On Wings Of Eagles (1990)

He was a happy man with a happy family, but a shadow had fallen over them this Christmas. Perot's mother was dying. She had bone cancer. On Christmas Eve she had fallen at home: it was not a heavy fall, but because the cancer had weakened her bones, she had broken her hip and had to be rushed to Baylor Hospital in downtown Dallas.

Perot's sister, Bette, spent that night with their mother; then, on Christmas Day, Perot and Margot and the five children loaded the presents into the station wagon and drove to the hospital. Grandmother was in such good spirits that they all thoroughly enjoyed their day. However, she did not want to see them the following day: she knew they had planned to go skiing, and she insisted they go, despite her illness. Margot and the children left for Vail on December 26, but Perot stayed behind.

There followed a battle of wills such as Perot had fought with his mother in childhood. Lulu May Perot was only an inch or two over five feet, and slight, but she was no more frail than a sergeant in the marines. She told him he worked hard and he needed the holiday. He replied that he did not want to leave her. Eventually the doctors intervened, and told him he was doing her no good by staying against her will. The next day he joined his family in Vail. She had won, as she always had when he was a boy.

One of their battles had been fought over a Boy Scout trip. There had been flooding in Texarkana, and the Scouts were planning to camp near the disaster area for three days and help with relief work. Young Perot was determined to go, but his mother knew that he was too young--he would only be a burden to the scoutmaster. Young Ross kept on and on at her, and she just smiled sweetly and said no.

That time he won a concession from her: he was allowed to go and help pitch tents the first day, but he had to come home in the evening. It wasn't much of a compromise. But he was quite incapable of defying her. He just had to imagine the scene when he would come home, and think of the words he would use to tell her that he had disobeyed her--and he knew he could not do it.

He was never spanked. He could not remember even being yelled at. She did not rule him by fear. With her fair hair, blue eyes, and sweet nature, she bound him--and his sister, Bette--in chains of love. She would just look you in the eye and tell you what to do, and you simply could not bring yourself to make her unhappy.

Even at the age of twenty-three, when Ross had been around the world and come home again, she would say: "Who have you got a date with tonight? Where are you going? What time will you be back?" And when he came home he would always have to kiss her good night. But by this time their battles were few and far between, for her principles were so deeply embedded in him that they had become his own. She now ruled the family like a constitutional monarch, wearing the trappings of power and legitimizing the real decision-makers.

He had inherited more than her principles. He also had her iron will. He, too, had a way of looking people in the eye. He had married a woman who resembled his mother. Blond and blue-eyed, Margot also had the kind of sweet nature that Lulu May had. But Margot did not dominate Perot.

Everybody's mother has to die, and Lulu May was now eighty-two, but Perot could not be stoical about it. She was still a big part of his life. She no longer gave him orders, but she did give him encouragement. She had encouraged him to start EDS, and she had been the company's book-keeper during the early years as well as a founding director. He could talk over problems with her. He had consulted her in December 1969, at the height of his campaign to publicize the plight of American prisoners of war in North Vietnam. He had been planning to fly to Hanoi, and his colleagues at EDS had pointed out that if he put his life in danger the price of EDS stock might fall. He was faced with a moral dilemma: Did he have the right to make shareholders suffer, even for the best of causes? He had put the question to his mother. Her answer had been unhesitating. "Let them sell their shares." The prisoners were dying, and that was far more important than the price of EDS stock.

It was the conclusion Perot would have come to on his own. He did not really need her to tell him what to do. Without her, he would be the same man and do the same things. He was going to miss her, that was all. He was going to miss her very badly indeed.