Quality New Mexico The Story of Malcolm Baldrige & QNM
The Story of
Mac Baldrige and
Quality New Mexico
By Nigel Hey
His name was Howard Malcolm
Baldrige, but he insisted that people
called him Mac. The White House
plucked him out of a top corporate job
in New England to be Ronald
Reagan’s first Secretary of Commerce.
He was a Yale graduate (in English)
and had a lifelong passion for the
American West. He loved rodeo life
and enjoyed curling up with a book by
Zane Gray or Louis L’Amour. He was
born in Omaha. He owned a ranch in
New Mexico. And his name is forever
associated with the grand idea that lies
behind Quality New Mexico.
Mac’s sister Letitia (“Tish”), who was
Jackie Kennedy’s social secretary in
the White House, said he was full of
paradoxes. “He likes you to think of
him in jeans low around the hips and
properly scuffed cowboy boots,” she
told
Louise
Sweeney,
staff
correspondent of the Christian Science
Monitor. “He enjoys that. His heart is
in the West, but his body and his mind
are in the East.”
Baldrige died in California in 1987 as
the result of a rodeo accident, leaving
a legacy of successful trade talks with
the Chinese, Indians and Russians –
and a lasting persistence that his office
would be a quality operation; further,
that he expected the rest of America to
follow suit. He was committed to
policies that increase productivity and
customer satisfaction, in particular a
dedication to clear communication.
“Use of the English language.” he
said, “should ideally be styled
somewhere between Hemingway and
Zane Gray.”
Baldrige’s interest in the West was
deepened by reading the books of
Gray, Louis L’Amour and other
Western writers. And his family joined
in. “I loved it,” said his daughter
Molly. “The ranch was a vacation place,
and a way to be involved in the cattle
business and have a foot in the cowboy
world.” His other daughter Megan, a
teacher, was just as enthusiastic: “My
decision to move to Cedar Crest with my
young family in the 1980’s and my
sister’s decision to work for an
agricultural bank in Colorado shortly
after my move was prompted by the
wonderful vacations we had in New
Mexico on the ranch.”
Congress created the Malcolm Baldrige
National Quality Award through Public
Law 100-107 in 1987. On October 17,
1988,
Baldrige
was
presented
posthumously with the Presidential
Tish, Mac, Midge Fall 1983
© 2015 Nigel Hey & Quality New Mexico
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