Small town media types like few things more than rewriting history…
Like bringing down legendary local icons such as Plaza developer J.C. Nichols. Or recasting a business bully like Sporting KC owner Neal Patterson as a jolly good fellow.
Why confine yourself to the mere writing of news when you can try to record what passes for history?
Make no mistake; Patterson was a giant among men, who loomed especially large given the context of his rise from the ranks of red dirt tenant farmers.
As for comparing Patterson to iconic local businessman and political firebrand Jim Nutter who died the same week, not even close.
Nutter may have wielded a heavy hand in his behind-the-scenes efforts to shape the local business and political landscape, but he was a genuinely nice guy with a comparatively deft touch.
Patterson on the other hand was a mean spirited bully who did not play particularly well with others when he failed to get his way.
Naturally, the Kansas City Star glossed over the most vivid example of Patterson’s rude, crude manner of leadership in writing that, “in 2001 he made national news when his strongly-worded email to employees complaining that they were not working long enough hours was leaked and picked up by the New York Times.”
Talk about an understatement…
Check out this far more vivid and accurate take on Wikipedia:
“Patterson is infamous for an e-mail flaming managers for not coming to work before 8 am and leaving before 5 pm, now a prominent example used when discussing e-mail etiquette,” it reads. “On the day that the email was posted to Yahoo, the company’s market cap fell by over 22%[5] from a high of $1.5 billion USD.”
How harsh was it?
“The only things missing from the office memo were expletives,” the New York Times wrote. “It had everything else. There were lines berating employees for not caring about the company. There were words in all capital letters like ‘SICK’ and ‘NO LONGER.’ There were threats of layoffs and hiring freezes and a shutdown of the employee gym.
“Now, Neal L. Patterson, the 51-year-old chief executive, a man variously described by people who know him as ‘arrogant,’ ‘candid’ and ‘passionate,’ says he wishes he had never hit the send button,” the Times added.
“Mr. Patterson went on to list six potential punishments, including laying off 5 percent of the staff in Kansas City. ‘Hell will freeze over,’ he vowed, before he would dole out more employee benefits. The parking lot would be his yardstick of success, he said; it should be ‘substantially full’ at 7:30 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. on weekdays and half full on Saturdays. ‘You have two weeks,’ he said. ‘Tick, tock.’ ”
So heinous was Patterson’s missive that “Jeffrey Pfeffer, a business professor at the Stanford University, characterized Patterson’s approach as ‘the corporate equivalent of whips and ropes and chains. It puts you at war with your employees and with your basic tendencies in human nature.’ ”
So enraged was Patterson over the leak of his email and the attendant publicity that he reportedly booted the firm’s PR main man – a variation on kill the messenger.
More recently, Patterson was a force at the American Royal when it tried to browbeat the Kansas City Council three years back into authorizing $50 million to raze Kemper Arena and build the failing annual livestock, horse and bbq blowout a new home in the West Bottoms.
As for Patterson’s rescue of KC’s Wizards soccer team (Sporting KC), that came as the result of a Lamar Hunt schmooze, not Patterson’s love of the “beautiful game.”
The season before Patterson’s purchase, I rode up the elevator at Arrowhead with his wife who was on her way to join her husband in the owner’s suite when she told me that was their first soccer game ever.
Also missing-in-action from Patterson’s sports bio in the Star was the fact that he foolishly named Sporting KC’s spanking new stadium after disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong in 2012 in spite of the fact that the investigation and expose of Armstrong’s drug and cheating scandal was well underway.
Instead readers were treated to this telltale quote from SKC coach Peter Vermes praising Patterson:
“When I had taken the job here, I had heard from a lot of people, ‘Oh, Neal Patterson, you gotta be careful; he’s tough; he’s really demanding; he’s all these things…”
No argument there.
I installed some AV stuff and a few cameras for the Pattersons about 15 years ago out at Loch Lloyd. Jeannie had yet to get sick and was such a sweetie. We were all in love with her. She came and talked to us every day for 30 minutes or so. Neal did not deign to speak with us at all.
But, he was a pretty busy guy it seemed and probably had a lot better things to do than shoot the breeze with the help.
One funny thing that I remember.
As I understand it from another contractor, Neal built his house at Lock Lloyd a little bit bigger than anyone expected. It had 6 garages, swimming pool, a tennis court, really cool landscaping and it sat on many acres. The guy next door, shit his pants and claimed that his house, about 5,000 square ft. looked like it was a toll booth set right to the North of Neal and Jeannie’s house. He was right, it did look like you checked in with him before you passed through the automatic, enormous, iron gated, mechanized entrance to the Pattersons.
He sued. I think he had standing, so…,
Neal then bought the entirety of Lloch Loyd and told his neighbor to go pound sand.
This has nothing to do with Neal, but he didn’t have the biggest house I ever saw in the KC Metro.
Over on 55th and Renner, some tobacco lawyer hit it out of the park. On his acreage he had built, besides the brobdingnagian house itself, a tree house for guests to stay in that ran around 150K 15 years ago.
Here is the deal thought, he built a 4 million dollar swimming pool. it had a 50 ft high volcano / mountain looking contraption, that you could take an elevator up to, with, wait for it, you SCUBA GEAR. Then you could hang around on top and drink beer at the bar, lounge and when you were ready, you donned said gear, and dove down into a HUGE, BIGLY, gigantic pool, around 50 yards wide as I remember it, by about 30 yards wide, which was, yep, 50 ft deep. Under the water, you could go into cave looking areas, but the piece de resistance was, wait for it…, enormous underwater aquariums filled with salt water fish, so you could pretend you were in the ocean.
The Clintons supposedly came for the house warming along with a very, no doubt, tony crowd of high falootin folks.
The crew that worked on and constructed the pools, traveled all over the world erecting them for rich people. There next stop, when I was talking to them, was Bejing.
Hearne, you gotta get one!!
Sorry about all the typos etc. In a hurry again…
Excellent comment, Chuck…
Great stories.
His wife did seem nice when I met her – I guess opposites attract.
Never could quite figure out why she ran against Cleaver, if Neal was pushing it.
She certainly had enough campaign cash to win but didn’t.
And far as I know she’s never much been heard from before or since as being particularly political
Oh shit, I forgot to tell ya…
The house at 55th and Renner, was only a mile or so away from the Defenbaugh land fill.
Yeah, that’s right.
When the wind shifted from out of the South West, the smell of garbage, rancid enough to bring up gorge and bile from even the hardiest of construction workers on site, sickened us all.
Yep…
So, a hard-nosed, self-made, visionary billionaire with a drive to succeed and crush all competition turns out to be less than a super nice guy? Wow! I mean, wow!!! You hardly ever hear about those kind of people. Can’t believe The Star wouldn’t have taken the opportunity to crush and belittle the guy after he was dead. That’s a missed opportunity for sure! I thought his obit in The Star was way too fluffy for a bastard of his caliber, too. When are we going to get some truth in reporting around here?
I understand why they take that road, Jim. Although like you, I wish they’d be at least a little more even handed.
But that’s not their style.
Most reporters at the Star – setting aside the new staffers most of whom I have not met – are writers, not investigate types. They prefer not to tangle with real people who can tangle back.
So they take on the easy targets like Trump and people guilty of obvious wrong doings and leave the majority of the reporting on touchier subjects to others.
That’s one reason why my column was so wifely read.
I didn’t call out and/or hammer that many people or businesses, but I was one of the few who dared to call a spade a spade.
Remember when LaMar’s Donuts closed and Joyce Smith did a front page story reporting that he was stepping down because of his age and health?
And then I looked into his empty storefront a couple days later and saw a pack of some of the biggest, baddest rats I’ve ever laid eyes on.
Something wasn’t right.
A trip to the KC Health Dept and an hour or so of perusing LaMar’s incredibly awful health violations record revealed that he’d finally been forced to close.
Joyce was so traumatized that she’s made a habit of checking the health department every month or three.
Come to think off it, she’s about due!
well hearne…you wanted to get your stripes back and this story did.
You went after someone few people outside of cerner really knew. But don’t forget the forbes magazine cover of neal when the headline read OBAMA BILLIONAIRES…..
so now you just crapped on a guy who the soccer fans here idolize…who built
a company from scratch to be a huge employer an who took a chance on a delapidated
area in the hood (bannister mall)….and who today is really a symbol of hard work
and dedication.
Truth is I totally agree with Neal. The workers of today are filled with lazy/selfish
people who have no pride in their work. They want an easy life. Cerner has hired
hundreds of people right from college and I imagine many have shown the
world they just have no pride in the work they do. Although I know many who are
doing well there at cerner.
For those of us who worked and slaved starting with nothing I give you the middle
finger. You got the money easily…working at a local rag then getting a job at the
star which gave you 300,000 readers then look where you are now…selling used
cars.
For those like neal and even Boom Boom the trip hasn’t been so easy. We depend on
many people to make our companies run….only to find out they are cheats….lazy…
unfaithful….backstabbers and need to be fired.
You and southy inherited your wealth. You had no payroll to meet….no anxious early
days when a simple job could mean the difference in whether your doors closed
or stayed opened. No worries about cash flow…or winning jobs…or making sure
the staffs worked hard.
I do know that cerner does pay it’s people well. A man 2 years out of college there
is making 6 figures so why should Neal have to worry about whether his staff shows
up on time and gives the extra effort to help make that company successful.
You don’t get it again. Owning a business is not running some free rag given away
on street corners and bars.
Neal and Cliff and those other people put their hearts and souls into that company
and look at what they’ve done for this town. Without them, many events would go
without sponsors…we would have lost soccer (soccer is boring to me…i despise it
and never go but there are thousands who follow it)….
But to nit pick a man who did what neal did is pure b.s.
Especially to have seen the disease that took his life…and you still have the
audacity to rip him after the work he did in the “free enterprise” segment and what
he gave back to this city and area after achieving success.
I did meet Neal at Loch Loyd years ago. Nicest guy you could meet. He gave me some tips about business since I was doing work for one of his neighbors.
You don’t get it because you’ve never started at the bottom. You never had to
sweat out the “early” days business owners do every day.
Even glaze has gone thru it and even though I give him trouble I have always said I
admired his “never say” die attitude even in the face of huge problems in businiess.
His personal life and his writings were a different story. But he put it out in public on his own.
thanks neal…we need more visionairies…risk takers in this nation.
I’d be interested to see you write a story on the good things this man did.
Talk about backhanded compliments, boom boom!
Oh well, I’ll take it.
You make many valid points, however that’s no excuse for being a you-know-what hole.
And you are wildly incorrect in saying that running a free rag is not owning a business. Millionaires were made doing exactly that. Just because the concept is above your intellectual pay grade…
I don’t look at critiquing Patterson’s character faults as nitpicking. You however are free to view it any way you wish.
By the way, you can’t get much closer than the bottom than taking a record store rag and building it into a seven figure weekly. Or perhaps coming out of nowhere and designing and writing the highest read column in the Star for 16 years.
Hey, it brought you to this website.
The good things Patterson did have already been written. I’ll bet you really got a kick out of the movie “Groundhog Day”
you didn’t own the rag newspaper made up of few employees.
Imagine running thousands of employees.
Lets get this straight…you didn’t start the pitch…you ran it
but you left or got fired…one or the other.
15-20 employees does not equal thousand of employees…
huge buildings across the nation…working with major hospitals and medical facilities all over the world….so don’t compare your
rag column to anything neal accomplished.
Daddy’s name got you that column in the star and you didn’t bring one additional reader to a very successful newspapere.
Your column was full of bull…and no it was not the most
read part of the paper and even after you got fired noone really missed you.
Andthis mess of a site…where the writers aren’t even real
journalists…with their lies and nasty stories like glazes romps with black strippers and stories about his long trash lined
books and movie scripts.
Running that rag that was famous for happy ending massages and sex for hire girls along with those dating lines is nowhere
near what Neal and his partners accomplished .
Stop trying to put yourself on a pedestal…without daddy’s
money you’d be writing blogs like kcc still selling those
crappy used cars in the huge market of topeka.
You can’t fool boom boom…you never have and you never
will.
Your silver spoon life would be a whole lot different if
you hadn’t been born into a trust fund existence.
At least southy’s family has something to show for their
lives.
All you have is a recalled vw or a 100K malibu for 8995!
Boy Harley, you do love to run that mouth of yours!
Hearne, this was one of your better pieces I’ve read in the time I’ve followed KCC.
Stories of the amount of time exceeding 40 hours weekly required to work and remain at Cerner are legendary. No question the pay is great and the company has no problem attracting top quality applicants. However I can tick off about a dozen or so really sharp kids I know (children of my 50+ peer group) who have worked there and all but one have left. If you have a family/children, you must choose between them and your employer and that is never a good place to be. The one who remains is in his low 30’s and pulls down close to 200k. He is single and has shared that he does not see staying there for the long game. Having Cerner as a previous employer looks very strong on your resume and future employers don’t need to ask the standard question “Why did you leave Cerner?” Everyone knows.
Harley/BoomBoom; You made some good points but I also think you are a bit unfair
with your other comments. As I’ve mentioned before, I have known both Hearne and Dwight for 50+ years. Just because someone comes from a family with money should not condemn them to have their business efforts trivialized. Both these guys have worked long and hard and have accomplished much. Yeah, their paths may have been a bit easier and less pressured than yours, mine, and others but criticizing them for that is unfair. As far as Patterson is concerned, and HC has already said this, being wildly successful in business and being a nice guy are not mutually exclusive. Success does not mean you get a pass as far as how you treat others, especially those down the ladder, those who can’t help you, or those when nobody else is looking.
On a side note, and this is a very different topic, the work Cerner does is EXTREMELY critical in the efforts to control rising health care costs in this country. They are a leader in what they do.
Chuck; good stories, thanks for sharing.
Wow, the Snake punches one out of the park!
Thanks for entering this week’s KCC “Homerun Derby”
Thanks, although, I was in such a hurry this morning, I didn’t do that pool justice.
The Volcano looking (It had rocks cemented to the sides.) upside down megaphone deal, was full of water, that pumps kept up to the top. So, when you donned your scuba gear, you went in, at the top, then down 40 feet or so, to the pool, which was then 40 feet or so deep.
Hell of a wild pool.
🙂
come on stomper…you post an article that a 12th grader would be ashamed
of.
I’m not downing the 2 silver spoon boys…just saying they never did a real
thing with their lives.
I understand southy has done some good things…but when you got the
big bucks…don’t have to worry about employees most of whom are willing
to take advantage of your giving them a great job with a progressive company
at a great wage.
Obviously you’ve never run or owned a companyso you too wouldn’t have any
idea what it took to run a corporation or company 24/7 with the guts and
determination.
Hearne says runnning some free newspaper given away free on some
box on the corner of mid town compares with running a major corporate
entity that is world renown.
Big deal hearne….a story about the american royal or some shmuck with a
bad hair piece does not even come close to what the cerner boys did not only
here in kc but around the world.
Oh and now he’s selling cars…and stomper who i guess got to be in his
late 60’s is lying around writing b.s. to please his buddies who with all the
money they got without working never did a damn thing positive for
others.
the barrister claims he did so much pro bono work…well great…that’s about
1/10 th what boom boom has done. All that money and nothing to show for
it when pushing up daisies.
Yes stomper, you never faced a tough day….never faced looking for payroll
money or figured out how to take a small entity and build it up.
Then you critique the cerner boys for making people work. That’s what they’re paid handsomely for. Yet when they say they expect a committment on the
part of those employees stomper finds fault with that. You ever had
employees who depended on you for a paycheck? I doubt it.
What has hearne accomplished. Using the 300K subscribers to write some
b.s. about gossip and lies? Or about some new restaurant that opened. I hardly see that as an accomplishment…and I forget…he now sell cars.
Say what you will…there are harder places to work than cerner.
Many more especially since your generation wrecked havoc on the economy.
You old guys don’t get it. The world has changed. Walk thru cerner and watch
how many people are REALLY working. Know many there dedicated not just for the money but for the profound effect their work has on our society.
So stomper…never doubt BOOM BOOM!!!!!!!!! When you start your own
company…put in those 15-20 hours a day…build something that produces
something….or creates work and jobs…then get back to BOOM BOOM.
Til then…take your companies check and pray you make it to 65 to collect
your social security check.
I’ve been around many many people who were born into money. They did
great things. Many people who made huge money and did great things
like Kauffman/Helzberg/Blocks etc. I’ve seen smart men start with nothing…make the sacrifices to do things and improve their community…
too bad not one of them was hearne or his buddy.
Writing some gasbag gossip column hardly qualifies as giving back to the
community.
Boom Boom has!!!! Even today he works with ptsd sticken kids.
Don’t doubt me! I’m still rolling with many miles to go before I sleep!!!!!!!!
p.s. Stomper…if that’s the best piece you’ve seen on kcc…it only makes my
statement that this blog is a huge underachiever.
I told them to bring in some real writers…with real life experiences…didn’t
listen to boom boom! Now look where he’s at. Go to google analytics…or alexa
and see.
Again…boom boom was right.
Boom Boom, you have never displayed an ability to read with comprehension so to refute all of your incorrect claims and assumptions here is a waste of my time. I will address a few however. In your initial comment you opened with “well Hearne, YOU wanted to get YOUR stripes back and this story did”. I opened with “Hearne, this was one of YOUR better pieces…” Pretty clear to me that we were both speaking about pieces written by Hearne, not all pieces written by all writers. I’m certainly biased but the best piece I have read here was a piece I wrote myself about professional wrestling in Kansas City. You can find it in the archives section. Dwight and Paul have consistently been the best writers here in my humble opinion but I’ve not been around as long as you as far as following this site. In terms of politics, I rarely agree with either of them but that does not mean I don’t have great respect for their writing ability.
Talk about posting an article that a 12th grader would be ashamed, how about your second sentence “I’m not downing the 2 silver spoon boys, just saying they never did a real thing with there lives”. Huh ??? You rival Trump for wildly inconsistent statements and reversing yourself in the same posting. You don’t know me so how can you make statements about me. I have owned my own company, I have worked 15/20 hours days. I’m not in my late 60’s, won’t be drawing SS until I have to at 70.
Boom/Boom, I will continue to compliment your political views as they have been consistently on the mark but your people skills and writing skills are horrid.
I’m going to limit my comment on the Stomp’s here to a simple, “Amen”
I’m going to limit my comment to “GOD…PLEASE”
We know stomper has lost his brain. Dwight writes like he’s a lit phd which none of the blue collar boys on here could even come close to understanding especiallly the “digger”.
Paul’s jokes are never ending. The shoe dogs in lawrence…the
aliens in large suvs with large antennas from outer space..his
butt getting stuck under the dash….his attempts to take on
glazer in a physical fight…his phony stalker stories…I mean
what kind of writer is this? I don’t claim to be a writer for this blog…it’s a joke and I write so fast my grammar and spelling
I could care less. But read the major pieces where I had thousands of responses and you’ll see what boom boom
predicted and what boom boom wrote about.
In fact boom boom knew about the commies and their
misdeeds and crimes long before it was a daily breaking news
item.
So stomper and hearne and southy and the unemployed guy…
the bad hair guy…..boom boom has outlasted all of you!
and I finish this comment with the famous words about
this group….”AND THEY ALL WENT DOWN TOGETHER!”
bOOM BOOM is the last one standing.
What about MAC-MAY FIGHT?
You should show this to your shrink, Harley…
You should never be too embarrassed to ask for help.
I hope the author doesn’t believe it’s a revelation that one of the men who built Kansas City’s largest private employer isn’t always a nice guy. I’ve had my share of 7:00 a.m. meetings with Cerner executives, too. So what? I’ve got a file full of ridiculous emails, too. So what? To grant naming rights to Livestrong is a sin? Excuse me, but Livestrong is about beating cancer.
You can’t drive twenty minutes around Kansas City without seeing Cerner signs on buildings full of employees raising families on competitive wages. A sports stadium, a 15,000 person campus at 95th and Bannister, an international powerhouse of a company, meaningful contributions to the community … this is the legacy of a man whose reputation the author would besmirch.
The author is an excellent writer, but this time he picked the wrong target for his critique. This article is in poor taste.
Fair enough, Laura B…
I certainly won’t quarrel with your take that my thoughts as expressed might be considered in poor taste.
Somewhat obviously though, my mission was to provide some historical perspective rather than being polite.
Livestrong is and was about cancer, but the naming rights were not.
The naming rights were about a handful of bights want to hatch a power schmooze with a huge international celebrity and pick up the cancer angle in the process.
Tale Lance Armstrong out of the equation and they wouldn’t have given Livestrong a second glance.
Unfortunately they were totally out of it not to know better as the handwriting was on the wall well before they inked that pact.
And speaking of Livestrong, the cancer charity accused Patterson’s company of stiffing them on the money pledged after Lance took the hit and Patterson gave him the boot.
Just saying…
the author is not a great writer. He’s a ghoul. Picks on dead people. He knew
all this before Neal’s passing. why not take on neal when he was alive?
Make your accusations hernia when the man had a chance to defend himself.
Because you’re a pos and this was not the first time you tried to tear down
a great man who passed.
The article is in poor taste and the writer has even worst taste in everything.
His defense of his limited career was a farce and Boom Boom tore it apart.
Money does not make the man. Whistlin/hernia/the lit professor even
glaze think so. That’s why they’ve done nothing of substance in their past.
I totally took on Neal while he was alive, boom boom (dumb dumb?)
Look it up.
I called him the dick-biter-offer the last time I wrote about him
Any truth to the rumor that Cerner employees got 30 minutes off to attend the funeral as long as they made up the time later that day?
I’m one of the few here that actually worked at Cerner, so I feel more or less obligated to write something….
I started at Cerner in the late 90’s as a consultant, and what immediately struck me was the concept of “Cerner Culture” the company wanted to instill in us all. We weren’t employees, we were associates, Cerner didn’t sell software, Cerner provided solutions. We even had a course (“Traditions”) each new associate was required to attend within weeks of their hire. Good times 🙂
I never really interacted with the C-Suite executives, other than an occasional elevator ride, so I don’t have a personal story to share — even though I was with Cerner for just over 9 years. I can tell you that shortly after his infamous email, a co-worker (our Technical Writer), sent Neal a reply addressing some of the issues, and suggesting ways that he could have phrased his comments to get a better response from his managers. She went on to become his ghostwriter, responsible for a significant number of his “Neal Notes”, and IIRC, assisting with Neal’s book, Manage iT.
I stayed with Cerner until the big NHS project in 2006 — at that point, the demands on my time were more than I (and my family) could handle, so I bolted. Shades of 2001….
I am grateful for the opportunity Cerner provided me — and I am saddened at the loss of a healthcare icon.
Rest in Peace, Neal Patterson.
Do you think Neal had any regrets at his death bed about working all those hours? I’m sure he did. Kind of ironic isn’t it? Nobody on their death bed wishes they worked more. Life is to be enjoyed for it’s far too short as Mr. Patterson’s family knows now all too well.
You losers, for neal his passion was to do something significant in life to help others.
From his work, from his long hours will come great strides in the medical area.
Hearne never met the guy….
And shawnster…another loser has the psychic ability to prey into Neal’s personal
life and say his family missed out on spending time with dad so he could build
something great.
I learned that life is more about what you give…not what you get.
For hearne…twice divorced…and now selling cars in small town pos topeka
he’s not only screwed up his family but also his professional life….nothing given
back!
Answer the phone hearne….it’s a used vw buyer on line 4. Get it. It’s an internet
lead. then asnwer the phone from the customer you sold a car to a weeek ago
with the faulty transmission. What a great life hearne!
And don’t forget to shine your shoes hearne….this ain’t some slop operation like the pitch.
So to allyou naysayers who shot down Neal because you “thought” he was a workaholic or never spent time with his family or demanded long hours from his
employees because he knew that to be great you had to contribute the effort and time.
Every great man behind a great company sacrificed for his dream. For Neal it
was to change part of the medical world and he did it with a vengance.
Read the forbes article on Neal and tell me he didn’t love his work and his life.
Till then…make sure you hear the alarm close at 7:30 as you (especially the diggeer)
run off to your $13 an hour job that means nothing in the real world.
Can’t wait til you keel oveer. Boom Boom will have a field day. Boom Boom knows
the truth!!!!!! And at that point hearne the truth will not set you free. It will be too late!
Never met the guy?
C’mon, boomer. When your basic premise is wrong it’s hard to mount a credible argument. Nice try though
JESUS CHRIST Hearne. You sound like Donald Trump isn’t president and that this isn’t the way people want America to behave. Get a life you, how would Steve Bannon put it, oh, yeah, you limp dic* mother fu**ker. MAGA
Nobody on their deathbed said; God I wished I could have worked another day. Cerner gives you a shot out of college, but you can’t find people who stay for very long.
Company does not value family time.