Morton Meyerson
Over the course of its 140 years and various incarnations, Paschal High School has sent some heavyweights out into the world. Talk to an alum — any alum — and they’ll likely remind you that the school sent one of their own to the moon, as if they blasted Alan Bean from a platform on the football field during lunch.
The realm of business, finance, and philanthropy is no different. There are some giants whose adolescence was captured for posterity in yearbooks. Before the world knew them, Paschal was molding them into thoughtful, literate, and adaptable business and community leaders.
The first to come to mind is Charles Tandy, he of Central High School, before the school was renamed in honor of its longtime principal. Richard Rainwater is, of course, another, the billionaire investor whose mark on the city will live for generations through the Rainwater Foundation.
And then there is Morton Meyerson, the Dallasite who calls his formation in Fort Worth the most important thing that ever happened to him. The foundation for this gentle soul who is strong in deed was Paschal High School, as well as his Jewish heritage.
Meyerson, 83, a 1956 graduate of Paschal, looks back fondly on those days.
“It was fantastic. Really, really good teachers. Powerhouse academically. Athletic powerhouse in baseball and basketball. Football, we were highly ranked,” says Meyerson by phone. “Academically, it was the best school in town. I was incredibly lucky to have gone there. I had some really good teachers who stepped in and took an interest in me and encouraged me to be more than who I thought I was.”
Meyerson played football at Paschal, just as his father did a generation before. Both wore No. 72. Brudus Meyerson played on Paschal’s — well, Central’s — 1928 state football team. Football was important to Meyerson, getting the “fundamentally” introverted teen out of his shell and the realization that a young Jewish boy could coexist in a very Baptist community, and, on a larger scale, the world at large.
“It was a great lesson, and that’s the way I handled myself the rest of my life. I just found places [in his career] where performance was No. 1 and who you were was not as important.”
Meyerson graduated from the University of Texas in 1961 with bachelor’s degrees in economics and philosophy. The university marked his life of note by bestowing on him its “Distinguished Alumnus Award” in 2005.
The year 1961 began Meyerson’s term of service in the U.S. Army. There, he received occupational specialty training in automatic data processing, a skill that would serve him well.
Meyerson is chair of 2M Companies, a family office he established in 1983, and of The Morton H. Meyerson Family Foundation.
In 1966, he took a job with Electronic Data Systems Inc as a systems engineer trainee, ultimately becoming president and vice chair and leading 45,000 employees.
After the sale of EDS to General Motors in 1984, Meyerson stayed on, becoming the chief technology officer of GM. In 1986, he left GM to focus on private investing, working closely with Rainwater and mentoring Michael Dell during the formative period of Dell Computer. In 1992, he again teamed with Perot, becoming chair and CEO of Perot Systems and leading it to $1 billion in revenue.
All of that to say that in October, Meyerson was inducted into the Texas Business Hall of Fame in Houston.
“I’ve had probably more recognition in my life than I deserve so I wasn’t particularly taken by the ‘it’s about me,’” he says of the Hall of Fame honor. “The reason I accepted is I felt like a Fort Worth person — there aren’t that many in there, that were raised there — No. 1. I was asked about going on the list about 30 years ago. I declined because I’m fundamentally an introvert. I’m not very big on accolades and those things. I asked them not to put my name up. This time, they didn’t ask me. They just did it.”
Meyerson laughs at that.
“Timing, luck, and having a good family were everything.”
The values learned in the Meyerson home also included the obligation to help others. Instilled at a very early age, he says, this ethos is the bedrock of the Morton H. Meyerson Family Foundation and its philosophy rooted in the Jewish concept of “tzedakah,” a Hebrew word for a moral obligation to give back to those less fortunate. The foundation’s focus is on assisting underserved communities and individuals, providing access to basic human needs, and supporting Jewish organizations and programs.
“My focus on giving back comes from my parents and grandparents. At the earliest age, 4 or 5, I can remember my grandfather would give me a quarter, but he’d give me five nickels. And if he gave me five nickels, he would say, take one of the nickels and put it in the pushke — a Yiddish term for the charity box.
“I’d put it in and say, wait a minute, I don’t have a quarter anymore; I have 20 cents. He would say, ‘Yeah, but you have money, and you have to share it with other people. That was his way of teaching me. My parents did the same thing. I had [learned] from the earlier time period, all of my family, and much of my school, etc., was about giving back. It came like drinking water.”
Meyerson was planning to go to Israel in 1998 when his son David died unexpectantly in Los Angeles at age 31. Working through his grief, Meyerson almost decided not to go on the trip.
“I decided to go. And I extended the trip and stayed two months and studied. One of the things I studied was tzedakah with a rabbi. I came back and formed a foundation. I think we’re making a difference. I’m active in the foundation, and the reason is, I learned as a child that if you have more resources than you can use and your family can use, you’re required to share it.”
The Meyerson foundations don’t accept applications for funding. They go out and find beneficiaries.
The Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center in the Arts District of Dallas was named for Meyerson when Perot insisted that he would make a signature donation for its construction only if the hall carried the name of the former president of EDS.
Ross Perot insistence is different from any other kind.
Meyerson, whose aptitude for music came naturally through a mother who was a talented classical pianist, was the chair of the committee planning its construction.
It was the culmination of a relationship that started as anything but warm.
Having started his career as a data processing engineer at Bell Helicopter in 1963, Meyerson accepted a job with Perot’s EDS in 1966 as a systems engineer trainee. Ultimately rising to the very top of the organization was the very last thing one could have expected at the time.
To Perot early on, Meyerson was a “square peg in a round hole,” more interested in discarding his young employee than mentoring him in a leadership role. The boss simply didn’t like him. Meyerson says it was company president Milledge “Mitch” Hart who saved his job.
Yet, later, Perot moved Meyerson out of the tech side and into the business side. Meyerson, again fundamentally an introvert, was a “deep nerd, techie guy,” he says.
“In the beginning he didn’t like me. But later he adopted me and treated me as a son. I don’t know why. I have asked him 20 times how he went about selecting me to move into the business side, and he never answered me. To this day, I don’t know why.”
History recalls those days in 1992 when Perot, who died in 2019, stepped into the political industry, running for president in 1992 and 1996 on the ticket of the Reform Party he founded. He was most certainly an industry disruptor, impacting and transforming the 1992 presidential election model, value propositions, and strategic direction.
What kind of president would Ross Perot have made?
“I’ve thought about this many times, and I don’t know. Ross had exceptional skills, but he had a way of doing things that he was very locked into. Part of me thinks in an absolute way, if I look at what presidents do, he might have had a hard time. But then I look at who has been president subsequently and say to myself, ‘Would Ross be worse than them?’ I don’t think so. I think Ross would have been a good president.”