An agency's new chief gets down to business - Erskine Bowles; Small Business Administration - includes biographical and family information and his fundraising efforts for diabetes research - Cover Story

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Nov 1, 1993 | by Betsy Pisik

But there are those who still watch the SBA with a wary eye. In Eckerly's words, "Just because you have an energetic administrator who wants to do good things for the agency, that doesn't justify the agency."

Business as Usual for Bowles

Erskine Bowles likes to call himself a businessman, not a politician.

He is also a devoted - if long-distance - husband and father.

Crandall Close Bowles, his wife of 22 years, is an executive vice president at Springs Industries Inc., a textile business in Fort Mill, S.C., with interests in insurance, real estate, leasing, publishing and railroads. A daughter of H. William Close, the late chairman of Springs, Crandall Close was a classmate of Hillary Rodham's at Wellesley College.

Mrs. Bowles considered moving to Washington when her husband took the job as administrator of the Small Business Administration, but she decided to stay in Charlotte, N.C., with her own work and the couple's children Sam, 18, Ann, 17, and Bill, 16,

Her husband rarely brings paperwork along on vacations. He tries to get home most weekends and succeeds about half the time. The Bowleses are not active in the Washington social scene.

The couple is involved with the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, of which Erskine was once an officer. The Bowleses have helped raise about $60 million for the foundation in the decade since diabetes was diagnosed in their son Sam.

Bowles remembers talking to President Clinton, "one friend to another," about the pain the condition has caused his family and about how important fetal tissue experiments could be in diabetes research. Clinton later presented Bowles with the pen he used to sign the order that overturned the ban on such research.

Although Bowles has repeatedly turned down offers to run for public office, he has been a fundraiser for the Democratic Party.

In Charlotte, he held a fundraiser for the Clinton campaign, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars.

After the election last year, Bowles worked with Mickey Kantor, now the U.S. trade representative, for several weeks, helping coordinate the economic summit that convened in Little Rock, Ark., this past December.

Clinton displayed his appreciation by seating Bowles near the podium in January when he took the presidential oath of office.

As for his new employment with the SBA, Bowles says, "I loved working at [investment firm] Morgan Stanley, and to build [my own firm] Bowles Hollowell was a dream come true. But nothing has ever been as fulfilling as this."

He pays a price, however. "People who know me know I miss my family," Bowles says, speaking slowly. "There is a lot of joy in my life that's not here."