Usher Considered Brusque, Secretive : Optimism and Idealism Also Characterize New USFL Head

Harry L. Usher, the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee’s No. 2 man, was on his way downtown for a security meeting last May 8 when the news flashed that the Soviet Union had decided to boycott the 1984 Games. Committee President Peter Ueberroth was a continent away, in New York City, starting the transcontinental torch relay.

Usher reacted decisively. Within an hour, he had issued a stiffly worded memo instructing the Olympic staff “not to make any comment regarding this matter to anyone.” He ordered reporters barred--not only from talking to anyone--but even from entering the LAOOC’s parking lot. Later in the day, Usher spoke to the staff at what amounted to two pep rallies. He told them that despite anything the Soviets might do, “these are still going to be terrific Olympic Games.”

Both the penchant for secrecy and the habit of expressing idealistic, optimistic sentiments are characteristic of the man who Tuesday was appointed new commissioner of the struggling United States Football League.

The appointment means that both senior architects of the Los Angeles Olympics have gone from the Games to major jobs in national sports. Ueberroth, as commissioner of baseball, is apparently sitting prettier than Usher, since there is no immediate danger that organized baseball will be going out of business.

Even so, Usher, going directly into a crisis situation, has opportunities. It is conceivable that if the USFL fails, some of the league’s teams will eventually be merged into the National Football League, which, in the eyes of many, would be a marked success for the league.

Usher, 45, never made any secret of his desire to use the Olympic job as a stepping stone to something challenging that would give him even more public exposure. There were times in the last few years, however, that he was so much in Ueberroth’s shadow, or even a contrast to Ueberroth, that it seemed he might be disappointed.

For one thing, despite frequent statements that he considered Usher his partner and not his subordinate, Ueberroth had a tendency to grab the spotlight. He was his own press secretary most of the time and newsworthy tips about what was going on at the Olympic committee came most frequently from him.

Usher, on the other hand, would seldom go beyond bland, idealistic generalities. His statements made little news, and he was much quicker than even the sensitive Ueberroth to take offense at what he considered reporters’ negative approaches.

The result was that Usher frequently cut himself off from opportunities for publicity that normally would have come his way. A lawyer, he seemed on principle to believe he ought not be too informative. He also tried to keep others, at lower levels, from speaking. His dedication to secrecy reached the point where, when members of the LAOOC’s own board of directors were going to tour the committee’s offices, he put out a memo warning staff workers to turn over all sensitive papers on their desks before the tour came through.

Another problem was that with the tremendous emphasis Ueberroth and Usher put on being in the black financially, someone had to be the tough guy in all of the committee’s negotiations. Usher was the man. When the committee’s leaders practiced a soft-guy, hard-guy approach toward its contract talks with sponsors, suppliers, police agencies and so on, Ueberroth was most often the soft guy and Usher the hard guy.

That put Usher in a somewhat difficult position when it came to seeking a job after the Olympics. He had alienated many of those he had dealt with, and requests for references sometimes yielded critical responses.

Behind the scenes, Usher had written harsh negotiation letters that were long remembered by their recipients. On the rare occasions when he did speak publicly about negotiations, he sometimes said things that rankled. He suggested last summer, for instance, that the Los Angeles Police Department was trying to bill the Olympic committee for “caviar lunches” for its officers on Olympic duty.

It was Usher who handled the everyday supervision of the Olympic staff, and here, too, his approach was sometimes brusque and controversial, as well as highly intuitive. One staff member was fond of telling how Usher got into an elevator at the committee’s offices one day and noticed boxes of computers stacked there. Deciding that the committee had too many computers if they could be left stacked in an elevator, he reportedly ordered a suspension of computer orders.

Employees were also frequently transferred from job to job in accord with both Ueberroth and Usher’s expressed feeling that such changes kept people on their toes. Firings were not uncommon.

Yet, when it came down to the Olympics, the staff was given credit for doing a superb job. It turned out to be well organized, high spirited and efficient, and Usher has to get much of the credit. Similarly, it is hard to fault Usher’s negotiating skills when the LAOOC came out at least $215 million in the black.

Usher, an only child, was brought up in New Jersey, largely by his mother, having lost his father when he was 3, and a stepfather when he was 10. He did his undergraduate work at Brown University and got his law degree at Stanford. Practicing law in Los Angeles, he worked for almost five years with the prestigious firm of Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, was president of the Beverly Hills Bar Assn., and, as head of his own small firm, became Ueberroth’s lawyer in the days when the Ueberroth headed a large travel company. He joined the Olympic committee as executive vice president and general manager in February, 1980, on Ueberroth’s invitation.

Although he appears quite athletic and younger than his years, Usher had a heart bypass operation when he was only 36. But he worked long hours at the Olympic committee, as did Ueberroth. In contrast to Ueberroth’s rather conservative views on many subjects, in some areas, such as gun control, Usher is a distinct liberal. During discussions within the LAOOC on what kind of security to have, he reportedly took the position that security should be as unobtrusive as possible.

Usher and his wife, Jo, have three teen-age daughters, including twins, and a teen-age son, and live in the San Fernando Valley. His loyalty to the Los Angeles area is such that one of the reported stumbling blocks to his becoming USFL commissioner was his desire to stay here, to the point that he asked whether the league headquarters could be moved here from New York.