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Plucking 10 San Diegans from the pages of history and declaring them the century's most influential in business was as difficult as it was fun. After internally narrowing the list to about two dozen, we ran it by folks we respect for their institutional or special memories. We received fresh suggestions, agonized over the drops and in the end were left with 10 Anglo men who built a dusty San Diego into a Navy town, then one where aerospace dominated and then most recently into a big city where digital technology will rule the coming decades. We focused on those who influenced industry and created jobs, not those who built the buildings and homes for the resulting employees.
Certainly John D. Spreckels in the early 1900s and Ernie Hahn late in the century were immensely important to the development of modern Downtown San Diego. But it took the steely vision of a politician, Pete Wilson, to reverse a ruinous decline and put some conditions on suburban sprawl. Fred Rohr brought manufacturing to the South Bay, Tom Sefton built a bank that may be gone but is still revered, Kate Sessions showed us how to be green, Doug Manchester stimulated the nation's coolest convention center, Ray Kroc saved the Padres, Joan Kroc continues to donate millions, Anthony Pico is reversing the fate of Native Americans, Ellen Browning Scripps fostered medical research and oceanography (and in 1926 was the first woman featured on the cover of Time), and Irving Gill set the architectural tone. There were, and are, other greats. But the following 10 presented in alphabetical order, most influenced the shape of commerce as San Diego enters the next millennium.
—Timothy J. McClain, Editor
 J. ROBERT BEYSTER (1924- )
His name may not be a household word, but the 75-year-old founder and CEO of Science Applications International Corp. has built quite a unique and influential high-tech powerhouse over 30 years in La Jolla. Beyster, a physicist whose career has included stints at Westinghouse, Los Alamos National Scientific Laboratory and General Atomic, and a handful of scientist buddies hatched SAIC in 1969, intent on parlaying their experience with nuclear power and weapons into a few federal consulting contracts. Business languished at first, but then Beyster decided to embrace an employee-ownership philosophy - rewarding those who bring in business with stock in the company - and business blossomed. Now boasting more than 38,000 employees and nearly $4 billion in annual sales, SAIC has branched out into such fields as national security, health care, telecommunications and transportation to become the country's largest employee-owned information-technology company. Its purchase of Bell Labs spin-off Bell Communications Research in 1997 (as well as going public with another acquisition, Internet domain-name proprietor Network Solutions Inc., that year) was hailed as SAIC's shining moment in the commercial world - to date, of course.
 JAMES S. COPLEY (1947-1973)
For decades, James Copley and conservative San Diego seemed a perfect, glove-tight fit. A staunch soldier of the Republican Party, Copley often drew criticism for his unwavering loyalty to the GOP while heading the family's sizable newspaper chain that included the San Diego Union and Evening Tribune.
Taking over after his father, Col. Ira Copley, died in 1947, James Copley kept his hand in politics while overseeing an aggressive expansion of his publishing empire. The paper's influence on post-Word War II San Diego stretched from politics to land-use issues that reverberate today.
During his 26-year tenure, the Union's circulation tripled, the paper's influence grew and the company moved to new digs in Mission Valley, representing to this day the single largest exodus of employees from Downtown San Diego. The first paper printed in Mission Valley carried his obituary. His widow, Helen Copley, surprised management by taking the helm of the chain and has carried on James Copley's legacy ever since, though not quite as conservatively.
REUBEN H. FLEET (1887-1975)
 There's much more to this influential San Diegan than the Balboa Park planetarium that bears his name. Fascinated with flying since childhood, Fleet shaped for himself an illustrious career and for San Diego its image as a military-production powerhouse. Fleet had his first taste of San Diego in 1917, when he was ordered to take aviation training here. Next stop: Washington, D.C., to oversee aircrew training and establish the first U.S. Air Mail service. After a few years as business manager at the U.S. Army Flight Test Center in Dayton, Ohio, Major Fleet left the military in 1922 for the private sector, soon starting his own company, Consolidated Aircraft Corp. Known for simple designs, Fleet's first aircraft, the PT-1, soon gained popularity with the Navy and Army. Consolidated's famed seaplane PBY Catalina, so-called flying boats, drew even more business. In 1935, Fleet - needing more production space and calmer weather for test flights - moved the entire operation, including employees and families, from Buffalo to San Diego using 157 leased railroad cars. With war in Europe fast approaching, Consolidated became the U.S. Army Air Corps' second production facility for the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress - with a major difference, thanks to the major. In 10 months, Fleet had redesigned the bomber into the faster, more durable B-24 Liberator, the most widely produced American plane in World War II. Through 1945, more than a third of the 18,000 B-24s had been built at Consolidated by a workforce of men and women that swelled from 4,700 in 1940 to a peak of 42,000 in 1943, drawing throngs of job seekers to San Diego. After the war, he retired from what had become Consolidated-Vultee (Convair) and later a division of General Dynamics.
 IRWIN JACOBS (1933- )
He's been called the "father of CDMA" leading the "Microsoft of telecoms." In the telecommunications world, that adds up to mega-influence. A teacher of engineering and computer sciences at MIT and UCSD in the '50s and '60s, Irwin Jacobs practically wrote the book on successfully moving from academia to business. When Jacobs - with long-time partner Andrew Viterbi - took a break from teaching duties at UCSD in 1971 to start the local legend Linkabit, even these geniuses couldn’t have guessed that their efforts would lead not only to new ways to communicate but how businesses evolve. Purchased in 1980 by M/A-Com, Linkabit would eventually break up and lead to dozens of spin-off telecom companies run by students of Jacobs' smart-people-in-nurturing-places philosophy. It also led Jacobs to start Qualcomm, which has grown from a company of modest ambitions to one of the darlings of Wall Street and San Diego’s largest private employer. With the CDMA technology Jacobs pioneered gaining global acceptance, Qualcomm has jumped full-force on to the world stage. In the wireless telephone world, Jacobs is the man of the moment, and his work has set the stage for a major part of San Diego’s economic future.
 WILLIAM KETTNER (1861-1930)
So, you ask, who's this Kettner guy with a Downtown boulevard named after him? Well, it would be hard to imagine San Diego at the end of the 20th Century without Kettner, a hawkish Democrat if there ever was one, at the beginning of it. The California boom of the 1880s drew the young Minnesota native, where he had worked numerous jobs since the age of 13. By 1908, he was running a local insurance firm and arranging the welcome for President Theodore Roosevelt's world-touring "Great White Fleet," an armada of 27 warships that had to anchor off Coronado because San Diego Bay proved too shallow for battleships. In 1913, Kettner began an eight-year service in Congress, which, coupled with Democrat Woodrow Wilson's presidency, saw San Diego’s rise from military backwater to homeport for the Pacific Fleet, despite spirited competition from conservative-led San Francisco. Kettner secured millions of dollars not only for the dredging of San Diego Bay (and, concurrently, creation of lands that would be occupied by the North Island Naval Air Station, Marine Corps Recruit Depot and Lindbergh Field), but also for the U.S. Naval Training Center and the Naval Hospital in Balboa Park. Dubbed San Diego’s "Million Dollar Congressman," Kettner put the city on course for the future.
 ROGER REVELLE (1909-1991)
Quite simply, without Roger Revelle, there would be no University of California, San Diego, at least not one so carefully focused on a blending of the sciences and a small college atmosphere perched adjacent to bluffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean. That struggle, the defining moment of which came in 1958 when voters deeded 450 acres on Torrey Pines Mesa to the University of California, was a difficult one. As Revelle once explained, "with most things one does for the first time - making love, becoming a father, getting a Ph.D.," creating a university was something he approached "with more enthusiasm than knowledge." Yet his desire for a place where the sciences would be studied and brought to life by seasoned graduates rather than unsure undergraduates, drove him to champion the campus location. From the selection of suitable grounds, to the pursuit of Nobel laureate faculty (most notably from the University of Chicago) Revelle immersed himself in every aspect of the university's growth. He believed that a university should be created from the top down and from the inside out, with great care taken at every step. He envisioned a collective of different colleges - each focusing on a different form of science - working together as a whole. Not only was Revelle instrumental in the selection of the grounds on which UCSD is located, but during his real estate ventures he contributed to the development of surrounding areas. A master plan of the La Jolla/Torrey Pines area included preliminary plans for estates, La Jolla Farms and a golf course. In 1955 he completed a community theater site transaction for the Theater and Arts foundation. Believing that the students and faculty of a scientific university would be stimulated by the arts, he fought to keep the La Jolla Playhouse in production. He played an active role in issues such as the placement of La Jolla Country Day School, Interstate 5, University City and the development of Sorrento Valley. Oh, and this "global warming" thing that’s afflicting us, he figured it out decades ago.
 GLENN A. RICK (1899-1983)
Known as "the father of Mission Bay," legendary city planning director Glenn Rick graced San Diego with his vision of the city as a tourism mecca at just the right time. With the war winding down, San Diego found itself searching for a way to maintain economic momentum for its booming population. For 25 years, city officials had dreamed of dredging a first-class aquatic park out of the state-owned mud flats of Mission Bay, but the war effort and the state's tight purse strings relegated plans to the back burner. By the end of World War II, Mission Bay returned to the forefront, and Rick emerged as the driving force behind its planning. He also sold it well to voters, who in 1945 approved the first $2 million bond issue to develop the park, as well as subsequent bond issues, totaling $7 million, in 1950 and 1956. Rick left as planning director in 1955 to establish Rick Engineering Co., which over the years has had a hand in the planning of numerous San Diego landmarks including UCSD, the San Diego Wild Animal Park, the Salk Institute, much of the regional freeway system and Fashion Valley Center.
 T. CLAUDE RYAN (1898-1982)
Of all the Hollywood-type stories in San Diego’s history, none may be as compelling as that of Ryan Airlines Inc. - nor of its most famous client. Two years into operating the country's first year-round air-passenger service, the buzz had evaporated for Ryan's San Diego-to-Los Angeles flights. Facing bankruptcy in 1927, Ryan sold his interest to high-rolling partner Benjamin Franklin Mahoney but remained on as manager. Worried more by money matters than his true love of plane design, Ryan nevertheless seemed intrigued by a wire sent from St. Louis by a 25-year-old former airmail pilot and wing walker named Charles A. Lindbergh. Seeking to win $25,000 for making the first nonstop flight across the Atlantic, Lindbergh asked if Ryan could build a single-engine plane for such a trek. The rest, of course, is history. The Spirit of St. Louis now has a place of honor in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., and the worldwide publicity of Lindbergh's historic feat made Ryan Airlines a household name, but it was ill-prepared to handle the orders. The fame drove Ryan into seclusion, but his newly formed Ryan Aeronautical Co. became a key player in the aviation industry. His nimble Ryan ST was the backbone of the World War II training corps. The Navy scooped up Ryan's combo jet-propeller planes and vertical-takeoff aircraft, the Ryan X13 Vertijet. The unmanned, remote-controlled flying drone came from Ryan, as did radar technology for NASA's lunar modules for Apollo moon missions. By the time Teledyne Inc. bought his company in 1969 for $128 million, Ryan's legacy in San Diego’s history was secure.
 C. ARNHOLT SMITH (1899-1996)
Smith ruled San Diego’s political and business establishment in the '50s and '60s, and some of his legacy remains. At the peak of the financier's dominance, his holdings included a great bank, the U.S. National Bank Building, the posh Westgate Plaza Hotel, National Iron Works (precursor to National Steel & Shipbuilding Co.), fleets of tuna boats and Yellow Cabs, a bus line, an airline, silver mines and the San Diego Padres. A San Diego High dropout, Smith was briefly a grocery clerk before going to work for Merchants National Bank, which later became Bank of America. At 34, he brokered a deal to take over U.S. National Bank, which over the years grew from a solitary downtown office and assets of $1.7 million to 62 branches throughout Southern California with assets approaching $1 billion. With this he built his empire and earned the title "Mr. San Diego" by the local business community. That empire, and Smith's lock on the establishment, began to crumble in 1973, when federal regulators declared his bank insolvent, the biggest such bank failure in U.S. history at the time. Smith was hit with indictments for bank fraud, tax evasion and making illegal campaign contributions and in 1979 was convicted of embezzling nearly $9 million from his holdings. After a five-year legal battle, Smith served eight months in a county honor camp. He died, still pondering his fall from grace, in 1996 in a Del Mar nursing home.
 PETE WILSON (1933- )
San Diego’s most influential politician and its only resident to serve as California's governor, Pete Wilson came into local politics just as C. Arnholt Smith's grip on things began to slip. Wilson became San Diego’s mayor in 1971 - despite rejecting a campaign contribution from Smith - and that’s when modern-day San Diego began to take shape. The Centre City Development Corp. he fought to establish has helped reawaken a comatose Downtown with the likes of Horton Plaza, new hotels, offices and the inspiration for a new convention center, while sparing the historic Gaslamp Quarter. He's credited, with Maureen O'Connor and James Mills, with bringing the San Diego Trolley to town. His managed-growth philosophy helped rope in overeager developers in the northern suburbs, or at least forced some to build Downtown before they could expand outtatown. And his "better in northern San Diego than nowhere in San Diego" philosophy led to today’s Torrey Pines, University City and Sorrento Mesa business and research centers.
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