|
iChrisWorld™ ChrisDuffield.com |
|
|
Out of the blue, Dr. SGA called me in the Spring of the next year, 1987. Would I like to come to San Antonio, Texas, April 17-19 for an IPT organizational meeting? He wanted to get things going. I had written him after our first meeting in July of 1986 about my interest in IPT and in helping get it into the mainstream of medicine. And now it was happening! Dr. SGA reserved guestrooms for us at the Travelodge on the River, alongside the San Antonio River Walk, and arranged for a big meeting room with a boardroom table. He called our gathering "Project 87". Carefully and thoroughly, he had prepared folders for all of us, including an agenda and even a page of poetic "Inspirational Notes". He even made a "Project 87" banner for our meeting room. We were a small group. In addition to me, Dr. SGA had invited a patent attorney, Melvin K. Silverman, whom he had met at a similar Miami Beach convention in 1985. And Mel, who practiced in New Jersey and in Fort Lauderdale, had invited two people as well, Ana Arriaga and Jeff Bernard. There was some hope that San Antonio mayor Henry Cisneros might show up -- he had met Donato 2 in December of 1986. But he didn't come. Dr. SGA [I have called him "Steve" since we first met] presided over the meeting with seriousness and grace. Things accelerated. By the second day, it became apparent that we were going to start a company. With Steve's personal connection to the doctors in Mexico who had discovered IPT, we were in a position to have exclusive rights to their technology and know-how. And if we succeeded in getting IPT accepted into the mainstream of medicine, we would certainly become very, very rich. We fantasized about having our own corporate jets. Mel took control of the more business oriented parts of the meeting -- plans for patent applications and the mechanics of forming a corporation. I had been through some patent adventures, but this was my first experience with corporation forming. Things took on momentum; decisions were made, shares were allocated. Dr. SGA would be President, Mel would be Vice President, and I would be corporate Secretary and Treasurer and Director of Scientific Research. I don't remember what Ana and Jeff were going to be. They never participated again, leaving just Dr. SGA, Mel, and me. Dr. SGA had had a vision of a receptionist answering the phone and saying "SANA International". I suggested that it might sound more dignified to call it SANA Institute, Inc. And so it became. We all paid Dr. SGA our portions of the meeting room rental, and got on our separate planes. I flew back to Tucson, now a corporate officer for the first time. [ Next......... ] [ Back to Story Contents ] |
|
iChrisWorld is a trademark, first published on this website on September 24, 2003. |