Temple Grandin

by Anita Lesko

  Jim continued, “So I got her name, and she had an apartment over by ASU. I called her, and finally got through to her. Temple is a very forceful person, and she has a lot of courage and great personal strength. She wasn’t about to meet some guy that wanted to do this and that, and didn’t want to be involved with somebody she didn’t know. She was very, very hesitant. So, I don’t know what I said or did, but I asked her to meet me right there near the university and have a sandwich or a cup of coffee and talk.”

  “After a reluctant start, she agreed to meet me. I think at the time she was working down at the packing plant here, stunning cattle, the job of actually putting the cow down. So we did meet, and she came directly from the packing plant. That’s a pretty rough job, as you can imagine, and her mode of dress (Jim started chuckling!) was pretty, uh, unusual. Particularly for a woman during those times.” My curiosity got the best of me. I wanted to know what exactly Temple wore to that first meeting, so I asked him to describe her attire. I was grinning as he described it, “She was wearing boots and jeans, a long sleeve western shirt, and she had been working hard all day. You have that normal amount of manure and blood and sweat all over you—in your hair, your face, all over you! It comes with the territory, you can’t do it any other way. Anybody would look like that. I don’t want to be dramatic here, but it was a bit shocking to me. Well, maybe not shocking, but unusual. But we sat down, and I didn’t act as if it made any difference to me, or that I even noticed, and we talked.”

  Jim went on, “For some reason, Temple and I hit it off. I assume Temple had you talk to me because she felt that same chemistry with me that I felt to her. That planted the seed of getting to know her. She invited me to come see how livestock work, why they do what they do, and why it was unnecessary to crowd them, punch them, or abuse them. I don’t want to use that word, so I’ll say ‘treat them in a rugged manner.’ You can instead treat them in a manner that appeals to them in their natural instinct. You can cause them to do what you wanted them to do, need them to do. Walk down a lane, stop, start, turn, don’t panic, don’t stampede, don’t hurt each other or anybody else, and quietly and calmly go forward to accomplish the task you needed to get done. Rather than dragging them, beating them, pushing them, stinging them with shockers, and screaming at them, there was another way.” This was very exciting for me, to listen to Jim tell the story. It was like a movie coming to life.

  So, here comes the squeeze machine. Jim described, “She showed me the machine she had built, and,” he laughed, “put me in the machine! By this time, I realized that there was more to Temple’s scientific research than just trying to make a name for herself in cattle. There was a feeling in me that this was a greater calling, a higher calling. She was a very unusual woman. She was very bright, very aggressive, very forward, she said what she had to say. There was just something unusual about Temple. When she showed me the machine she built for herself that hugged her, I didn’t know anything about autism. I had heard the word, but knew nothing of it. Over time, as she got to know me, she’d start saying things like ‘a person with autism doesn’t really want to be touched.’ You don’t necessarily go up to Temple every morning and hug her. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t enjoy saying good morning to you. That machine sort of took the place of that.”

  Jim goes on to describe his thoughts on Temple being different. “I realized I was dealing with a very unusual person here, but I was fascinated, and became completely convinced that she knew what she was doing. In order to build something like this, it had to be done right. She agreed to provide the proper design, and I was just delighted! Temple is a good business woman. She reads The Wall Street Journal every day, I mean, she knows business. I didn’t think money was the motivating factor, but money is a part of business. She wanted everything just right, and didn’t want her name on it unless it was perfect. She showed us what to do: put that up, take this just down, repair this, fix that. We were simply delighted to do whatever she said to do.”

  “How did your men handle her?” I inquired.

  “The men I had working with me were very unusual, and they took to her. Temple has leadership ability and they began to believe in her like I did. If she said, ‘Take it down and put it up right, you did it all wrong,’ they would do it. These were macho guys, I’ll tell you that, but they took a liking to her and believed in her as I did, so we did things the way she wanted them done. And so that began the relationship that went on for at least ten years. My love became doing Temple’s work. We did lots of other jobs, too. My company sometimes did fifty million dollars’ worth of work a year. I liked doing the other work, steel structures and concrete structures for industrial purposes, but I loved doing Temple’s jobs. The most fascinating thing was to work with Temple to build these livestock handling facilities that she designed. When we’d be building them, she’d come to the job site, and she wouldn’t leave until the job was done!”

  “Boy, you two sure spent a lot of time together,” I commented.

  “Yes, we did,” he responded. “We’d have lunch and dinner together every day. We were together seven days a week, because we worked at least six, but mostly seven days a week. The facilities that we built would take the cattle from the range, to the feedlots, to the dipping vat, all the way there to the packing plant kill floor. I never did anything beyond the kill floor. Once the animal was stunned, there were great companies in the United States who had wonderful designs for handling the animal. I’m going to use the word ‘stunned’ instead of ‘killed.’”

  Jim was specific, “Nobody had any real designs prior to Temple. There were only one or two people that I’m aware of in the United States who had any kind of designs to do with the animals when they were alive. How do you handle them? A lot of that technology was known, but a lot was not. Even if it was done correctly, like down in Texas or up in South Dakota, Temple went to those locations and watched those operations work. Temple is a master photographer. She’d photograph them, then stand there and measure everything and draw them. She brought these designs from California to Texas, Arizona, Wyoming, New Mexico, and brought them together and consolidated them.”

  Temple got to meet the legendary actor John Wayne. Jim shared this, “Let me digress a moment, there was a man down at John Wayne’s feed lot, Red River, which was a major feed lot in Arizona with nearly one hundred thousand heads of cattle. The guy who owned it was Ted Gilbert, a very prominent cattleman here, very forward thinker. He was raised in the Santa Barbara, California area in the twenties when there were big cattle ranches there, and spent his life in the cattle business. He was a very sophisticated guy who looked like he ought to be in Hollywood himself; he was handsome, sophisticated, refined, and flat knew cattle. He gave us a wonderful job at Red River building a dip vat, which gave me the opportunity to do bigger work in that industry than I had ever done before. I remember very well standing there with Ted one day, as we were watching Temple go out and inspect the work that our men were doing. He said, ‘You know, I’ve spent a lifetime working with cattle, and I’ve dipped thousands and thousands of heads of cattle, but if you told me to tell you exactly how many inches apart this was supposed to be here, and what angle that was supposed to be there, and what degree turn that was supposed to be, I couldn’t tell you! But Temple can tell you, because she’s gone out and measured and documented what works, and cataloged that and indexed it. She’s just terrific!’”

  Jim continued, “Ted and his wife, Lillian, adopted Temple as their great friend. Until the day that Ted died, Temple was one of his favorite people, and Temple loved Ted and his wife.”

  Jim shared more about Temple and her work. “I didn’t design anything. Temple designed everything, I only did what Temple told me to do. I believed in her then and I believe in her now. She was the designer, and we built according to her designs. She was also doing scientific writing and getting published. Temple works twelve hours a day, seven days a week. She’s a human dynamo, in love with her subjec
t. It’d be nothing for Temple and me to leave Phoenix together and drive to Reno. During these drives, I said very little and she talked about a wide variety of subjects. I found her fascinating. I had been privileged to be around some very intelligent people; I got to spend a summer with the President of Harvard Medical School. Temple is very, very bright, so if you’d ask her about something, she would talk about it. I learned a lot from Temple, just absolutely fascinating!”

  I thought this was really cool. Jim said, “I was in the Marines during Vietnam. As an example, I’ll say that if you were going to be in a very difficult situation and you could pick someone to be with you, Temple would be the one I’d pick. Temple doesn’t give up, she doesn’t quit, and she isn’t intimidated by anybody. The guys I had working for me, many of them were older than me. One was over twenty years older than me, and I loved him like a father. Well, he loved Temple, and he always called her ‘Miss Temple.’ The other guys (and myself!) treated her with respect, and they knew she was providing them with work. She also was nice to them, and she helped them. If one of them was lifting something heavy, Temple was right over there at the other end helping him lift it. If one of them got cut or hurt, she was also right there helping them. She’d clean it up, put a bandage on it, asking them, ‘Are you okay? I’m going to watch you.’ She’s the real McCoy.” That says volumes about Temple, right there.

  How People Reacted to Temple

  I asked Jim about how people reacted to her. He said, “I’ll break it down into two categories, maybe three. There were some people who didn’t know what to make of Temple. They had probably never been around anybody like that, with her type of laser- beam intelligence, her being vocal, or her being able to get up in front of a large group and stand up there and speak. She was aggressive, and wasn’t afraid to walk right into wet manure and check something out. Those people were kind of shocked by it. Then there were others who just automatically knew that this was a person who was deeply committed to what she was doing, who had admirable qualities of courage, determination, and observation. She’s an observer, communicator, and has a ‘never say die’ attitude. These could be people from all walks of life, from average to the very top echelons of business. It depended on their ability to accept her. There were cattleman and important business men who absolutely could not accept her, but they are idiots!”

  He continued, “With a lot of the other cattlemen, if they misbehaved, the other ones would pull them aside and reprimand them and tell them to act like a gentleman. I don’t necessarily think it was gender-based. There were highly successful men and women in the cattle industry that just didn’t want to hear what Temple had to say. There was one time I took Temple out to dinner, and this woman kept saying things to Temple to antagonize her. This woman wanted me to do her job. She kept going at Temple. Finally, Temple hit her fist on the table! I then told that woman to leave Temple alone, or I’d leave and let her pay the restaurant and do the building herself. I told her I was not going to jeopardize my relationship with Temple, because she wanted to show Temple she knew more than her. And she didn’t! She immediately stopped, and everything calmed down. Some people simply couldn’t take Temple. They just didn’t know what to make of her. It appeared that they were intimidated by her. I don’t want to use the word ‘unusual,’ because I feel like I’m being disloyal to a great friend and a person I respect tremendously. They just simply flat out didn’t know what to do with Temple, and they were sort of in shock. The rest of us were sort of in awe! Our family doctor here in the Scottsdale area was, until his death, an extremely well known, brilliant guy with a great personality. Temple was having a problem and didn’t have a personal physician. She wasn’t feeling well, so I told her I know a great doctor and I called him for her. She then went to see him. The next time I saw that doctor, he said, ‘That young woman is highly unusual, and very brilliant.’”

  I found Jim’s description of all those people’s reaction to Temple to be exceptionally interesting. As someone on the autism spectrum, throughout my life I’ve experienced exactly those same things with various people. Looking back, I realize they simply didn’t know what to make of me or how to deal with me. My demeanor was pretty much the same as Jim’s description of Temple at that time. But those who did like me thought I was the greatest thing since sliced bread. This is a phenomenon of being on the autism spectrum.

  Jim was very insightful. He continued, “Then there are the people who see beyond the superficial differences, and recognize that this person has a huge amount to offer. Let’s quietly listen and extract that information, because the overall goal of doing something well and correctly supersedes the various personality traits as long as we have a great end result. So what if Temple’s personality or mannerisms were somewhat different?” Exactly. So what?

  I cringed at this story: “Temple did a lot of things that were highly dangerous in order to understand the behavior of livestock. I think her parents would have lost their breath if they saw the things she did to gain scientific knowledge that nobody else had. For instance, I don’t know if you know how hot Phoenix can get, but on a load of cattle going to the McElhaney feed lot—which is about a two-and-a-half hour drive—she snuck inside the cattle hauling truck and recorded the temperatures and behavior of the cattle. Let me tell you, that was one dangerous move. If those cattle had shifted, they’d have crushed her. But afterward, she knew the heat stress that was occurring to those animals.” When he mentioned the McElhaney feed lot, I asked him, “Did you know about Temple going up flying with Sam McElhaney in his Baron?” Jim got to laughing about that and shared, “Sam was a gentleman, like most men from back then, and I can still see Sam hobbling along with his cane to get to a fourteen-foot iron gate open for Temple and ushering her through. He absolutely loved her—when they liked her, they loved her! Just talking about Temple brings a lot of warm feelings to my heart.”

  I went on to tell him, “So, here’s what Temple told me about flying with Sam. She said she got to fly in the cockpit of Sam McElheney’s Baron, up to his feed yard in Wellton, Arizona when they were working on the dip vat. One time, when they were coming back, Sam flew right across the path of a jet as they came in for the final approach. The air traffic controllers started screaming at him, and he simply yelled back, ‘Yeah, I saw it!’ Sam always had his dog, Booger, flying in the plane, and there was dog hair everywhere. The first dip vat project was at McElheney’s feed yard. By this time, Temple was totally over her airplane fear.” Jim bellowed, “That’s quite a story about her and Sam!”

  I asked Jim if he knew Temple when she got thrown out of the Scottsdale feed yard. Laughing, Jim started, “I’m at Scottsdale feed yard right now! It’s kind of funny you asked me that. Well, in the 1970s I did a lot of work for the Scottsdale feed yard, and I knew them well.” Jim shared his thoughts on why Temple got thrown out of the Scottsdale feed yard that he asked not to be in print. He went on to say, “Temple could be in your face, and she could be aggressive. You know, she comes from a very fine family. Temple and I had what I call adventures and good eating!” He chuckled. “We worked hard all day, then I’d say, ‘Why don’t I take you and I out to dinner?’ and we’d have a nice quiet dinner someplace. She loved it and I loved it too, and we’d get away from the crew and have a nice meal. Rarely was our work in Phoenix, so we were always on the road. Temple was very nice to my son and my wife, and she knew my mother. We looked out for her and her welfare, and tried to make these projects enjoyable. In recent years, she’s told me they were the most enjoyable years of her life. I never permitted any one to treat her in any way other than appropriate for the occasion. If any of my men would have treated her in any other way, I’d have fired them!”

  Reminiscing, Jim recalled, “One thing that stands out is the time when we were working at a job out in Fresno, California at the O’Neil Meat Company, and Muhammad Ali was going to fight Spinks. Temple knew about it, and she said, ‘You know, Jim, every place we go you take me to nice plac
es, and you do what I’d like to do, and you know it! I’m going to take you to dinner at a place where we can watch that boxing match on a wide screen TV.’ So we did that together, and she sat there through that with me, and I thought that was really nice. I remember that forty years later, and bring it up to you because it was just courteous in that manner. I’m a huge Temple fan, and have absolutely nothing negative to say about her. Only positive things. I think she’s wonderful, she’s made a contribution to the livestock industry, and she helped me build my company.”

  I could sense that Jim was getting overwhelmed when he started saying, “But all along, I began to figure out that Temple was answering a greater call. Her study of animal behavior was assisting her in understanding the difficulties she had as a child, and was continuing to have, so that she could improve the lives of children, understand them, and help them to live a better life. And when I came to that conclusion, then forever and always, my heart is with Temple, because that’s a higher calling.”

  “Jim, how did you feel when the movie Temple Grandin came out and she exploded into superstardom?” I asked. His response was, “None of the guys who are still alive, nor myself, were the least bit surprised. We thought this film was long overdue, as we all knew that we had a star in the making.”

  Nearly at the end of our great conversation, Jim volunteered, “I feel I knew Temple during the formative years about as well as a person could know another person intellectually, because she was so open. I can remember being at the San Francisco airport with her and the plane was delayed for many hours. So, during that time, Temple explained Einstein’s Theory of Relativity to me!” He laughed quite heartily. “I can still remember sitting there being entertained as she explained it to me, with my jaw dropping.”