Elisabeth

"To get to Paris by stagecoach, it takes at least six days, a real adventure for a young saddler aged twenty years going abroad for the first time. In his luggage, saddler's tools, a few scraps of French, and perhaps a meager inheritance shared with his sister Elisabeth."

"I had decided to become a management consultant. Through an acquaintance, Kaj Kjellqvist, I knew about Bohlin & Strömberg, and I went there to apply for a job. I arrived almost an hour late. There were traffic jams and canceled buses to Sundbyberg, and no taxis were available. Clearly, I was at a disadvantage at this important meeting, but I was able to start with a salary of 3,000 kronor a month. The salary just covered Elisabeth's and my joint expenses, and we were able to settle into our first own apartment at the top of Källängsvägen 36 in Lidingö. We lived here for a few years before moving into a house in the neighborhood, and together we managed an expanding home when Carl was born in 1965 and Eric in 1968. Being a parent of young children has its challenges for men with a career in business. But I was careful to devote all my free time to Elisabeth and the children and not to repeat the parenting mistakes I feel I was subjected to as a child."

"The honeymoon trip went to Stockholm, where we lived a life of luxury for a few days and stayed in Elisabeth's grandfather Wilhelm's one-bedroom apartment on Strandvägen. We had no need to travel anywhere. Soon it was time to move to Boston. We arrived a few days before the start of school and quickly rented a three-room apartment in Watertown, where there were many student accommodations a few miles from the school. Elisabeth applied and got a job as a receptionist at a steel construction company, A. O. Wilson's Structural Steel. She got the job because her accent reminded them of Ingrid Bergman, and the owners were of Swedish descent."

"Just before leaving for Östra Ryd's church, Elisabeth's mother, Lillan, took me aside and said, "Now you must not back out of this. You've had all the chances, but now it's too late." She truly sounded worried, and I—somewhat shocked by the intensity and the question—answered that I absolutely had no such plans. And I never have. At my seventieth birthday party, there were seventeen of us who had been at the wedding forty-five years earlier."

"Elisabeth and I persevered. Her salary paid for the food, and my stock trading covered the costs for studies and housing. Afterwards, I have often felt great joy that we managed Harvard together. It is unfortunate when one has not shared the struggles in life, especially when the reward for the effort comes as a shared blessing. After we had been married for a month, I thought it was time to celebrate with a bit of luxury for dinner, but I forgot an important detail. I rushed back to the supermarket and met Elisabeth. "Where are you going?" she asked. "To the grocery store," I answered, "I'm going to buy mayonnaise." To my surprise, she burst into loud laughter. She had the same thought but hadn't forgotten the mayonnaise. Four lobsters worked well too—and thereafter we celebrated our wedding anniversary every month with lobster, which was very cheap in New England. Thinking the same thought simultaneously is something she and I often do and marvel at even today, after more than fifty years of marriage."

"Even though my family has a long history, it has never developed into a dynasty or ownership aristocracy. Ownership has always been linked to land and farms to be responsible for and pass on within the family. This has been done with great feeling, but also with the unimaginative traditionalism that sometimes characterizes the land-owning nobility. For me, the land heritage has been a cornerstone and a driving force for my wealth building. Preserving, caring for, and developing what was given to us was a duty from the very beginning for Elisabeth and me, which I also want to talk about. The chain breaks at its weakest link, something I heard my father speak of in somber moments, and it is a knowledge that has been kept alive and can disturb sleep and deeply worry the soul."

"What I took with me when I left the partnership in 1983 was a rather small property in Frihamnen in Stockholm, Haifa 1, worth around 30 million SEK. There was a film laboratory for Sveriges Television there. It was the foundation of Förvaltnings AB Wasatornet, which from the start had us four as owners with forty-two percent for me, ten percent for Elisabeth, and twenty-four percent each for our two children, Carl and Eric. From the very beginning, we discussed all our business at the kitchen table and always pursued joint decisions. And that's how it still is."

"My professional life began after returning from Harvard. By then, my mother-in-law had already asked me if I could support Elisabeth. I replied that I thought she was going to support me, and my mother-in-law burst into one of her big laughs. But my father-in-law was worried about our finances because he couldn't afford to support us. In previous generations, it had been common for "young people" not to receive any significant salary at the beginning of their working life. This was especially true in government service. But now, times were different."