Squeaky

One evening in the fall of 1975, my parents, Robert and Alice Harrison, went out for an early dinner with friends. Returning home, when they pulled into their driveway, they saw two men in suits standing on their front porch. One of the men had just taped a note to their front door and they had turned to leave. The note said simply, "Please call Bob Sabol, FBI," and gave a phone number.  Dad stopped the car halfway down the drive, got out and greeted the men. Sabol introduced himself as an agent with the Indianapolis office of the FBI. Then he asked, "Mr. Harrison, what do you know about Lynette Fromme?"

Dad knew exactly who she was. Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme was all over the news. Earlier that week she had aimed a gun at President Gerald Ford and was apprehend without firing it.  Other than that, Dad knew nothing of her.

Agent Sabol asked Dad a few other questions wanting to know where he worked and what his position was with the company.  Dad was an executive with Wallace Expanding Machines. Wallace was a company that started as a small tool-and-die shop. It had developed a machine known as an Expander, which was able to stamp large metal shapes in one operation. That invention took the company to the big-time as it was subsequently used to manufacture car doors for Ford and appliance housings in a matter of seconds.

Dad was in charge of the company's purchasing operations and was Secretary-Treasurer of the corporation. In this position he earned a listing in Standard and Poor's Directory of Corporate Executives, national edition. 

Sabol went on to explain that in searching Squeaky's apartment after the incident, they found a mass mailing she was preparing and all of the envelopes used Dad's home address as the mailing's return address. The mailing also listed Dad's title as "President, US Natural Resources." Dad told them he had never heard of that company.  Sabol informed him their investigation had determined the Standard and Poor's directory had shown Dad as its president. It didn't take much in the discussion that followed to determine Dad had no relationship with either Squeaky or US Natural Resources. S&P affiliating him with the USNR was, in fact, a clerical error.

Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, aside from being a kooky follower of Charles Manson, was a rabid environmentalist. In fact, she had gone to the Ford rally where she was arrested to try to plead with him to stop harvesting redwoods. Apparently, she thought US Natural Resources had something to do with the environment, had looked it up in the S&P directory and that is how she got Dad's name.

The conversation with the FBI sent Dad to his office where he had filed the proof copy of his S&P listing without paying much attention to it. Sure enough, right there under "Other Current Affiliations" he found himself listed as the Chairman & Chief Executive Officer of US Natural resources. He filed the note from the FBI with it as a souvenir.

Courts found Squeaky guilty of the attempted assassination of the President of the United States and sentenced her to life. She was paroled in 2009. The great irony for her is US Natural Resources is a company that deals in sawmills and equipment to harvest trees, not save them, as the Squeakster must have assumed.