The Prophet

Your article “Capsule History” in the November 1999 issue reminded me that when on February 24, 1966, E. F. Hutton & Co. opened its fiftyfirst office, in Chicago, I—as manager of that office—decided to bury a tenyear time capsule. Questionnaires were mailed to prominent businesspeople with some twenty questions, among them: What would the Dow Jones Average be?; would the Chicago Cubs have won a World Series?; and who would be President of the United States?

When we opened the capsule on February 24,1976, we discovered that almost everyone had missed the Dow by at least 100 percent, while almost everyone was correct about the Chicago Cubs. However, one person did predict that Gerald Ford would be President. That was my friend Glint Frank. He was the 1937 Heisman Award winner from Yale, and when I asked him how he’d come to make his prediction, he said, “I met Ford when he was an assistant coach at Yale, so I gave him a vote.” Glint was perhaps the only person, including the President himself, who in 1966 had such prescience.