Meindl has that effect on people. All kinds of people: Silicon Valley titans, engineering graduate students, bellmen, taxi drivers, inventors, and even jaded journalists. As Perry was to learn, Meindl leaves a trail of smiles everywhere he goes. He's just that nice.
Perry really needed a smile on that gray day in February. She was making her first trip on assignment after taking time off to recover from a ruptured disc; still wearing a neck brace, she wasn't sure she'd be able to sit comfortably for more than an hour. That's why she was meeting Meindl in a Silicon Valley hotel instead of on his home turf at Georgia Tech, in Atlanta. Meindl was in California, not far from where Perry lives, attending a meeting at SanDisk Corp., where he's on the board. Also on his agenda was the International Solid State Circuits Conference in San Francisco--he hasn't missed one in almost half a century.
Greeting Perry in the lobby, he told her he'd read so many of her articles he felt he knew her. It's about the sweetest music a journalist ever hears, and it wasn't just flattery, Perry swears. During 4 hours of interviews in and around the hotel, a favorite of Meindl's, he paused from time to time to chat with hotel and restaurant workers, often asking them questions about their lives that suggested a familiarity that went well beyond small talk.
And when Perry left that day, she realized that Meindl had given her something more than a good story. He had let her borrow his rose-colored glasses, and for the next few days, everything she looked at seemed just a bit brighter.