Almost 60 years ago, the Bell Telephone Company launched a program to address rising concerns about the education of its managers.

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Three and a half years ago Gary Fuller was vice president of operations for an affiliate of Cincinnati Bell, an Ohio telephone company.

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Others arose from service on boards as diverse as those of Pacific Bell, California's huge telephone company, the NAACP Legal Defence and Educational Fund and McClatchy, a Sacramento-based newspaper chain that now extends across America.

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But if Alexander Graham Bell had fallen into the Grand River and drowned that day back in Brantford, the world would still have had the telephone, the only difference being that the telephone company would have been nicknamed Ma Gray, not Ma Bell.

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