It was early December -- six weeks before the allied bombin started and nearly three months before Kuwait would be liberated -- and William Parsons was planning for the future.
Nearly everyone else was caught up in the day-to-day aspects of diplomacy, politics and warfare of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. But as Mr. Parsons sat in the tub one morning, it suddenly dawned upon him that there was money to be made rebuilding the war-torn Persian Gulf nation once the fighting ended.
His thought processes shifted into overdrive as he considered the business prospects associated with a multibillion-dollar rebuilding program and what it might mean for Maryland companies, the port of Baltimore, Baltimore-Washington International Airport. . . .
Mr. Parsons, the president of Parsons & Co., an architectural and engineering concern in Monkton, could hardly contain himself. He jumped out of the tub, wrapped a towel around his waist and ran through the house calling to his wife: "Pam, Pam, I've got an idea and we've got to get into this."
"That's when he called me," recalls William Touchard, a longtime friend and the retired president of Poole & Kent Co., a local mechanical contracting company.
" 'Bill,' he said, 'can you come see me?' I said, 'Yeah, I'll see you one day next week.' He said, 'No, I'd like to see you today, within the next hour, if you could.' This is the way Bill is. He's a dynamic guy and when he comes up with an idea, he wants to act on it fast."
Off on the other side of the world Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was still hanging tough. Despite the increasing size of themultinational force being assembled against him, Mr. Hussein continued to insist that he would never leave Kuwait.
But Mr. Parsons thought differently. As he and Mr. Touchard talked in the architect's home office, Mr. Parsons insisted that the Iraqi soldiers were going to leave Kuwait, "either vertically, meaning they walk out, or horizontally, meaning they would be carried out in pine boxes."
When that happened, the two men agreed, it would be good if they were prepared to act on the business opportunities. Mr. Parsons suggested assembling a group of companies, such as they had 15 years earlier when they worked together on the construction of a sports arena in Saudi Arabia for the University of Riyadh, to get their foot in the door and their names out among potential Kuwaiti customers.
Mr. Parsons' bathtub brainstorm led to the formation of the Kuwait/Maryland Partnership Inc., a business initiative that Kuwaiti Ambassador Saud Nasir al-Sabah says is unique in the United States. Gov. William Donald Schaefer, meanwhile, claims the group has put Maryland out in front of the race to land Kuwaiti reconstruction contracts.
The partnership coordinates businesses throughout the state to form a one-stop shopping center where the Kuwaiti government can come for a variety of goods and services.
At last count, about 900 Maryland businesses had registered with the group, says Mr. Touchard, the 67-year-old who was lured out of retirement and away from an amateur softball career to take over the day-to-day operations of the group.
"They range in size from a guy with two dump trucks and a couple of drivers that he wants to send over there to giant Westinghouse" Electronic Systems Group, a producer of radar systems and the state's largest manufacturing employer.
Mr. Touchard and Mr. Parsons had help as they moved from a concept to an up-and-running business. They took in five other partners to share the $200,000 start-up costs and benefited greatly from a bright idea offered by a Baltimore businessman. And they were helped along by the governor's ties to Arab leaders.
At first, there were plenty of skeptics -- including State Economic Development Secretary J. Randall Evans. Mr. Touchard recalls that when the group first approached the state official "his reaction was along the line of what's the hurry, the war to $H liberate Kuwait hadn't even started yet."
Mr. Touchard's response was loud and clear. "No way. We want to be out in front of the crowd and that's where we have the state of Maryland today," he exclaims, emphasizing the words by tapping his index finger on one of the few clear spots on the cluttered conference table he uses as a desk. Mr. Evans soon was won over.
Convincing the Department of Economic and Employment Development of the merits of the plan was easy, says Mr. Touchard, compared to trying to keep up with the workload at the partnership's office.
"This is embarrassing," he says, looking over the table covered with piles of letters -- some opened, some still in envelopes -- catalogs, brochures, sheets of notebook paper and business cards.
"I was president of Poole & Kent for 17 years and we did $200
million a year in work," he says. "I always had control of everything. I never had a desk so messed up as this is. But things are coming in here so fast it's hard to keep up with it.
"We have been bombarded with inquiries since that first newspaper article about our formation. It was like the atomic bomb hit us. We had people walking in and out of this door all the time. You never got a chance to dial out, there was always somebody calling in. It was just unreal. Those phones were busy from 7 in the morning until 9:30 at night with people trying to get jobs in Kuwait."
A good many of the calls in January and February were stimulated by rumors of Kuwait's willingness to hire skilled laborers at wages 10 times higher than those available in the United States.
"There were rumors out there -- and they are strictly rumors -- that you could make as high as $110 per hour working in Kuwait as a skilled mechanic," says Mr. Touchard. "You can't make that kind of money. I heard $85. I heard $56 for construction workers.
"Listen, these Kuwaitis are not dummies. They are not just going to hand you an open checkbook. We've got to be competitive."
Some of the phone calls into the partnership's office are of a questionable nature. Mr. Parsons, the group president, says: "We've had 24 -- at least 24 calls -- from people who know how to put out oil well fires even though they have never done it before. One guy said he could put out a fire in four seconds, but he had never done it before. . . ."
Louis J. Grasmick, owner of a Baltimore lumberyard, may not have had a plan for snuffing the oil well flames, but he came up with an idea that seems to have won the hearts of the Kuwaiti government -- and may have given the partnership a leg up on the competition.
For Christmas, Mr. Grasmick's wife game him a biography of Occidental Petroleum Chairman Armand Hammer, who helped a group of American doctors go into the Soviet Union to perform bone-marrow transplants after the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster in 1986.
Why not do something similar, he thought, to help ease the suffering of the people in Kuwait? It didn't take long before Mr. Grasmick was linked up with Dr. James A. D'Orta of Franklin Square Hospital, who, in December 1988, had taken part in a U.S. team treating victims of the earthquake in Armenia.
Dr. D'Orta put together a medical task force of doctors, nurses and other medical personnel that was ready to leave for Kuwait on a 24-hour notice.
Mr. Grasmick, another of the partnership's founders, presented the group's plan to his longtime friend, Governor Schaefer.
The governor is said to have a keen interest in Middle East affairs, and in June 1989 he was host to Prince Salman bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia at a luncheon in the Walters Art Gallery. Later that year the governor led a trade mission to Saudi Arabia at the invitation of the royal family.
This year, Mr. Schaefer was the only U.S. governor to accompany the emir of Kuwait during his return to his homeland after the war ended.
On Feb. 13, 10 days before the massive land attack, Governor Schaefer traveled to Washington to call on Kuwaiti Ambassador al-Sabah. Although the governor had the details of both Mr. Grasmick's humanitarian plan and the partnership's business thrust, he backed off on the latter, according to Representative Helen Delich Bentley, R-Md.-2nd, and pushed the no-strings-attached medical assistance offer.
If this was a planned move, it worked as well as Army Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf's battle strategy against the once-feared Iraqi Republican Guard.
During a State House ceremony earlier this month, Mr. al-Sabah said he was "really touched" by the state's offer of humanitarian medical aid to the Kuwaiti people.
His comments came as he signed a business pact between Maryland and Kuwait. Under terms of the agreement, Kuwait is encouraging companies shipping products from the U.S. to use the port of Baltimore and Baltimore-Washington International Airport as "preferred" points of embarkation.
Mr. al-Sabah said that while his country would be doing business with all states, he would push as much business Maryland's way as possible.
Maryland has also been designated a primary procurement agent by the Kuwaiti government, according to state economic development officials, meaning that Kuwait has agreed to look at Maryland first as it shops for U.S. goods and services. The partnership is to serve as the clearinghouse that processes orders and arranges for the goods to be shipped abroad.
In a private luncheon meeting with governor, the leaders of the partnership, and Dr. D'Orta prior to signing the business agreement, Mr. al-Sabah strongly encouraged the business group to establish their presence in Kuwait as fast as possible if they wanted to take advantage of the business opportunities there.
The spirit of that meeting was "do it tomorrow," recalls Milton F. Borkowski, a vice president of the local Westinghouse division and one of the partnership's founders.
Mr. Touchard's version of the same meeting: "The ambassador told us, 'Hey guy, if you want to get some of this work, you better get off your butts and get where the action is. We knew we had to do something like that, but that kind of put an urgency to it."
On the eve of leaving for the May Dubai trade fair, which was
designed for Kuwaiti and other Arab customers to view American goods and make business contacts, Mr. Touchard was still referring to the trip as a venture into the unknown.
"We know they are going to spend billions of dollars," he said, "but we don't know where they are going to spend it. But I can tell you this for sure, if we are not over there and we are not participating none of the business will come here. That's the only thing I can tell you for sure."
After returning to the states early last week, Mr. Touchard's initial reaction was that "everything went absolutely super. Everyone was happy. It was all positive. . . . Things are looking good, very good."
The businessmen say it is difficult to estimate how much business will eventually come out of the three-day trade show. The goal of the event was to simply bring buyers and sellers together. Negotiated sales may take weeks, or even months, to complete.
But Curt Matthews, a representative of the Maryland Department of Economic and Employment Development who traveled to Dubai with the partnership, says Maryland companies have already landed $28 million in new business. This estimate is based on firm written proposals, requests for proposals or serious negotiations, he says.
"It was extremely successful, says Peter Dakin, an account executive of international sales for Scotsman Group Inc., a Baltimore manufacturer of modular buildings. "And that's an understatement."
When Mr. Dakin returned home the middle of last week he carried a suitcase full of proposals from Kuwait and at least a half-dozen other Arab nations. "You have to call them prospects," he says, "and I talked to 140 of them." While not all prospects become customers, he says at least a half-dozen of the people he met have already made appointments to visit the company's Baltimore plant.
One of the visitors from Saudi Arabia is interested in a two- or three-story hotel. A group in Dubai is negotiating with Scotsman for the purchase of a hospital. Mr. Dakin also has been asked to ship to Kuwait a number of "cheap" housing units that would be used by resting firefighters as soon as possible.
Mr. Dakin says between 1,500 and 2,000 people a day stopped by his booth. "I was flabbergasted with the quality of the people we were seeing. It was like Lee Iacocca walking up and saying he'd like to do a building with you. The chairman of the country's leading bank walked up. The country's leading developer walked up."
Mr. Dakin remembers frequent occasions when the Maryland booths were left unattended because company representatives were off negotiating deals. He says that members of the Maryland group functioned as a team and looked out for each other. It went something like this: A company selling chickens would ask what other products a customer was interested in and refer them to the proper person. "At one time I had six customers at my booth that had been referred by other team members."
"I've been to trade shows all around the world," says Mr. Dakin, "more than I can remember, but I've never seen anything like this. I can't imagine anyone not getting something out of this show."
Mr. Touchard is the starting center fielder and cleanup hitter for the Maryland Oldliners, a softball team in a league for players 65 and older. He is quick to note that the team won the state championship last year.
He loves the game and was playing five days a week. Now he's working seven days a week with no pay and wonders if there will be time for softball this summer.
But he doesn't seem to mind.
"Really," he says, "it will make me feel good if we can make this thing happen. It will probably be one of the greatest things to happen to me in my life."
The partnership will charge a commission on each sale it handles.
"I may make a few bucks, we all may make a few bucks out of this, but that's not the intent," Mr. Touchard says. "Helping the people of Kuwait, helping the people of the state of Maryland, is more important."
SUMMARY
Two Maryland businessmen created a kind of one-stop shopping center for Kuwaitis seeking goods and services to rebuild their country -- the Kuwait/Maryland Partnership. About 900 Maryland businesses have registered with the partnership.
KUWAIT JOBS
If you're interested in working in Kuwait, you can register with the Job Service Office that is a part of the unemployment office in Baltimore City and each state's counties.
Applications will be coded so that a computer can sort them out when a particular job become available and an appliicant can be matched with it.
More than 1,000 people have already registered to work in Kuwait
Resumes can also be sent to the Kuwait/Maryland Partnershi Inc., World Trade Center, Suite 222, Baltimore, Md., 21202.
In addition, the Kuwaiti Embassy asks that people seeking job opportunities in the Persian Gulf nation send proposals or resumes to: Kuwait Emergency and Recovery Program, 1510 H St., Washington, D.C. 20005. Phone: 202- 966-0702.