(Karl Vollmer was a writer and curmudgeon in residence at Lands’ End for many years. A legend in advertising, he had been Gary Comer’s mentor, and with art partner Sam Fink created the original Lands’ End advertising campaign. But his primary interest was food, and imagining what his next meal might be. He was often disappointed by what he was served – not surprising, when you read about the mouthwatering fare he enjoyed as a boy, in his grandma’s kitchen.)

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We admit it without shame: the first Rugby Shirts we sold at Lands’ End decades ago were not very good. The all cotton, heavy jersey fabric shrank up to 10%. Not acceptable. So we took them out of our catalogs.

It took a year of trial and error, but we developed a jersey fabric that reduced shrinkage from 10% to 3%. Along the way, it became beefier too: 10.5 ounces. versus the usual 5 to 9 ounces.

A friend of ours knew someone who played for the University of Chicago rugby club. We asked the team to give our new shirts a try.

Embarrassing. They tore out plackets, ripped off buttons – rugby, it’s no sissy game. Back to the drawing board.

Ex-Lands’ End merchant Rick Rusch picks up the story here: “The collar was a big area of failure, because guys would get grabbed there, and the opposing player would end up with half a shirt in his hand.” So we rein-forced the collar with tough twill tape. Developed a placket built of 4 layers of heavy twill tape, too – truly player proof. The rubber buttons got extra stitching, and the protection of a French flap. And we put gussets under the arms for extra freedom of movement.

How to give our new shirts the ultimate field test? We inked a deal to supply them to the America’s national team, the U.S. Eagles. Calling these guys brawny was an understatement – some of them were born with 5 o’clock shadow.

They took the field, and we held our breath. More disaster. Some of the shirts failed again. One Eagle walked off the field wearing nothing above the waist but a collar. We wanted to crawl under the bleachers.

“We were surprised,” recalls Rusch, “but we realized that this time, the failure was coming from the fabric itself. So we re-engineered it completely. Changed to stronger, longer-staple cotton yarns. Went to a different, more gentle detergent in the washing process, at a different temperature. All in all, we did several things to create fabric that was stronger and more resilient.”

This time the results were different. The new jerseys held up to every ruck, maul and scrum. After three years of trying, the Lands’ End rugby shirt was finally “tough as the game.”

In 1987, the U.S. Eagles wore our shirts at the very first Rugby World Cup, hosted by Australia and New Zealand. And not only our shirts.

“We outfitted them completely,” says Rusch. “Blazers, khakis, shoes, the works. It was no small task. Some of the guys were oddly shaped – almost as wide as they were tall. So we had to custom-make things.”

The Eagles defeated Japan 21-18 in their first-ever World Cup match, then lost their next two games, 47-12 to the mighty Australia Wallabies and 34-6 to England. But impressed everyone with both their sportsmanship and their fiercely competitive spirit.

Rugby players are known for their off-the-field antics and tireless revelry. But the Eagles turned out to be great, gracious ambassadors for Lands’ End. Rusch says, “For years afterwards, I’d get letters and phone calls from people who’d met them at the World Cup, who told me what gentlemen the Eagles were, and what nice things they said about their Lands’ End gear.”

Where are those “tough as the game” rugby shirts today? Not on the field.

As in so many other sports, cotton shirts have been replaced by new high-tech nylon or polyester ones that are not only stronger and lighter-weight, but have amazing wicking and anti-microbial properties.

But most Saturdays, we still wear our old Lands’ End shirt, and think about those glory days gone by, and all the lessons we learned the hard way.

~ ~ ~

We still make a (say it five times fast!) rugged rubber-buttoned Rugby. It’s soft and civilized, more for strolling the mall than joining a rugby maul. But it remains so durable it’s Guaranteed. Period.®

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Lands’ End has been doing business for 50 years. Malcolm Scollay Low has been shopping with us for 49.

That makes him the longest-serving Lands’ End customer we know of. Remarkable, but less remarkable than the man himself, as we realized when he told us his story.

“The first thing I bought from you was a Barient halyard winch for my new Bermuda 40 sailboat in the spring of 1964,” says Malcolm. “I had seen a terrible accident at sea – a man’s hand had slipped when he was raising a sail with a winch, and it had smashed him in the face. I didn’t want that to happen to me, or anyone on my crew, so I bought the best winch there was.”

Who sold it to him? An affable, crewcut young man named Gary Comer, who had started Lands’ End a year earlier.

“Gary was a wonderful fellow,” says Malcolm. “We got to be friends. A few years later, he was coming out to Boston near where I lived for a Star Boat race, and I invited him and his wife to stay with us. He arrived in an enormous Cadillac towing his Star Boat. He opened the trunk, and there was a large commercial sewing machine inside. He was prepared to recut his sails if he needed to.”

Malcolm doesn’t remember how Gary did in his race – he was frantically preparing for one of his own. It was a race from Bermuda to Copenhagen, to celebrate the 100^th anniversary of the Royal Danish Yacht Club.

“Mine was one of the two smallest boats in the race, with a crew of seven,” recalls Malcolm. “I was unprepared for the rigors of the race. It took us 27 days to reach Copenhagen! We had to go all the way up to 60 north looking for wind, into Arctic waters – it blew and snowed, terrible weather. But even so, at one point or another, every one of my crew came up to me individually and asked if once the race was over, we could re-provision and sail all the way back to Bermuda!

Malcolm’s boat ended up finishing the race dead last, but only because it spent 20 hours waiting with another boat whose rudder had broken, until someone could rescue them.

“I had promised my crew that I’d get them all to the party that the king was throwing, once we reached Copenhagen,” says Malcolm, “but we were all too seaspun to attend.”

Malcolm never saw Gary Comer again, but they corresponded off and on over the years, and called each other from time to time.

“Gary did a wonderful thing,” says Malcolm. “He went into the clothing business, and made clothes that were very seaman-like – very well-made, very well-priced. As only Gary could have done. So I’ve continued to shop with Lands’ End.”

Malcolm, we’re honored to have you as our customer, and hope your voyage with us continues for many more years.

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What? You haven’t heard that song? Well, maybe because we haven’t recorded it yet. And the way we sing, we’re not likely to.

But it’s our way of saying, Pima cotton is pretty special. It has that distinctive yellow flower. (Blink and you’ll miss it, because it only lasts a few days.) And it’s the only American cotton classified as “extremely long staple” – an inch and 3/8 or longer. The longer the staple, the stronger, softer and silkier the finished cotton garment will be.

At Lands’ End^®, we go even one step further with Pima, and offer garments that are Supima^® (short for “superior Pima”), meaning they are 100% pure American Pima cotton, and not mixed with any lesser cottons. You’ll feel the difference from ordinary cotton when you button into one of our Supima Pinpoint oxfords, polo shirts or fine-gauge sweaters. You might say “Ooooo!” or “Ahhhh!” if you’re the emotional type. And from a purely practical point of view, you’ll find they’ll outlast your other cotton garments as well. Even colors are richer, truer in Supima cotton.

Pima didn’t just sprout up from the ground one fine day – it has a long and convoluted history. Don’t worry; we’ll give you the nutshell version.

Sherman, set the wayback machine for 1790. That’s when the first successful crop of Sea Island cotton was produced on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina – the first “extremely long staple” cotton we know of.

In 1825, this Sea Island was taken to Egypt and crossed with a cotton called jumel. That produced ashmouni, which eventually got fine enough to compete with Sea Island for supremacy.

In 1908, a cotton called Yuma was introduced in Arizona – a hybrid of ashmouni and Sea Island. It got a boost in development during World War I, when it was used for tire cords and airplane fuselage. When a marauding army of nasty boll weevils wiped out Sea Island cotton in 1920, Yuma became America’s premier cotton. Eventually, it evolved into Pima, named for the Native American Pimas who helped raise it.

We’ve met our share of cottons over the years, and our share of cotton people. But we’ve never run across any cotton like Supima. It’s amazing.

The fact is, Supima is the finest 3% of all cotton grown in America. That’s a pretty select club, but not a snooty one. Anybody can join – especially if you shop Lands’ End, where it’s affordable.

Check out a brief video starring Supima, and see what soft looks like…

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We learned that in England, a sweater is called a jumper. And that in Japan, customers are crazy for embroidery – over 60% of the polo shirts we send out have a gymnast, dolphin, flag or other insignia on the chest.

But what happened in Germany tops everything. It had to do with our unequivocal guarantee – Guaranteed. Period.® – which is the very foundation of the way we do business.

You see, our founder Gary Comer didn’t believe in fine print. He believed in doing business in a fair and open-handed way, and doing whatever it took to provide 100% satisfaction. Like offering a guarantee with absolutely no limits.

So naturally, when we mailed out our first catalogs in Germany, they contained our Guaranteed. Period promise of satisfaction, inviting our new German customers to return anything at any time, for any reason, if they were not completely satisfied with what they’d ordered from us.

Well, much to our surprise, the bratwurst hit the fan. A group of 1600 German merchants called The Association Against Unfair Competition sued Lands’ End, claiming that our unconditional guarantee violating a German law that banned retailers from offering gifts to lure customers.

It wasn’t just neighborhood merchants fuming and sputtering. “There are a lot of huge companies who are hiding behind this association,” said Frank Kriegl, at the time our marketing director in Germany.

Lands’ End refused to back down. In fact, we launched an advertising campaign to win supporters to our just cause. Ganz Deutschland ist eine Servicewueste? asked one ad. Is all of Germany a service wasteland?
Alas, the merchant association won their suit when the German Supreme Court ruled that our promise was indeed a violation of German law. But still, we wouldn’t back down.

Phil Young, our European managing director, stressed that the ban would not affect how we treated our German customers. “This antiquated law will no longer allow us to communicate our guarantee to our German custom-ers,” said Phil, “but regardless of this, every single product we sell in Germany will be backed by our guarantee.”

We began running cheeky ads elsewhere in Europe, with headlines like:
“Introducing a guarantee so good the Germans banned it.” In Germany, we just blacked out the “guarantee” part of our ads, stirring up even more interest in the whole brouhaha. And in 1999, we launched the German version of our web site, which couldn’t mention the guarantee, but linked to a separate site that did. German customers began rallying to our cause.

The Association Against Unfair Competition was clearly on the wrong side of the fight, especially as the age of internet shopping picked up steam. Eventually, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s government revoked the antiquated 1932 law prohibiting discounts, rebates and lifetime guarantees.

Just like that, the great Guaranteed. Period. controversy in Germany was kaput. We began telling our complete and unexpurgated Lands’ End story again. And our business has been growing in Deutschland ever since.

The customer is always right, as Gary Comer might say.

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“I’d like you to think about a little place out back where we could all work out,” said our founder Gary Comer one day to Milt Martinson, the Green Bay architect who had designed most of the Lands’ End office buildings in Dodgeville.

Well, things had a way of sprouting up like corn at Lands’ End back in those days, and a couple years later – February 24, 1989 to be exact – we all found ourselves standing around an Olympic-sized swimming pool, celebrating the dedication of the brand new Lands’ End Activity Center.

It had turned out to be more than a “little place out back.”  A whopping 80,000 square feet, the new center had a gym, 1/8th  mile indoor track, racquetball courts and a plethora of exercise equipment in addition to the
75-meter pool.

“I’ve been to every major corporate health facility in the country, and this is the best of them all,” commented Ray Squires of the Mayo Clinic, on a visit to the new Lands’ End center the week before it opened.

But as we stood around the pool that day, most of us were feeling more impressed with the size of Gary Comer’s heart than we were with the size of the Activity Center. The founder of Lands’ End cared about his employees – we’d always known that from the time he spent with all of us – but this new facility was further evidence.

The usual speeches were given, all of them heartfelt, some of them more interesting than others. Most touching was one from Sam Fink, a legendary advertising art director who had known Gary for over thirty years.

“Gary is a dreamer,” said Sam. “He dreamt and he dreamt, and this is what he dreamt.” Sam spread his arms wide, seemingly to encompass the whole activity center.

Gary had asked Sam if there was anything he could do to decorate the new center, Sam being an artist of no small repute. Sam answered, “What you oughta’ do is honor all the people who work for you, because I know you love them.” Gary told Sam he could do anything he wanted, to accomplish that.

So when all the speechifying was over, Gary cut the ribbon for the new Activity Center, and a banner fell away to reveal Sam’s handiwork. There were 1,400 names hand-lettered by Sam on the pool wall tiles – the names of every permanent full-time and part-time employee at Lands’ End at that time, along with this inscription:

These are the names of the people whose daily work and good spirit at Lands’ End have made this building possible. It is dedicated to them and their continued good health.

“Years from now, you can come with your kids and your grandkids, show them your name, and tell them you were a part of all this,” said Gary.

What we remember most from the dedication ceremony was what happened after Gary cut the ribbon. A couple boisterous (and brave) employees tossed him into the new pool, necktie and all.

Gary flipped onto his back, swam gracefully halfway down the lane, then turned over and finished out the length freestyle. Not Mark Spitz, but not bad. He emerged in soaking Oxford and khakis, to wild applause. Walked along the end of the pool, shaking a few hands, then jumped up on the diving board, did a graceful swan dive, and swam another length!

We’ve all swam our share of laps since then, and sweated buckets on the stair-climbers and treadmills and weight machines. Some of our kids have learned how to swim in that pool, and started a lifelong love of exercise. A few past Presidents of the company have even joined in the fiercely-contested noontime basketball games, throwing up their share of wild treys.

Just as Gary intended, we’ve had a ton of fun in the Activity Center – now appropriately called the Comer Center. And every time we go there, we can still see him paddling in the pool, his knit tie floating on top of the water, a happy grin on his face.

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Calling 1996! Check out that cell phone.

It wasn’t the kind of sleek, stylish briefcase the big money boys carried. It didn’t convey wealth, status or an Ivy League pedigree. If Gordon Gekko had seen you carrying it, he would have snorted in disdain.

No, the Original Attaché was always more about Main Street than Wall Street. It was the bag of choice for teachers, lawyers, contractors, architects – anyone who valued function more than fashion.

It was rough and rugged looking, in 18 oz. Square Rigger cotton canvas – the same stuff old-time sailors hassled from the yardarms around Cape Horn. Incredibly durable, yet pliant enough to stretch for that one extra book, brief or folder you always seemed to need.

We introduced it in 1977, along with an overnighter called the Packet and a suit bag called the Captain’s Wardrobe – the first non-sailing bags we’d ever offered. People weren’t used to the idea of a soft-sided briefcase, but for $18.95, many of them decided to give it a try.

And, quickly got “attache-d” to it. Maybe for the homespun look, maybe for the ingenious features, which included a clip for your keys. But also because it was different. You couldn’t take it on a train or a plane without somebody asking, “Where’d you get it?”

In the disco 80’s, it was a welcome symbol of good sense.

Our customers did more than carry our attaché – they wrote to tell us why they liked it, and how it helped them in their work.

“My attaché is roomy enough to hold all the large volumes I use in my work, and the compartments hold my gadgets out in the field,” said Dr. Robert Bianchi, curator at the Brooklyn Museum.

 

“My attaché has been with me to the Far East five times, around the world once, Europe twice, Mexico once, and logged more domestic miles than I’d care to count,” reported Blair Kennedy from Pennsylvania.

 

And from Connecticut, French teacher Patricia Perry: “Le sac est superbe!”

 

Our attaché even had its admirers in political circles. In 1990, Nebraska Governor Kay Orr told us that she and her staff all carried our attaché: “We just couldn’t find a more roomy, professional or durable bag on the market.”

 

Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee wrote in 1996 that it was “the most efficient briefcase in the world, which I carry literally everywhere I go.”

Over the years, we sold over a million Original Attachés. How many of them are still on the job? We’re guessing most. The suckers just don’t seem to wear out.

Are you still carrying your Original Attaché? If so, let us know. Maybe if we hear from enough Original fans, we’ll show your letters to the decision makers here at Lands’ End, and ask them why a product this good ever went away.

It sure was an original.
 
 

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An average office desk is 28 inches tall. Not very imposing, but try doing a standing jump and landing on top of one with both feet.

On second thought, don’t. You may break your neck, or at least a shin.

Jack Sidebotham could do it though. That’s how he celebrated his birthday, every year at Lands’ End. And the first birthday he celebrated at Lands’ End was his 66th one. Can you say spry? We were all astonished. He giggled at our astonishment.

The annual desk jump gives you an idea of what a youthful spirit Jack had. But our first clue was his doodling.

It was all so unexpected. Jack had come to Lands’ End after a legendary career in advertising, as an art director and creative director at Young & Rubicam, McCaffrey & McCall and other notable agencies. He was tall, charming, a classy dresser. (Although he rarely wore socks.) Seemed to us like the quintessential sophisticated New Yorker, especially in the company of his lovely auburn-haired wife Bernadette.

We remember sitting next to him at his first big meeting – one of those slightly pompous affairs, with the top brass of Lands’ End sitting like the Supreme Court in front of us all – when we noticed that Jack was doodling. We leaned over for a closer look, then cut loose with an uncontrollable guffaw. He was drawing the top brass as crawling babies in diapers! Our current president was sitting up with a puzzled expression, asking, “Goo?” For that day on, we took great comfort in knowing that while Jack took his work seriously, he realized that life is just a bowl of cherries. You couldn’t have a grumpy day when he was around.

Later, we learned that along with his work in advertising, he had also been a main cartoonist and creative force behind “Schoolhouse Rock,” which gave him rock star status among the twenty-something age group of his co-workers.

Soon the Lands’ End catalogs became livelier and more amusing than ever before,  thanks to Jack’s contributions, cartooning and otherwise. He came up with unexpected cover ideas. He inspired his art department to their best work ever. He even created the first-ever comic strip in a catalog. Chronicling the whimsical adventures of his grandkids Tim and Kate.  It was a golden era that our customers loved, and we’ll always treasure.

Once, over a particularly convivial lunch, Jack made a bold statement: “Anyone can learn how to draw cartoons!”

We begged to differ, offering a pathetic stick man drawn on our napkin as proof. But Jack said he had written a book once that would have us all cartooning in no time. Then the conversation turned to other subjects – baseball, wine, our waitress, the barmaid, etc.

We forgot about the cartooning book till the other day when, missing Jack, we looked for it on Amazon. Voila, there it was – “The Art of Cartooning”, a Grum-bacher art library book.

You may have the knack, you may not. But it’ll help keep you young at heart. And it’s a lot less dangerous than the standing desk jump.

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If you’re like most people, the American Midwest is not the first place that pops to mind when you think of sailing. But from the skyscraper canyons of Chicago to the rolling farmland of Wisconsin, hundreds of fanatical heartland sailors as well as those from around the United States and overseas anxiously await the Chicago to Mackinac race on Lake Michigan, held every year in July.

Known as the “Mac”, the 333-mile race from Chicago to Mackinac Island is the world’s longest freshwater race on the planet’s third largest fresh water lake. It’s always been near and dear to our hearts at Lands’ End, since we got our start as a sailing hardware business in Chicago in 1963, and have sailed the Mac ourselves many times. (Admittedly, often as “rail meat,” a crew member who sits on the rail most of the race, using his or her weight to help keep the boat flat or induce heel in light air.)

“Sailing in Lake Michigan is not like sailing in a mill pond,” says Randy Adolphs, a long-time sailing buddy of our company founder Gary Comer. Randy has sailed the Mac four times, and has two transatlantic crossings under his belt as well as sails across the Red Sea, the Mediterranean and a run from the Galapagos to Easter Island. He knows first hand the punches that Lake Michigan can throw. “It’s very comparable to ocean racing,” he says. “I remember one year Ted Turner entered in a boat called American Eagle. It blew 40 to 50 miles per hour. Needless to say, Ted was impressed.”

No kidding. That was back in 1970, and it was one of the most treacherous Macs since the first race in 1898. The 13-foot seas battered the 167 boats and crippled 88 of them—broken masts, wrecked gear, ripped sails, injuries and fatigue took their toll on the most famous race in the middle of America.

In the Hard Blow of 1937, only eight yachts out of 42 made it to the finish at the Round Island Lighthouse off Mackinac Island. Of course, Mother Nature can throw curve balls in the other direction, as well. Last year was one of the most lethargic Mac races on record, with so little wind that “half the fleet didn’t arrive by the Tuesday afternoon awards ceremony,” says Rick Lillie, chairman of the Mackinac committee and a member of the Chicago Yacht Club since 1989. In case you were wondering, the current uncorrected course record—before handicapping for vessel size—is held by Roy Disney (Walt’s brother) aboard Pyewacket. His time? 23 hours, 30 minutes and 24 seconds.

“The longer the race the shorter the boat becomes,” says Lillie, “and many are happy to get off of it.”

Fortunately for Mac sailors there is the Pink Pony bar located within convenient stumbing distance of the wharf. “Sailing is a sport that involves a fair amount of bragging and storytelling,” says Lillie, “and during the first beer the waves on the voyage were two feet. By the fifth or sixth beer, they become eight feet.”

What happens if sailors arrive in the wee hours of the morning and the Pink Pony is shuttered up? Lillie says most sailors are prepared for such a dreadful emergency: “On board we carry a short supply of what we refer to as an ‘arrival beverage,’ which is usually Mount Gay Rum.”

Of course, he adds, “we keep it under lock and key.”

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Look at his heartfelt black-and-white photos of sheep farmers in the British Isles, and you know that Archie Lieberman was a kindred spirit to people who work the land.

Here is Anne Hendrie, tenderly feeding an orphaned lamb from a bottle. Stuart Hird tramping out with his trusty Border Collie. Stanley and Jeannie Sandison tending their flock on a treeless Shetland Isle.  And maybe best of all, Old Mister Tidyman in his shirt, tie and dirty wellies turning his twinkling eyes to the camera, with a walking stick in one hand and a brindled baby lamb in the other. It was an image we used for our September 1985 catalog cover, still one of our favorites.

“Archie had a wonderful way about him,” says his wife Esther, who traveled to the British Isles with him. “He wasn’t a big, imposing figure, with a lot of assistants. It was just him and his camera. People warmed to him.”

He had an illustrious career as a photojournalist, working as a World War II combat photographer in the Pacific, then traveling the world for Life, Look and many other magazines, back in the glory days of editorial photography. But in the 1950’s, he got an assignment that changed the course of his career and his life.

“This Week Magazine sent him to a little farm in Scales Mound, Illinois,” says Esther. “ A high school girl named Janet Hammer had won a trip to New York City in a Singer sewing machine contest.”

Something about the Hammer family and the life they lived touched Archie, and he began photographing them every chance he got. The pictures turned into the notable book “Farm Boy,” published in 1974, which chronicled 20 years in the life of Janet’s brother Billy.

“Why did you let me intrude in your lives?” Archie once asked Janet’s mother Mildred. “It was your living, and we wouldn’t deprive you of it,” she answered.

In 1973, Archie talked Esther into moving from their home in Evanston to a 20-acre farm in Jo Daviess County that the Hammers helped them find. This was where the people lived that Archie wanted to photograph. It was where life made sense to him, as he wrote in the foreword to his book “Neighbors,” a successor to “Farm Boy:”

 “In the morning the sun rises over the ridge and you truly know the day has begun. Roosters really crow, cows moo, pigs oink, church bells toll, and streams swish and gurgle. People work, pray and play. In the evening, the sun goes down over another ridge, and you know you have lived a sensible day.”

Not long after “Farm Boy” came out, Archie got a call from old Chicago acquaintance Gary Comer, who had recently moved his company Lands’ End from Chicago to Dodgeville, Wisconsin. Gary had made the move for much the same reason Archie had – he loved the character of the people who lived in this rolling farm country. They were honest, generous, industrious and good-hearted.

Gary wanted a photographer to capture the spirit of these employees – which was, after all, the spirit of Lands’ End – and who better than Archie? In the years that followed, he became a familiar figure at Lands’ End, strolling through the offices, the phone center, the warehouse, and visiting employees at their homes and farms too, shooting them as they went about their lives. A little booklet called “Out Our Way” told the story of the company through simple words and Archie’s memorable photos, and was included with the first order shipped to each new Lands’ End customer. The catalogs began featuring employee stories called In Person, with Archie’s photos. It was a revelation to our customers that many Lands’ End employees started their day with a 4 AM milking.

“It was always a pleasure when Archie was here,” says Sharon Kostuch of our Customer Service department, who was featured in an In Person article, and whose mother and niece Archie photographed for a Christmas catalog. “I remember telling him I didn’t like to see myself in a picture. He said a person never thought they took a good picture until they looked at it 10 years later. He had a point.”

“Archie had a way off making you feel very special,” says Joan Conlin, another In Person subject, “even though I thought my life was pretty uneventful. He used his wit and warmth to capture some of the most beautiful pictures.”

Between his regular visits to Dodgeville, Archie traveled to the British Isles for Lands’ End on more than one occasion, to India for a Madras story, and back and forth across the United States, photographing cotton growers and mill workers, sheep farmers and wool spinners, all the people who worked so hard to make the sweaters and shirts and jeans the company sold. On every assignment, his camera got under the surface of the story and into the soul of the people he photographed.

His dedication to his craft was legendary. We remember a trip we took with Archie to visit Larry Hancock, a cotton grower in California’s Parker Valley, near the Arizona border. “It takes 13 months a year to grow a crop of cotton,” Larry told us. Archie had some kind of a bug that day – or maybe just a reaction to the previous night’s truckstop dinner – and as we bumped over fields in Larry’s truck, his face got greener and greener. “Gotta stop,” he’d say, getting out to double over and heave into the furrows. He did this once, twice, three times. But never stopped taking pictures. On the flight that night from Phoenix back to Chicago, as the color began returning to his face, he turned and said, “We made some great pictures today, didn’t we?”

He did indeed, that day and so many others, for which we are eternally grateful.

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