INSIDERS

Harden Wiedemann

Some days, Harden Wiedemann must wonder why he got himself into the “mess” he’s in. Last spring, he left his established, comfortable position at his family’s insurance firm, Wiedemann & Johnson and Co., to assume a senior staff position with Gov. Mark White. In September, he received a hefty assignment from the governor: director of the office of economic development for Texas.

Wiedemann says that he always thought he was driven when it came to his career, but he says he didn’t really know the meaning of the word until he went to Austin.

During his first four months in the White administration, Wiedemann worked from about 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. each day. He says he was surprised by the state employees’ level of commitment. He says that they, too, are driven to work. . .and work. . .and work.

Just when Wiedemann thought he might be able to slow down his pace. White appointed him to the new position, in which he now directs 10 professional staff members.

During his first week in the new office, he and his staff drafted a preliminary economic development plan for the governor while working on the Southern Governor’s Convention in Austin. There wasn’t much time to sleep that week.

Wiedemann heads up the central coordinating office for all economic groups in the state, and he’s divided the workload into several areas that he believes need immediate attention. He hopes to increase exports from Texas (which is only third nationally behind California and Florida).

Another of Wiedemann’s priorities is “coordinating the infrastructure” of the state. “The highway department,” Weide-mann says, “needs to know what the port and airport control departments are up to and vice versa, all the way down the line of government agencies.” He wants to step up the campaign to promote Texas while maintaining a “managed” growth. Texas, he believes, is very attractive because it’s not an overcrowded, high-priced Silicon Valley- that’s the image he wants to push. Now, it’s up to him to design the detailed plans of action for each of these major projects.

In addition to the constant furor in his profession, Wiedemann has found a new endeavor in his personal life: Last month, his wife, Cynthia, gave birth to their first child. Wiedemann now begins his work hours before dawn so that he can be home at a reasonable hour.

Although he enjoys Austin, he says that when his tenure with the White Administration is up he plans to return to Dallas and continue his work with the family firm. He’ll stay in politics, he says, as long as it keeps him in his hometown.

Philip Montgomery

Philip O.B. Montgomery grew up in a family in which serving the community was just something one did. He never questioned that ideal or went through those typically rebellious adolescent years. Committee work, pledge drives and benefit functions were a normal part of a Montgomery’s routine.

He was president of his class at St. Mark’s as well as president of his class at a college program he attended in Italy. After graduating from Stanford University, he received his MBA from the University of Chicago, where he was president of the business school’s student organization.

Montgomery returned to Dallas in 1979, after finishing up his MBA. Once here, he started his own real estate business and began poking around for some outside activities. In 1982, a Dallas bond election consisting of 11 propositions came before the voters. One proposal was for the Dallas Concert Hall, and Montgomery was named chairman of that campaign.

The campaign was successful, and shortly afterward, he was recruited to head up the Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) campaign. The DART campaign, he says, made the concert hall campaign look easy.

Montgomery’s real estate firm became secondary to his “full-time” job with DART. He worked days, nights and weekends during the eight-month campaign, and the more the campaign progressed, the less time he had to himself.

DART, as we know, won by a healthy margin. And Montgomery is back to being Joe Citizen.

Although he enjoys his public exposure, Montgomery chooses fairly solitary hobbies: playing the guitar and fishing. And now that he has some time to himself, he’s continuing work on a project he started years ago.

During a summer break from college, Montgomery lived in his family’s cabin in the Hill Country and began writing a book entitled “Our Way of Life.” He plans to get involved in more civic projects.

Gail Sachson



One fall morning about 10 years ago, housewife Gail Sachson took off her apron, slipped into her old jeans and hopped onto her 10-speed bike. She was heading back to college.

At the time, she lived in Wellesley, Massachusetts, with her husband, an endocrinologist, and their two daughters. Although she already had a bachelor’s degree in elementary education, Sachson took an art course at Wellesley College for fun. During that first class, the professor lectured on the many aspects of art. Halfway through the class, he turned to Sachson and asked, “Gail, what do you think about art?” Some people say she hasn’t quit talking since.

So goes the birth of “Ask Me About Art,” Gail Sachson’s one-woman “college” of art education.

When the Sachson family moved to Dallas in 1974, Gail got her master of fine arts degree from SMU and began teaching art courses to elementary students at a local community center. To the amazement of others, her approach to teaching was something that got the children enthused about learning of such oddities as mixed media on canvas and the art of Jackson Pollock. Sachson chose artists whom the children could relate to, and she let them touch the canvases and splash paint all over the classroom. She told them stories about the artists’ lives and sent them home with buttons pinned to their shirts that read “Ask me about Jackson Pollock” and “Ask me about Alexander Calder.”

That program led Sachson into another form of education. Several parents, intrigued that their children were chattering about artists that even they hadn’t heard of, convinced Sachson to start an adult art class.

Today, a glance at Gail Sach-son’s calendar is testimony to how well she responds when people ask her about art. She’s in charge of several gallery-hopping groups that meet once a week for six weeks to visit various galleries, artists’ studios and museums around Dallas; she takes groups to New York and Houston for shows and invites groups to her house for art discussions over wine and cheese; she sponsors one-day excursions; she teaches a class at Brookhaven College; she writes a biweekly art column for a Piano newspaper; and she helps people locate and select art.

This winter, Sachson will start a “couples” evening art group, in which members will enjoy a light gourmet supper then travel to a gallery, which will be open solely for the group. The group will then head back to the host’s house for coffee, dessert and- you guessed it-a discussion of art.

In her introductory meeting with a group, Sachson shows outrageous art-the kind that will provoke an emotional reaction. She enjoys watching people who claim they aren’t interested in a certain style of art carry on a heated discussion about it.

Whenever she has time away from her art groups, she is at work on her doctorate degree in fine arts. The additional diploma won’t change her career much; her motivation for getting the degree is personal: “When the phone rings and someone asks for Dr. Sachson,” she says, “I want to say, ’Which one?’ “