9
Work yields worlds of fun for KU grad
Path to corporate success gives amusement but business not always an easy ride
By Chris Siron
Kanean staff writer
Lee Derrough, KU graduate and president of one of the Midwest's largest corporate concerns, Hunt Resources Inc., is a consumate business企.
University Dally Kansan / Tuesday, July 3, 1990
He reads business.
"When I have time to read I try to read business books, books on finance and management."
His politics are business.
"I have more than a passing interest in poli-
ties. I follow county and city politics on behalf of the company. On a global scale, the opening of Eastern Europe holds practically unlimited business opportunities."
Lee Derrough is consumed by business.
"All of this baloney about quality time and one-minute management doesn't work," he said. "To make work your focus, your full-time job, I don't think it is unhealthy. To sue, you have to stick you smooot in it."
Derrough is the president of one of the Midwest's largest entertainment complexes, which includes Worlds of Fun and Oceans of Fun. He also is the director of the new estate development companies and mining operations in the region.
All three businesses come under the masthead of Hunt Midwest Enterprises Inc., part of the Kansas City area footprint of Lamar Hunt, who also owns the Kansas City Chiefs.
The Worlds of Fun and Oceans of Fun amusement parks serve about 1.5 million people each year, according to company reports. They generate more than 410 million in tourist revenue for the area each year.
Hunt Midwest Mining excavates rock and other building materials. About 25 million square feet of rock have been mined from Bethany Falls limestone in northeast Kansas City, Mo.
Hunt Real Estate has developed 6.3 million square feet of the mined space for commercial occupancy. About 60 companies share the underground's facilities, which include 1.9 miles of railroad and 3.4 miles of roads.
Derrough has decisive day-to-day control over the three companies.
Although his schedule varies according to the season, he divides his time fairly equally among the three.
"All of them have different challenges and different rewards," he said. "You really get to work all the parts of your brain."
the real estate division exercises the strategic part with its long-range goals and almost imperceptible changes.
"With the real estate you're setting up a situation and running it," Derough said, "It could take 10 or 15 years to see results. Even when we reach a goal in the real estate division, we still have to manage it on a
regular basis with a new set of targets."
The mining division has its own headaches.
"You have a whole range of worker relations there," he said. "That includes the occasional minor strikes and other flare-ups."
But managing Hunt Enterprises' amusement parks gives Derrough his most intense satisfaction.
"You know immediately when you're on track," he said. "There's not much doubt because you see the customer's face, and you like the other parts for their challenges, but the park gives you instant gratification."
And immediate agony.
Safety concerns
in 18 years more than 250 million people have ridden the rides at Worlds of Fun without a single fatality, and share its share of spectacular accidents.
Most recently, on 1909's opening day, March 31, the braking system failed on the Timber Wolf roller-coaster, the park's latest death-defying ride and the linclin of a multi-million dollar advertising campaign.
More than 35 people were sent to area hospitals with injuries ranging from minor cuts to a broken leg.
The Timber Wolf ad campaign was suspended and Hunt Midwest lawyers girded themselves for lengthy court battles.
"Our safety record is one of the best in the industry, and the industry is one of the safest." Derrough said. "You see those studies that say it is safer than driving in your car. But you're dealing in a business where accidents happen, you're forced to accept that."
"I'm sure there will be lawsuits," he said. "We're here for the long haul and we're going to play fair with people, even when they don't want to play fair with us."
"That's one of the unfortunate concerns of the business," Derrough said, "I get involved because of the different concerns. You take the bad with the good."
From KU to KC
Derrough has been involved for 23 years since his graduation from KU's School of Journalism. He started out with Lamar Hunt's Kansas City Chiefs football franchise as a gofer in the promotional department. He worked his way through the business marketing director in seven years.
When Words of Fun opened in 1973 he became its general manager. He became president of Hunt Midwest in 1985.
During his entire adult Life Lee Derrough has worked for one man, Lamar Hunt, and has managed to establish himself in a highly visible business.
The key to his success, by his own admission, was being in the right place at the right time.
"I didn't set out with the goal of reaching where I am today," he said. "I don't know if it I had any goal in life, but just that a chain of nature progressions."
But the reasons he progressed instead of someone else include hard work and a fair for risk-taking.
"You have to make it work," he said, "No one hands you control for nothing."
The essential element for Derough is maintaining one's perspective.
"You have to enjoy it," he said. "It has to be something you really have fun at. Money can be rewarding, but you don't always know about that in advance. You have to find a job you can get wrapped up in."
Hudecke, general manager of Worlds of Fun and Oceans of Fun, said he thought Derrough met those standards.
"You know he has to work hard," he said. "You can't manage as many different things as he does, as well as he does, without really involving yourself personally. The key is he has a good time, and he works in it. He really gets you jazzed about the whole thing."
Other workers, from his secretary to the receptionist in the lobby to workers scurrying through the halls and in the office ecdo Hudecke's sentiments.
Lee Derrough works because that is how Derrough plays.
Even his wife, Bertha Denryd, said that their lives revolve around the working world and that they were both pleased with their lifestyle.
Don Hagan, treasurer of Hunt Midwest, said it succinctly, "He has a good time coming to work every day."
"If we're not at work, we socialize with the people we work with," she said. "We're fortunate to work with people we enjoy being with."
But she said there was another side to Lee Derrough's life — the realistic side, as she called it.
Work and family go together
He has become something of a culinary master, she said.
Although business gets the lion's share of his time, he does have a limited private life.
Beth Derrough began traveling about two years ago for her job with Bachman Information Systems, a Boston-based computer company.
"He was forced to start cooking for himself, which he hated, but now he has fun with it," she said. "He kicks me out of the kitchen. He almost a gourmet chef now, even though we only eat at home once on a weekday."
he was no mechanical ability at all," she said. "Absolutely not. Turning the ignition key is the extent of his know-how."
He collects cars, ranging from a 1964 Triumph to a 1984 Jaguar, but he is no treasure monkey.
"He just has a good time with them," she said. "He deeply believes that he who dies with the most toys wins. Fortunately his toys are fast cars instead of fast women."
His primary diversion is music and he spends most of his time with music plaving around him.
His office has a small stereo in it,
Derrough's tastes are eclectic, ranging from the Rolling Stones to Wagner.
and the rooms in his house are wired for sound.
But he said he had to admit that his music showed his age.
"Old people say they don't understand new music," he said. "I'm starting to say that. It worries me."
Getting started
Lee Derrough's younger days were spent in Overland Park and in Lawrence.
He graduated from Shawnee Mission East High School, Prairie Village, in 1962.
"I graduated without honors," he said. "I was 'emashed' not voted most likely to succeed. Maybe friendliest; I liked to meet girls and party. I think that sums it up."
Derrough said he continued his wayward ways at KU with a checkered academic performance.
"I was hardly scholarly," he said,
"It was a combination of not being
very smart and liking to have a good
thing." I was your basic C+in student."
Derrough said he chose the advertising sequence in the school of journalism as the path of least resistance.
He liked courses with pragmatic professors the best.
"What the good ones described came closer to what happened in the real world," he said. "Some of the best ones could be ruthless."
Lee young, retired professor of journalism who taught advertising classes during Derrough's time at KU, said he remembered Derrough as a good student.
"He was very lively and active," he said. "He was very interested in the business angle."
Young said he invited Derrough to lecture in class about eight years after his graduation. Derrough was a general manager of Worlds of Fun at
"The students were interested in his outlook," he said. "He impressed them very much."
Derrough said he spent most of his time at KU drinking and carousing with his fraternity brothers.
Jay Claunch, a Cedar Rapids, Iowa, resident, who was a Kappa Ppps member with Derrogh, agreed with Derrogh's recollections.
"Lee was my pledge agent, actually," he said. "but I definitely wouldn't use the term role model with him."
Clancy said he stayed in contact overreached infrequently, but regularly.
"I wouldn't say I was shocked by his success," he said. "I don't think it's a path he or us foresee, but it wasn't a big surprise."
Success not surprising
Derrough, too, does not seem surprised by his success.
"It certainly wasn't inevitable," he said. "I had a lot of trouble finding direction, but I developed a positive self-image, which made me more upbeat about myself and my potential."
Although the governmental gurus and Chamber of Commerce chameleons who support the trafficway obviously are uninformed folk, each indisputably has a considerable power . . .uh...to persuade.
William Dann
2702 West 24th St. Terrace
Lawrence, KS 66047
paid advertisement
Stratospheric ozone shields the earth's surface from excessive ultraviolet radiation from the sun. This radiation, which harms wildlife and crops, also causes skin cancer, cataracts, and suppression of the immune system in human beings. The June 24 New York Times says new scientific evidence indicates that the ozone layer is undergoing a more rapid destruction than was previously thought.
The March 11 New York Times notes that because motor vehicles "add to smog, deplete the ozone in the stratosphere . . . (ant) cause acid rain . . . (tho) air quality in major American cities . . . has continued to worsen. In the 1986-88 period, 101 metropolitan areas did not meet the standards on ground-level ozone pollution [ozone is a gas which is poisonous to most living organisms], up from 64 that were not complying in the 1985-87 period."
Yet the medieval roadbabies were aesthetics committed to quality while the materialists in our Chamber of Commerce appear willing to ignore both the reflective and factual as they embrace the superficial. Even as these philistines propagate about the trafficway, the swelling number of motor vehicles in this country diminish both the quality of our air and quantity of our resources.
A TRIBUTE TO THE UNINFORMED TRAFFICWAY TROUBADOURS
After Governor Hayden announced that the state would provide $27.7 million of the South Lawrence Trafficway cost of construction, the June 26 Journal World said "the reaction was overwhelmingly positive . . . from city hall to the Douglas County Courthouse to the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce". The dignitaries responsible for these expressions of elation can best be described as later-day troubadours who frequently melodize about the proposed trafficway.
The original troubadours were aristocratic poet-musicians who surfaced during the Middle Ages. The lyrics and poems they composed often dealt with courtyard love, war and nature. Because Webster's Third New International Dictionary defines a troubadour as "anyone who in music, verse, or rhetorical prose promotes some cause", the Chamber of Commerce dogmatists currently calling for the trafficway's construction qualify as troubadours.
Wake Up To CEDARWOOD APTS
Wake Up To CEDARWOOD APTS
Now Leasing
Summer & Fall
Newly Redecorated Units
Air conditioning & Pool
Close to Mall
1 Block from KU Bus route
Studios
1 & 2 Bedroom Apts
Duplexes (3 & 4 Bedroom)
call Pat today 843-1116
2411 Cedarwood Ave.
804 Massachusetts, 843-5000
SUNFLOWER
***
GET USED
What's the answer to high CD prices?
In the Love Garden, most used CDs are only $8! Tired of your old discs? Come
trade 'em in! And we haven't
forgotten about vinyl - we have thousands of used LPs, plus posters, t-shirts and accessories. Come on up and
Love Garden USED!
936% Mass. St.
(in the heart of Lawrence) 843-1551
see why it pays to GET