Letter: On the importance of mistakes
First-time reader Jasmine Williams writes from Texas: "A work-colleague sent me your Weekend Reading about admitting and dealing with failure. Ooh, I like! I have forwarded it around to my team. You might also like the below from Greg Opelka in the WSJ, hits some of the same notes."
Greg Opelka, WSJ, July 23, 2025
My father and my mother’s brother began their careers in the now defunct savings and loan industry in Chicago in the late 1950s. My uncle George was a young executive at Fairfield Savings and Loan, where his father, my grandfather, was president. In the early 1940s, my grandfather—“Pa” to us grandkids—had been a federal bank examiner. When the government decided to convert the failing Fairfield bank into a savings and loan—commonplace after the Depression—Pa got the nod. Right place, right time.
My dad was an apprentice real estate appraiser at Draper and Kramer, a mortgage banking company. Established in 1893 by Arthur W. Draper and Adolph F. Kramer, the firm still operates today. According to its website, it became “one of Chicago’s premiere mortgage banking and residential real estate management firms,” promoting home ownership and providing residential financing during a critical period of city growth.
But what soldier doesn’t dream of becoming a general? My father and my uncle, both about 30 and newly married, had loftier ambitions. In the spring of 1957 or ’58, with their vast three or four years of real estate experience, they decided to found a residential construction company during their off hours. (S&Ls were closed on Wednesdays.)
They named the fledgling company “Dual Builders,” after the first two letters of their wives’ names, Duckie and Alice. They set about building and selling new homes. They found an architect whose plans they liked, located affordable tracts of land in the growing Chicago suburb of Skokie, secured financing and hired a team of subcontractors to do the hammering, plumbing and electricity—while juggling their day jobs. My uncle even ate his own cooking; for two or three years, he and my aunt lived in one of the Skokie houses. They moved their growing family to nearby Glenview in 1961. My parents followed in 1963.
Their day jobs having become increasingly demanding, my dad and Uncle George reluctantly closed Dual after building only a few homes. My dad had left Draper and Kramer to work at Fairfield for his father-in-law, eventually rising to vice-president and head of the mortgage department. After learning the ropes, my uncle replaced Pa as president. Together the two brothers-in-law steered Fairfield Savings through the crisis of sky-high interest rates in the early 1980s. Dozens of S&Ls went belly-up, but their business acumen guided them through those turbulent years. They sold the company and retired in 2003.
The youthful partners believed they’d failed with Dual. But unbeknownst to them, that brief experiment taught the two future executives indispensable minutiae about everything that goes into building a home, from floor plan to finished product. This knowledge informed their 35-year stewardship of Fairfield, which helped thousands of Chicagoans finance their homes and realize the American dream.
Ironically, their early “failure” made Fairfield a rare success.
Read the whole thing here.
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