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Every HBS class has its “war stories.” In recent decades, they’ve been about takeover battles on Wall Street or crashing and burning in Silicon Valley. For the MBA Class of 1949, however, the “war stories” unfolded in places like Iwo Jima, Okinawa, Germany, and France.
Military service is just one of the factors that bound together this extraordinary class, most of whom attended HBS with help from the GI Bill. Author David Callahan has chronicled their achievements in his new book, Kindred Spirits: Harvard Business School’s Extraordinary Class of 1949 and How They Transformed American Business.
At their 25th Reunion, nearly one-fourth of the class were presidents or CEOs of their respective companies, and more remarkable in today’s era of the disposable CEO, nearly one-third of the class would retire in such roles. Notables include James E. Burke of Johnson & Johnson, C. Peter McColough of Xerox, Thomas S. Murphy of Capital Cities/ABC, William J. Ruane of the Sequoia Fund, John Shad of Wall Street and the SEC, and Marvin S. Traub of Bloomingdale’s. But lesser-known figures like George M. Berman and Malcolm Hecht, whose semiconductor firm Unitrode supplied components for Apollo 11, made big contributions, too.
Although the “49ers” chose a miner heading for the Gold Rush as their class emblem, growing up during the Depression gave them a different perspective on wealth. Their initial salaries averaged only $4,000, more than double the typical pay at the time, but, in 2001 dollars, only about one-third the average starting pay for recent HBS graduates.
“We were brought up to believe that it was less important to make money than to build a company that you were proud of,” said Xerox’s McColough. Fortuitously, many in the class did both, and for their 35th Reunion, they gave of those earnings at then record levels to establish the MBA Class of 1949 Professorship of Business Administration. Stressing that the class provides solid role models for today’s leaders, Callahan gives detailed accounts of eight classmates who underscore his contention that “the 49ers focused on building great companies and doing a great job.”
— Laura Singleton (MBA ’88)
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