With the workers compensation laws of the states of Pennsylvania and Oklahoma being as similar as they were, our Dallas KPMG Peat Marwick consulting practice won a joint contract. The work was done in 3 locations, Scranton, PA, Oklahoma City, OK, and Dallas, TX.

Flying to the project site at an old public school facility in northeastern part of the city only took 45 minutes. The flight attendants didn’t even have time to serve drinks on the flight.

This project was the first of our Dallas office since the merger of Peat, Marwick, Mitchell & Co. (my firm) and Klynveld Main Goerdeler (KMG) which had been finalized earlier in the year. As expected, there was some animosity to overcome between the 2 groups of employees which would alter the course of many of our career paths within the firm.

I stayed at a Residence Inn (a new concept in motels in those days) south of the airport and our team members would take a leased car to the job site. On some evenings when I worked later than some of the other members of the team, I would call for a taxi to take me back to the motel but had trouble getting a cab driver to agree because of the wave of cab driver related crimes in the northeastern part of the city at that time.