Moving Metal

o’clock, Schiotis would say, “Mrs. Littell, it’s time for you to go home.” “Oh, is it already?” Littell would ask mournfully. By 1991, Littell’s memory was failing. Gimbel took her out to dinner and said “Bettie, for your own safety, you have to retire.” It was an act of sincere compassion, but Littell was crushed. The very next morning she turned in her keys and ledgers and left, never to return. The disappointment was evident in her formal resignation letter to Gimbel. “This is the most difficult task you have assigned to me, and I have not found it easy to comply willingly,” she wrote. Schiotis took over her duties full time and became Executive Corporate Secretary until retiring in 2008. Another rising star during the transition was Karla R. Lewis (then McDowell), who joined Reliance in 1992 as Corporate Controller. Born and raised in the small farming community of Millersburg, Ohio, Lewis graduated fromOhio State University in Columbus with a Bachelor of Science degree in Accounting and became a certified public accountant. “I always knew I wanted to be a businesswoman in a big city,” she said, and from an early age, she began investigating which city she wanted to go to. She decided that New York was too dirty and that Columbus was too close, so during her senior year in college, when she was entering a professional accounting internship program, she settled on sunny Los Angeles. She interned at Ernst & Whinney (formerly Ernst & Ernst) and worked on the Reliance audit. After graduation, she moved permanently to Los Angeles and went to work full-time for Ernst & Whinney. Lewis worked the Reliance audit for four years and got to know many people within the company, including Hannah himself. In 1992, one of the new joint venture companies needed a controller, and Hannah thought that Lewis would

Outside sales secretary Yvette Schiotis, left, and bookkeeper Bettie Littell in the 1960s, at the outset of their long working relationship. Schiotis replaced Littell as Corporate Secretary in 1991.

a.m. and remaining until after dark. She had no plans to retire, insisting to Schiotis, “I will die with my boots on.” After Littell’s health began declining, Schiotis became Assistant Corporate Secretary. One of her tasks was to make sure that Littell, who was now working only part-time, went home each day. “She was there at five, six o’clock in the morning until one o’clock,” said Schiotis, “and you had to push her out.” Each day at one

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