into the counseling that they needed. Some of it was done on-site. Some of it was done off-site.

Those of us in Human Resources also did some of our own. We would meet with employees at water coolers, standing in the hallway, elevators, just anywhere and just began to listen. Let them talk. Let them get it out. And some of us needed our own debriefings.

Bowen:    In going back over it, any indications that you had that, perhaps, would have been early warning signals?

VonderHaar:       Well, perhaps. You know, knowing what we know today about what angers people about their jobs, had we, perhaps, had a mechanism in place to be more listening, to allow employees to vent their frustrations, let them get it off their chest kind of thing, you know, who knows? I think at that time, we handled it the way it should have been handled at that time, knowing what we knew then. Knowing what we know now, we would probably handle it differently today.

Bowen:     Did his colleagues, his fellow workers, have any clues? Did he say anything to anyone?

VonderHaar:     Well, he did, but we didn't find out about it until later. But most people told us afterwards that he would talk about his collection of weapons. In fact, he had pet names for them. And that he would oftentimes, in his conversations with them, make comments along the lines of, you know, some day I'm gonna go in there and I'm gonna show that Foreman. I'll take my Yak-Yak in there or something like that and teach them all. And, I mean, even today you hear some of those kinds of remarks. We react a little differently today but at that time you probably would have just blown it off as a guy just venting and not paid a whole lot of attention to it.

Bowen:     What is it that you are doing today that is an outcome from that experience back in 1989?

VonderHaar:     Well, anyone who makes any kind of a comment or reference to, you know, "I could kill you," or "If you think Wesbecker was bad, you haven't seen anything yet," any of those kinds of comments, that sets us off right away.

We then set in motion to contact the person who's alleged to have made the statement. We'll either interview them in person or on the phone, try to find out what, the extent of what their problem is, why they said what they said. We just don't pass those kinds of remarks off any longer. Those kinds of remarks are action remarks for us. They put us in motion right away to address what's going on to try and get to the bottom of it very quickly.

Bowen:    Do employees feel a responsibility for dealing with anger in the workplace?

VonderHaar:       Well, what we've tried to do is train our supervisors. And one of the many things a supervisor has to do in the course of being a supervisor is to oftentimes critique the work of the employee. That may be an annual performance appraisal but it could be any host of things, from attendance to the quality of work or the lack of work. And so what we've tried to do is put together performance appraisal-type training where we incorporate in that training, so that we don't make it look like it's a big deal, that, it's not a focus in and of itself, about violence and anger. But it's a part of what you have to do as performance appraisal process--to make employees aware of the work that we see as unsatisfactory and what, how we want to get to a satisfactory level.

And so, sometimes, what we've told them is, you know, you're going to get anger. You're going to get an employee who's going to say, "Well, if you'd hire some people, we could get the work done. But you guys just won't hire anybody. You even want to continue to do more with less," or, "You won't buy us equipment. We're still operating with equipment that's 1948 vintage and we have to put it together with bailing wire and paper clips and rubber bands." You know, the usual complaints that you hear.

And so, what we've trained our supervisors to do is listen to that. Just be a listener. Don't try to be defensive and get in there and try to defend everything right away. Let them talk it out. Let them get it off their chest. Let them say what they feel like they have to say. Once you feel like that they have exhausted, they've let all of it off their chest, then bring them back to the reality. Say, "Okay, I understand how you feel about the equipment. I understand how you feel about the fact that you don't think we have enough people. But here is the situation, here is the reality, we want you to deal with the fact that we think you can do more. You've shown us in the past you can.

And sometimes when you do that, when you allow them time to vent and you bring them back to the reality, then you, all the sudden it's, you can almost see the lights come on. You know, they realize, "Okay, he's allowed me... He or she has allowed me an opportunity to say what I feel but, in reality, that's not the problem. The problem is me and I have done it in the past and I can do it.

Bowen:    What other policies have been put into operations since the experience in 1989, in addition to supervisory training?

VonderHaar:       Well, we've done a lot of different things. First among them was to tighten up how we allow access to our building. We instituted a, an ID Badge Program where folk's photo ID has to be worn by employees and then visitors would have to sign in. If these were routine visitors, perhaps folks who service vending machines, they had a different color-coded visitor's ID. And then those who were just casual visitors for the day, perhaps they had some business in the building, they would have a different color and they also had to be escorted.

We then made that public to the employees so that the employees knew, you know, who was going to be wearing what kind of an ID card. Basically, what that was to do was to give some assurance to our employees that we were trying to provide, as best we could, an environment that was somewhat controlled. We wanted to stay away from the airport-type of thing where you have to go through some sort of metal detector-type thing. We did not want employees or visitors to think we were, you know, an encampment of some kind but we still wanted to have some sort of process in place where the employees felt like that there was some effort, on the part of management, to secure the place.

We all know, if someone's determined to do some dastardly deed, we're as vulnerable as anybody else. If somebody wants to wreak havoc they can. Not a heck of a lot that we can really do to stop it. But we did that.

The next thing that we did was that we made it very clear to all Supervision and employees that there would be absolutely zero tolerance for any kind of flippant remarks, like, "I could kill you," or "I'm gonna kill you," or "By god, I'll get even with you someday." As soon as those are said, we jump right on it. We call them in. We talk to them. I mean, we've even gone to the point where we've had retirees at some sort of gathering outside the building and they would make a remark, you know, that they had some animosity towards an existing manager and it would get back to me. And I would get on the phone and I'd call the retiree and I'd confront them right on the phone and say this is what I heard. You were at a gathering, this is what you said, that you were going to kill so and so, tell me what this is all about.

And, then, here again, it's the same process as if they were employed. Anyway, I'm doing it on the phone and I'm allowing the retiree to just give me all the feedback that they want to give me, which is how bad they were treated when they were employees. You know, they never got a holiday off. They only got Mickey Mouse raises. And, you know, all the different things that you would hear. And then when the conversation was ended the person would assure me, you know, "I'm not coming in there. I'm not gonna do anything that stupid. I, you know, I was just blowing off." And so, then, you feel, you know, better about the process, that you've been able to, hopefully, head off another incident.

And then we have our Supervision and, actually, our employees are really keenly aware that we have a zero tolerance. And, so, when they hear any kind of thing at all that causes them concern, where another employee may be just talking to another employee over the water fountain and is overheard to say, you know, "I'm so darned mad. I could just kill him for giving me that poor appraisal," you know. As soon as that employee, you know, hears that, they report it and we get involved. And so we've effectively, I think, have a workplace where everybody is keenly aware that there just is zero tolerance for any kind of remark that could cause any problem.

Bowen:     It also sounds as if employees are accountable and responsible for monitoring anger in the workplace and in your organization?

VonderHaar:     Oh, definitely. They know that they are a key element to it and they know that there are no repercussions if they do it. They know that they have the support of their peers, as well as, the management.

Bowen:    What advice would you give other organizations with respect to managing anger, number one, and number two, with respect to sensitivity around potentially volatile situations resulting in violence?

VonderHaar:       Well, I think, on managing anger, I think I would recommend a zero tolerance for any kind of threats. Make sure that it is well-known among employees and managers. And, then, I would do as much training as I possibly could with managers and supervisors in the performance appraisal process so that they know how to allow that anger to just vent and just let it dissipate over time, you know, maybe in a short meeting or a long meeting. But I'd work on that, those two pieces alone--on managing the anger. You're not going to do away with it but you're going to have to manage it. It's just one more thing to manage.

Bowen:    And what about with respect to sensitivity around situations that could be potentially violent?

VonderHaar:       Well, I think you have to become more keenly aware of those. I think a lot of what we used to dismiss, we can no longer dismiss. And, well, perhaps an employee comes in and tells you that they're going to be separating or get a divorce. And they're having trouble with the spouse over, you know, the disposition of assets or maybe it's visitation by the children. It seems to me what I hear mostly about is the visitation of children. One parent tries to control the situation by, you know, not allowing the children to go with the other parent. Even though that's outside the work environment, the employee has come and told you about it now. It's, and so, now, what used to be a non-problem for you is a problem for you because they've brought it to work. It's one, and, now, they've told you about it.

And so, if they drop the ball on some project or something and you've got the CEO hot on your case about this project and they've dropped the ball on it, you know why they've dropped the ball. They've dropped the ball because they've got some misfortune going on at home.

And so, you know, it's a whole different thing. You've got to be aware of those kinds of things and you've got to be savvy enough to say, "Okay, how can I help you?" But, in the meantime, also help yourself by knowing, you know, where are they with the project, is there anybody else involved, you know, you got, you've just got more to do.

Bowen:     We hear about employment-at-will policies and downsizing and the notion that jobs can be eliminated or terminated at any point in time and, while that sounds somewhat easy, my sense is that's it's not all that easy. So my question to you is, in today's society, in today's workplace, how is the attitude of the supervisor different today from what it might of been ten years ago? Or how should it be today versus, perhaps, ten years ago?

VonderHaar:     Ten years ago it was fairly easy that, when top management said, you know, we've got a loss to make up for the last quarter. We need to reduce the workforce by X percentage, so, give your layoff notices and reduce the workforce by the end of the week or something like that. And so the younger or the less senior folks were the ones who were kind of bouncing in and out. I used to work in the auto industry so I know how that happened.

Today we're a little more savvy about how it impacts families. And so we know that there's more to just losing a paycheck. You're losing some benefit coverage. You're losing some status in the community with your neighbors, with your friends, with your church members. So we have to try and come up with some severance packages that maybe include some, you know, some pay as well as some benefits, maybe help with resume preparation, maybe some out-placement.

Anything that, you know, it's a little more costly but it probably keeps you out of the soup with the lawyers and the courts and, in my personal opinion, it keeps you from reading in the paper about some misfortune that some family goes through because it cushions the blow. We are much more sensitive to the fact that, of the feelings, of the human that involves. And not just so much the bottom line impact that we have to take care of.

Bowen:    Larry, let's talk about the survivors of that tragic incident. What impact on their lives? What impact on their performance for the immediate period after the experience and then longer term?

VonderHaar:     Well, one of the things that I've witnessed is that, just like in everyday life, different personalities handled it different ways. Those who are highly motivated, self-starters, get-up-and-go kinds of personalities, they've, for the most part, put it behind them and they've moved on. Their careers are even different, more enhanced now than they were then. Then there are others who I assume their pain is real and they are still recovering. It may be a long, long time, you know, before they fully recover, if ever. So it's had the polar effect. Those who have gone on with their lives and then those who are just kind of stuck in a rut.

Bowen:     Hearing you talk about the special training for supervisors and taking time to listen to people, I'm reminded of how many organizations find that to be an unnecessary expense. Based on your experience, what would you say to that kind of opinion or that kind of observation?

VonderHaar:     I guess it would come down to what value you put on human life. And, you know, I know it's tough to make it in the business world. There's a lot of competition out there. And when you, I mean, those of us that have been in the human resources field for years know that when things get in a crunch, one of the first things you cut out of your budget is training. It's the easiest one to cut. You always go to the easy things first. So we cut the training out. But in reality, the training that supervisors need in order to handle performance appraisals, which handles the anger, manage the anger of employees, you can't do enough of it. To me, it ought to be, perhaps, as frequently as twice a year so that they know constantly what's expected. And that we expect them to sit down and listen to employees that have problems. Give them an open ear. Let them vent. Let them raise, let them call you anything in the book. A name's not gonna necessarily hurt you.

But, you know, if they get to the point where they feel like they can't talk to you, and they don't have an audience at home, perhaps, or, you know, in the bar, you know, the guy on the stool next to you in the bar is not responding, and you got the supervisor shutting you down, we're not giving them very many alternatives. If the supervisor gives them an alternative, gives them an ear, I think it will go a long way towards helping to manage the anger.

Bowen:    Did this whole experience change how you personally think about the work that you do?

VonderHaar:       Definitely. Well, I guess I have to go back to my industrial days at International Harvester. We had some pretty contentious Labor Relations. We had some tough strikes. In other words, we did not get along very well with our Union counterparts, for the most part. And we took tough stands as managers. We had an awful attendance problem. And we suspended people. We discharged people. We felt like that was the way we had to control that. We just dismissed the anger. We didn't care. Take your anger somewhere else. Go home with your anger. It's not our problem, you know.

And, now, now, I know that, based on what I've been able to do the last ten years anyway, if you give them an ear, if you listen to the problems, sure makes a world of difference. It's, you know, it's like learning how to put a, you know, a project together and then, once you've learned how to do it and you see that it's a much better way, you think, "Gee whiz, why didn't I know this longer, a long time ago. Things could have been so much different." And I think that, you know, that's the thing that I've walked away with.

Bowen:     Has the management structure taken that to heart and tried to be more flexible in how they are dealing with employees? You know, you mentioned, you know, at the time, Mr. Wesbecker's Supervisor just said, you know, "Tough. You gotta do this." Whereas, you said, today, you know, they would have tried to find him another job. Has that really taken hold, that kind of we must be responsive, in addition to listening?

VonderHaar:       It's a work in progress. We're not there totally yet but we're making progress. Some supervisors have seen the value of it. Others still, you know, they're preoccupied with other things and, you know, they don't feel like that they have the time to give to those kinds of things. And so it, basically, ends up being a human resources area that becomes the listening post. But there's some, you know, not all managers are alike and there are some that have seen the value of it and they will do it. They will sit down. They will take the time. And that's what you gotta do.