ARRESTED ON WALL STREET LONG BEFORE TODAYÕ S PROTESTORS


Posted on October 11, 2011 by peter


How many people to do you know that started out their business career by being arrested directly in front of the Stock Exchange on Wall Street?


The year was 1974.


My wife LeAnna and I were administrators of a group home (Staten Island Group Home) under the auspices of the Eastern Mennonite Board of Missions and Charities. I was 25 and having been raised on the windswept, pristine prairies of Alberta, I knew little about the street life of New York City.


We had created a craft project for the girls paying them on a piecework basis. Producing the goods was one thing – marketing them was another (more on this in future blogs).


A weekend craft fair at the South Street Seaport Museum circa 1974 www. petergrahamdunn.com


I had been successfully retailing our craft projects in other parts of Manhattan. On a whim we decided that the best place to set up our display was right on Wall Street under the assumption that one couldn’t get any better traffic flow, and that these guys would have discretionary cash to spend.


One morning Nancy Sosna, one of the young women in our group home, and I dutifully loaded up my 1963 two-door Dodge and drove the short distance over the Verrazano Narrows Bridge from Staten Island to Manhattan.


We did get our display set up, and we were in business, but not for long. The men in blue showed up within minutes, loaded us and all of our product into their patrol car, and hauled us off to the local station. Our products were all confiscated. They let us off with a warning, but the next time we attempted a stunt like that we would be arrested.


I reported to a board that met quarterly, but I don’t recall that this little incident was ever relayed to them, at least not until months later! Rather duplicitous, and an ignominious start to a business career, wouldn’t you say?


For the past 35 years I have bootstrapped my way through the business world that started in the rented basement of Milton Falb’s house in Orrville, Ohio.


At the time our first-born, Anna, was a year and a half old. I was the only wage earner in the family; LeAnna was a full- time homemaker. I was thirty years of age, knew little, if anything, about running a business, but regardless could not suppress the urge to launch out on my own by turning the woodworking hobby started in NYC into a business. At the time, however, my only objective was to keep our financial heads above water.


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