William W. Martin
How Do You Know You Are Right?
It was 4:40 p.m. when I made my last cold call that fateful day. The prospect’s name was Ed Barr and he ran a yacht brokerage office on Mission Bay. He tried to brush me off, but I wasn’t taking any no’s. Finally he said, “All right, if you can get to my office from wherever you are by five o’clock sharp, I’ll listen to you. If you’re late I’ll be gone.” “You’re on,” I said and hung up. I grabbed a scratchpad and pencil and tore out of the door, flew down the stairs, and piled into my car. I laughed and pounded my steering wheel all the way to his office. Something good had happened to me this day. In fact, before getting the Barr appointment I had banged out three other appointments for the next week. When I pulled into Mr. Barr’s small parking space outside his office it was exactly one minute to five.
Mr. Barr was standing behind his desk when I entered. He was tall, blond, and handsome. Not much older than I was, I figured. “I see you made it,” he said.
“Yeah, I drove like a maniac.”
“Whadaya got?”
“A funnel talk.”
“A what?”
“It’s all about what I do. I hope you’ll like it.
I had given the funnel talk enough now so I didn’t have to think about what was coming next. I was full of show business this day. I couldn’t care less if I got him or not. As a matter of fact, if he so much as hinted at an objection or an evasion I’d thank him for the opportunity of telling him my story, and without any further ado clear out of his office, shaking my head over his loss.
“The funnel never got a better delivery. Mr. Barr listened intently. When I was about to ask him what his estate settlement costs were if he died last week, he broke in: “Mr. Martin, you are semantically precise.”
“Thank you—”
“Who are you going to vote for?”
For Christ’s sake, I thought, as I recalled Bob’s dictum to avoid politics or religion. “Barry Goldwater!” I declared.
“Why?” Barr asked.
“Because Goldwater realizes that we cannot peacefully coexist with the communists. His opponent thinks we can.”
Barr said nothing, just kept his eyes on me. So what the hell, I thought, give him more of the rest of it. Show him your disgust for the country, how it’s running scared. You didn’t read Swartz’s You Can Trust the Communists for nothing. Besides, this sale’s going nowhere. So I declared:
“What’s more, to quote Lenin, the morality of the communists is dictated by the exigencies of the class struggle, whereas the morality of the American political heritage is based on Christian values. The one morality is relativistic, the other is absolute. This gives the political advantage to the communists. Therefore, any presidential aspirant who thinks we can peacefully co-exist with the Russians and makes this part of his campaign rhetoric is either inexcusably naïve or a bloody traitor!”
“How do you know the morality of the American way of life is right?” Barr asked. “In fact, I’ll go a step further. Do you find my question philosophically provocative?”
“I do,” I said.
“I’ll even go further,” Barr said. “Do you know how to determine right from wrong on an absolute basis for all things?”
Stunned by such a radical question, and unable to answer it, I said in perhaps the finest moment of my life, “No, I can’t say that I know such a criterion.”
“Would you be interested in learning what it is?”
“Very much.”
“It does not come from politics or religion,” Barr went on. “It comes from physics. It was developed by an astrophysicist. He has a revolutionary new theory that integrates his breakthrough science of human volition with the larger and earlier subject of physics.”
The idea that this universal standard of rightness should come from physics struck me with great significance. It sounded like the things I’d read in Aristotle and Lucretius.
Mr. Barr wasted no time. He pulled out his desk drawer and tore an enrollment form off a pad. “Would you be interested in taking a course by this man?”
“Yes.”
“You are fortunate, Mr. Martin. The course, which is titled ‘Capitalism—the Key to Survival!’ began on Monday night of this week. It is presented on reel-to-reel tape and will continue on Monday evenings into the winter of next year. You will be hearing its revolutionary second session, which is titled: ‘How Do You Know You Are Right.’ The tuition is fifty dollars.”
Barr shoved the enrollment form over to me to sign. I filled it out and signed it. I’d borrow the tuition from my father over the weekend.
“Since you are decisive and intellectually honest,” Mr. Barr said, “I would like to hear the rest of your pitch now.”
So I bridged to data, asked a couple of sweat questions, and got an appointment for data gathering with him and his wife. My career as an estate planner was officially launched.
When Monday evening rolled around I drove to the address on Gage Street in Point Loma where the course was being played by The Free Enterprise Institute’s tape contractors Jack and Meg Williams. When I entered the house I had the feeling that this night could be the most important experience of my life.
William Martin
The Great Conversation
Chapter 78: pp. 597-600
It was Monday, September 28, 1964. Thus began Bill Martin’s thirty-two year relationship with Professor Andrew Galambos and his Free Enterprise Institute.
Student
After his initial taking of course 100 Bill knew he had found what he had been searching for the first twenty-eight years of his life. Truth, validity, rightness, freedom, capitalism, integrity, morality, all explicitly and absolutely defined. Man’s most significant issues clearly identified next to which nothing else mattered.
Over the years Bill would take V-50 over two dozen times; V-201, Galambos’ “most important course,” over fifteen times; would enroll in and hear over forty-five additional courses, many of which he would take several times. In 1982 at the 100th anniversary celebration of the birth of Joseph Galambos the professor singled out Bill for his “haven taken twenty of the twenty-two V-40 seminars given to date” and called Bill “one of the few Class A, Class B, and Class C students in his market.” This was defined by the professor as a person who not only patronized the courses but brought others in and applied the theory to his own life. Galambos enjoyed Bill’s company and conversation and frequently invited Bill and his wife Julie to be dinner guests during these seminars. Bill called the Highlands Inn where most of these were given his “alma mater.” To the very end Bill’s loyalty to the professor never flagged. He was one of only a dozen or so students at the final lecture Galambos delivered on November 5, 1989, session 68 of BFSC.
Flowstream
Bill was tireless in his efforts to “fill the V-50 funnel” and ultimately would be the source of a flowstream of several hundred. His most successful referrals were his son Lance and his younger brother Mike. On November 29, 1973 during the first session of the Concept 21 (V-40) held at the Islandia Hotel in San Diego, the professor asked the audience who was the most important person who ever lived. Twelve-year-old Michael Martin, seeing that no one was answering the question raised his hand. The professor called on him.
“Newton.”
“Yes Mr. Martin.” Then: “Can anyone name the most important person before Newton?”
Thirteen-year-old Lance Martin saw the perplexed look on the faces of the audience and shot up his hand:
“Archimedes!”
“And who taught you this?
“You did.”
Lance himself would have a flowstream of over seventy young people which by 1985 had become the largest representation in Galambos’ open-end course.
Lecturer–Teacher–Father
Realizing that “the public schools had by now degenerated into blatantly undisguised nurseries of Marxist propaganda” Bill decided to take the education of his young sons into his own hands. On July 23, 1970 during a long drive about the city Bill delivered his first lecture to his sons (Lance age ten, Michael age nine, Joseph age 6) on the professor’s theory of freedom. This would become a daily event in the boys’ life as more and more subjects were introduced and mastered. Five years later Lance had his first spaceland friend in Martin Atkins, and others quickly followed. This led to the well-known Saturday night lectures that began in the summer of 1975. Ultimately several dozen young people would crowd the Martin living room, overflowing into other rooms, to refine their knowledge of the professor’s theory. The Martin moral island was growing. These regular Saturday lectures would often end in the wee hours of the morning and would continue for over fifteen years. Lance himself would have the distinction of being the first person in history to be raised in the theory his entire life.
Talks at the Free Enterprise Institute
Several times professor Galambos invited Bill to give talks to his market during courses of The Free Enterprise Institute. The first was during the 10th Anniversary Alumni meeting held March 13-14, 1971 at the Grand Hotel in Anaheim, California. Having spent weeks preparing a speech entitled, “The Most Important Property,” Bill was told just before being introduced that he would have only twenty-five minutes to speak, not the forty-five he had planned, since time was running short. Out went the prepared speech and Bill delivered an impromptu talk that thrilled the audience on the beauty of the theory of freedom and the path that had brought him to it. A lengthy applause and kind words from the professor followed.
At the 20th Anniversary Alumni Meeting of The Free Enterprise Institute held March 14-15, 1981 Martin Atkins was the first guest speaker following the morning session on day one. Atkins was introduced by Mrs. Galambos as, “Lance’s first referral to FEI.” He paid his gratitude to his great friend Lance, to Bill and to the professor in his talk entitled “Lance W. Martin – A Tribute to a Primary Friend.” As he struggled to get through the very last part of his talk, the reading of the letter from Lance that would become his last will and testament (see page 531 of The Biography of Lance Martin), Martin looked out at the audience and saw tears everywhere, including in the eyes of Lance’s father. When he finished Galambos shook his hand and took the microphone from him. Martin went and sat next to Bill in an area reserved for guest speakers. The professor then introduced Bill. When Bill joined the professor on the podium Galambos could see that he was shaken and very sensitively stayed with Bill telling the audience what a quality person and student Mr. Martin was and what a great job he had done raising his sons. He spoke of Bill’s large flowstream, the fact that he had been around “since the early days” and that he “had been at the very first Concept 21 and had attended 20 of the 22 to date” and that he was “very articulate.” Eyes still red with tears Bill delivered a beautiful and exceedingly significant talk on spaceland parenting. Bill ended the speech with the first thing Lance had written in his diary when he was just twelve years old:
My life goal is the promotion of freedom and to be the equal if not the superior of my learned father in all aspects of mental talent. His wish for his offspring to surpass him in knowledge shall be the foundation of my inspiration. I’m the only person I have the knowledge of, of having such an extraordinary father. He’s taught me the way to think rationally and has saved me from the insidious hands of our degenerate society and for that reason alone I’m forever indebted to him as my teacher and father and I figure I owe him his wish of having offspring to carry on the Martin reputation.
With tears in his eyes Bill thanked the audience whose tears had never stopped and who immediately jumped to their feet and burst into applause. Bill would call finishing this speech “the hardest thing I have ever done in my life.”
For weeks and weeks after the alumni meeting William Martin’s speech, the way he raised his children in the theory, and the love and respect his sons had for him were the talk of the market. You could feel the buzz. Just one example of the professor’s comments came at the intermission of session 99 of the open-end course when he said that, “If more parents were like Mr. Martin we’d probably be in freedom.”
Less than a year later on December 4, 1981 during session 108 of the open-end course Bill Martin sent a short note to Martin Atkins seated next to him:
Martin,
Joy of joys!!! Galambos has invited us to be speakers at his fathers’ centennial! Can you believe this? Perhaps the very most significant of all alumni meetings. I am temporarily overwhelmed. Looks like hours of sweat again for us. But Jesus what an historic opportunity!!! G. wants to see us to confirm our interest in accepting his invitation – and honor! I’ve already accepted. I trust you will!
Bill was one of just six people besides the professor and his wife to speak at the Centennial commemorating the birth of Joseph B. Galambos (1882-1982) held March 6-7, 1982. Bill, who led off Part B of the evening session on March 6 was introduced by the professor. He said that “Mr. William Martin is an excellent enrollee, graduate, customer and developer of not only quality people but his education is vastly superior.” And, “Better educated than those who have been educated at universities and colleges.” And he is, “Well informed on historical subjects and an excellent speaker.” Also, “He’s exceedingly sensitive to what I say and almost always picks up little things that no one else notices….I’m happy to say I consider Mr. Martin to be an A, B, and C graduate all in one.” The professor also announced Bill’s independency on the naming of the title of his speech: “A Monument More Lasting Than Bronze – Joseph B. Galambos’ Moral and Cultural Affect on Future Spaceland Generations.” He said, “It takes a quality graduate to recognize this.”
During his talk Bill described how he patterned his relationship with his children on the example of Joseph and Andrew Galambos:
Long ago when I first listened to professor Galambos expressing his gratitude for his father I resolved that this was the kind of relationship I wanted to have with my own children. Over and over again I rehearsed with them the inputs Galambos had gotten from his father. As the years passed I can tell you they bore fruit. Wherever we went or whatever we did it seemed that we were always talking about the theory and about how it had come into being. We talked about gratitude and its related virtue, integrity. And about truth and how its quest both in behavior and knowledge leads to a disbelief in hypocrisy…
In recalling that Galambos had once said that the effect of the Latin proverbs his father taught him was not much in the short-run but it produced an enormous long-term effect, I made sure to teach them to my sons. There was a great moral to this: Joseph Galambos knew what to say to his son; which reminded me of Solomon’s proverb, “Raise up a boy in the way he should go and when he grows old he will not part from it.”
I also passed on the stories of Joseph Galambos’ great warmth and compassion; of his generosity; of his love of cats, who are individuals and not sycophants; of his competence as a businessman and how he never hurt anyone he did business with, and who above all was a realistic idealist….And these talks and personal aspiration bore their inevitable fruit.
Just before closing Bill recalled the story told to him by one of Lance’s former classmates:
He said that in a high school class he once shared with Lance the teacher had asked the members of the class to name someone they had high regard for. The kids replied one by one. Some said the president of the United States, while others gave names of popular sports heroes…various celebrities. But when it came to Lance he stood up and said that the person he admired the most was his father. When the teacher heard this he was somewhat taken aback. He asked, “Why your father?” Lance replied, “Because my father is not only my father, he is my teacher.”
Now these words did not spring out of a vacuum, Ladies and Gentlemen. They were inspired by the story Joseph Galambos told his son about how Alexander had esteemed Aristotle as his teacher more than he esteemed his own father [Philip II king of Macedon]. When Lance stood up and said these words he made an indelible impression on that student, and later, many others who are now in this room.
After the speech, which received a standing ovation from the appreciative audience, Mrs. Galambos came up and said, “I hope Mr. Martin’s words will sink in deep and permanently.” Still later the professor complimented Bill for his, “astuteness in seeing his father’s quest for justice and gratitude, his predictions about WWI, and the importance of history as one of the most important components of education.” He said that all the speeches given were worthy of publication.
On June 13, 1986 Bill Martin wrote the professor from Budapest, Hungary to express his gratitude for all he had learned from him over the years about this great city. Bill stated his belief that Budapest’s most important figure was Joseph Galambos. Bill and his wife toured dozens of the places Galambos had suggested they visit taking hundreds of photos of these historically significant places: The Semmelweis museum where the great doctor was born and which housed, among many other things, microscopes of Leeuwenhoek, books of Paracelsus and Vesalius and William Harvey; the memorial to Doctor Karolyi and the German doctor who discovered homeopathy, Samuel Hahnemann. The Hungarian National museum; Rákóczi Blvd; Eastern rr station. Széchenyi swimming pool; Hunyadi castle; The Yokai statue; old New York Café; Wallenberg St.; Matyas statue; Kossuth statue; Parliament Bldg.; Margit Bridge; the Buda view of Parliament Blvd, and much more.
When he returned Bill presented Galambos with over 100 slides of the historic city with a detailed description of each. On September 13, 1986 during the first bonus session of his 1986 open-end course Galambos asked Bill to present all of his Danube trip slides along with commentary to his class. He also asked Bill to read the letter he had written Galambos from Budapest. Bill took the podium and for three and a half hours discussed, with the tapes recording, the history of Budapest, and of Hungary, via the slide presentation. During the entire time he was interrupted by the professor just twice.
During the break of the professor’s open-end special course on November 8, 1986, Bill Martin walked up to Galambos and asked: “Do you know who said ‘Deism has no brokers?’” “No – but it must have been Paine.”
“You did,” Bill replied.
He looked surprised, his eyes opened wide. “I said that?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Session thirteen of Positive History.” He then thanked Bill for remembering the quote, and remarked that he “doesn’t remember everything he says, or when he said it.” Bill then opened up the book he was preparing for the professor and spun the pages before his eyes saying, “I have over two thousand quotes of yours.” Galambos began to reach out for the book, then pulled back, saying: “May I have a copy? I’ll pay you for it.” Bill replied yes and offered it as a royalty. The professor insisted on paying for it. Later, after the break Galambos asked, “Did you say you have two thousand quotes of mine?” “Yes, and I haven’t even begun my Concept 21 notes.” This seemed to amuse the professor who again said he wanted a copy and would pay for it. Bill told him he would make the book available to him “when he was finished,” and added that, “It’s very good reading.”
Later that night Galambos asked the class who has added to the building of freedom. Bill Martin raised his hand. He was the only one in the room to do so. “I accept your answer, Mr. Martin,” the professor responded.
Just prior to the start of session 171 of the open-end course on May 10, 1987 Bill and Julie’s eight-year-old daughter Heidi got to meet the professor. He was standing in the book alcove. Bill records: “When he saw Heidi he said ‘hello,’ smiled, looked very gentlemanly Hungarian, and came over and embraced her with a kiss. He took both her hands, smiling, and looking her in the eyes, said, ‘You’re going to become a fine lady.’ Again he hugged her, and kissed her, on the cheek and neck. Then, later finding out that Julie would not be able to attend because of our not finding a baby-sitter, he called me up to the podium and asked me to go get Julie and Heidi and bring them back, setting the precedent of allowing an eight-year-old to sign an enrollment form and listen to his elite lecture. When I was running over to Carrows restaurant to get Julie and Heidi, the professor said to his audience (the quote was made available to me by Martin Atkins): ‘She’s an exceedingly young girl and Mr. Martin is an extraordinary person. Don’t think I will do this for just anyone.’
“This evening, 1987 (300 P.I.), May 10, I presented the quote books to the professor and his wife. He asked me to announce this to his class, and to speak on the accomplishment, turning over the podium and the microphone to me. I held the books up, asked the audience what I held, and told them they consisted of 6,000 quotes. I read quotes at random after telling the audience that the reader would immediately grasp the meaning of what the author was getting at. The professor earlier said to me privately that he would like to pay me a substantial revenue share upon selling the books. I stated that if each book were sold for a minimum of $50 the revenue generated could be $1,000,000. He asked me if I had a copy of the books. I said I didn’t but that I would like one with his permission. ‘Of course,’ he replied.
“When I read my dedication (To Professor Galambos, my incomparable teacher and friend), after explaining how this was the distillation of a runaway, voluminous listing of all the things I was grateful to the professor for, the audience rose to its feet and gave the professor an ovation that lasted approximately one minute. I ended by reading some of the quotes with the exchange between the professor and his father about wedding gifts.
“Afterwards, the professor came to the podium and, according to Martin Atkins’ notes, said: ‘Mr. Martin, I would like to say something to you about you…in all these twenty-six years I’ve had a great deal of difficulty with my customers…very rarely there are some who are durable and never falter…The one at this time who has done the very most as far as I can see at this time, is Mr. William Martin…I’m very sorry about the loss of his eldest son…I’m very sorry about the loss of his third son. His middle son is here… [Looking at Mike] I hope you live to be 137…that would be a good age…In the recent years Mr. Martin has gotten better and better…I’d like to have this thing [the quote books] published sometime…I’ve never expected anyone to do this much.’
“Also, Galambos assured me that I would be remembered in history. He also told me that my letter from Budapest about his father would not be forgotten.
“The session ended at 3:30 a.m. Mrs. Galambos came up to me, took my hand, told me what a fine thing I had done, and how ‘touched’ she was. Then she hugged me tight and kissed me on the cheek and again on my neck. The professor, who had taken a seat behind one of the tables facing the chairs where his classes sit, looked up and said, ‘I would kiss you too, Mr. Martin, but my wife can do it for me!’
“The highest compliment and honor of all, however, was when I was on the dais reading the quotes and after one of the quotes the professor said that he would have liked to introduce me to his father and that he believed his father would have liked me.”
The Ultimate Responsibility
Over the years there were many, many, more personal interactions between the professor and William Martin. Often the professor would call in the early evening seemingly for no reason other than to talk. These phone conversations would frequently last until after dawn. As the years went on the professor confided more and more in Bill. Their friendship grew stronger and stronger. Then there was the tragic Lange theft of the TUSPCO accounts, perhaps the most significant theft in all history. The professor asked Bill to meet him on July 21, 1984 at an old office building in downtown San Diego where he would be taking inventory of whatever property he might have left after Lange’s crimes. He wanted Bill to be a witness. The tragic, sad, yet also beautiful story of that afternoon and evening can be found in the section “other writings” on this website. It is Bill’s diary account of the event.
There was the day in 1990 when Galambos asked Bill to meet him at the Department of Motor Vehicles in Anaheim where the professor had to stoop to taking a written test to keep his drivers license. The rude, insensitive, petty bureaucrats treating the professor with disdain, unaware they were dealing with the architect of civilization. The many mentions of, and expressions of gratitude to Mr. Martin addressed by the professor both privately and from the podium. Bill’s loyalty to the professor would never waiver.
In January of 1991 Mrs. Galambos called William Martin to inform him that her husband had decided to make him his literary executor when she passed away and that he would be calling him about this. A little over a year later in Schedule “B” of the Galamboses’ Natural Estate Trust William Martin was named Successor Literary Executor thus setting in motion a series of events that would ultimately lead to the theories of volitional science being put into book form and, as Galambos had allegorically stated it, into their permanent, stable configuration which he called orbit. All Bill Martin’s years of studying the professor’s work had led him to a better understanding of the theory than anyone else in the market. Once he became literary executor there was no fear, no doubt. Decades of his life had inexorably led to this. The ultimate responsibility was in his hands. Success was practically guaranteed.
Please see: The Real Sic Itur Ad Astra
