Solid Business Sense

Grassroots power can change the world.

I want to help enable it by getting more people online and encouraging community involvement.  I believe everyone should learn to use search engines and have a blog, whether they are in business or not, to give them a view of the world they cannot see now, and a chance to hear and be heard online.

Troxler Inc. is a merchant on this road, peddling our websites and encouraging ordinary people to organize.  We are in business to help your business succeed.  We offer websites that anyone can use.

Let me share a story with you of my father, and his faith in people.

In the early 1950′s, a very young black man walked into a bank in downtown St. Louis, Missouri to get a loan.  He was carrying an old acoustic guitar his late uncle left him.  He had learned to play and wanted to buy an electric guitar and amp and start a band.  The guitar was his collateral.

The bank was Mound City Trust Company, and the banker was my father, Oliver Troxler, head of the loan department.  He had been sizing up this young man as he spoke.  When he finished telling his story, Ollie Troxler looked him in the eye and said, “The bank cannot accept a guitar as collateral for a loan … but I believe you are an honest young man and will repay the loan.  So I am going to lend you the funds myself.  I’ll charge you the same interest the bank charges.  But I want you in that chair every Friday to make your payment. ”

The young black man was Chuck Berry.  He took the funds and bought a white Gibson and an amp.  Then he went straight to Chicago and found Muddy Waters and asked him who to record with.  Muddy sent him to his studio, Chess Records.

If you’ve seen the movie “Cadillac Records”, you have seen Leonard Chess as a young man. When Chuck auditioned with him, he first tried to play and sing like Charles Brown.  Then Leonard Chess asked him if he “had anything else”, and Chuck played Mabelline.  Leonard called it “his country piece” and recorded it.  The rest is music history. Chuck Berry never forgot my father’s kindness to him, and started a weekly visit that lasted thirty years.

There were many others who my father helped over the many years he worked in that bank.  The spirit with which Oliver Troxler offered assistance to those who sought him out is alive in me, and in Troxler Software.

Dedicated people with vision, like Chuck Berry, willing to fearlessly take on great odds, can achieve great things and change history.  Oliver Troxler had no idea when he made a personal loan to a young black man that he would go out and change the world with his guitar, but that’s what happened.

Troxler Software is built on this faith in grassroots power and ordinary people helping one another.  Yes, we want to make money, but ultimately its not the money that makes us rich.  It is our connectedness and sense of responsibility for one another that enriches our lives.

– Mary Troxler Luketich