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72 SCENE | MAY 2017 on the town A.G. & Diana Lafley Where were you born? I was born in Keene, New Hampshire that was then a very small town, but I grew up in small, semi-rural town called Burnt Hills, New York.    What is your greatest childhood memory? As soon as the newspapers were delivered, we had breakfast and the four of us kids were out the back door. If you wanted lunch, you came home. If you didn’t want lunch, my mother needed to know where you were having lunch, and you had to be home by dinner because my dad would be home by six and we would have dinner as a family. It was a time that cars, garages and houses were unlocked. It seems like a long time ago. I think there are few places still like that, but not enough. I only had one decision I had to make. Was I going to walk or run to where I was going, or was I going to jump on my bike? Simple things. Back then if you wanted to play baseball, you showed up at the playground and you picked sides in pick-up games in which the oldest kids ran the show. I remember showing up when I was seven years old and I didn’t care if I was put in right field. I just wanted to play. I knew if I played well, then they would move me to second base or left field. As I kid I was a bit of trailblazer and all the rules were established for me. (Laughs) I had a fabulous childhood.   What was your first job? Delivering newspapers. After that I was a stock boy at the local grocery store. My father worked for GE. After 10 years of growing up in this world that doesn’t exist anymore, we moved to Chicago. I always wanted to be independent so at 16, I loaded freight cars during the 10:30 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift. I wasn’t the kind of kid that was going to sit around. After that, we moved every three or four years because of my dad’s job with GE.  So your father worked for Jack Welch? My father worked for Mr. Welch and I actually worked with Mr. Welch and it was a riot. This is diversion, but I’ll come back. The day after I was elected and appointed chief executive of P&G, I get a phone call late in the evening at the office. I’m working late. I’m drinking through a fire hose, running like crazy trying to figure out the job, and my associate turns to me and says, “There’s some guy on the phone and he says he is Jack Welch.” I said to her, ‘Does he have a gravelly voice kind of like this?’  She said, “Yeah.” I told her to put him through. I pick up the phone and he doesn’t say hi, hello or how are you. He says, “Are you Al Lafley’s kid?”  I said, ‘I am.’ He says, “Your father was the only honest son of a bitch in corporate when I was running the plastics business.” What do you say? So I said, ‘Thank you.’ (Laughs) Then he said, “Get your ass into


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