Past master

As the sole employee of the International Memory Training Institute, self-taught expert William Hersey trains CEOs and NASA scientists in the art of recollection

by Andrew Weiner

William Hersey. Photo by Mark Ostow

Some institutes occupy entire campuses. This one has only a modest, quiet plot in a modest, quiet town. Some institutes are in office parks near interstates, with addresses like Research Way or Technology Drive. This one is located in Evergreen Acres, down a woodsy dirt road called Memory Lane. Some institutes have research librarians and catalogued archives. This one has a pad and pencil by the toilet, and a pair of dim rooms where books, mementos, and photo albums compete for what little space remains on the shelves and the carpet.

Some institutes have boards of directors. The International Memory Training Institute has William Hersey. The International Memory Training Institute is William Hersey, a tall, hale 90-year-old man who rises from his rocker to greet me with an improbably firm handshake. With his outsize belt buckle, turquoise Western-cut shirt, and matching string tie, he looks more like a prosperous rancher than a onetime consultant to government agencies and Fortune 500 corporations.

"Look at my face," he instructs me, and I do. Hersey's features project confidence and reliability: his jaw is even, his gaze steady, his brow broad and crowned with thick white hair. He bears a strong resemblance to the portrait of Alexander Hamilton on the $10 bill. "Now picture unwrapping a Hershey bar and rubbing it over my head. You'll never forget my name."

I'VE BASICALLY toured the Institute just by walking through Hersey's living room and into his study. Its walls display framed certificates from Tufts University and a local Masonic lodge, but its outstanding attribute is owls -- stained-glass owls, carved owls, owl dolls, even an actual stuffed barn owl. Fairlee, Hersey's wife of 67 years, tells me there are more than 200 of them in the house: "They represent wisdom . . . and the woods."

Hersey chuckles as he warns me of his tendency to ramble, a trait that led his high-school debating teammates to nickname him Blabbermouth. Before I can respond, he starts telling me his story.

In his heyday, Hersey could tell you what was on any page in the current issue of Life magazine. Before his memory seminars, he would learn the names and occupations of every member of his audience, which could run to 300 people. Today, at age 90, he can still memorize the order of a deck of cards.

Hard as it may be to believe, these stunts weren't the product of prodigious talent, but of simple hard work. Just as remarkable is that Hersey taught himself these skills on his own, and that he did so in midlife, having already worked his way up through two fields. As a young man, Hersey studied psychology at Tufts. In the years before World War II he worked in a Standard Oil service station on Comm Ave in Boston, first as a "grease monkey," then as a manager, and later as a supervisor. At 40, he left the company to go into business selling mutual funds.

But his mnemonic powers remained undeveloped until he was asked to speak at the Sharon, Massachusetts Rotary Club in 1954. The Rotarians informed Hersey that their previous speaker had memorized everyone's name, and challenged him to do the same. He did, and started trying the trick at other engagements. Friends suggested he go out for quiz shows, and in 1958 he appeared on Concentration, coming home with $30,000 in cash and prizes.

These experiences persuaded Hersey that an effective memory is the key to success. But before he could spread this message, he needed to transform himself from amateur to expert. The methods he used are documented in his 1990 book, Blueprints for Memory: Your Guide To Remembering Business Facts, Figures, and Faces (AMACOM).

According to Hersey, one way to memorize a stranger's name is to make it into an acronym. The first time I introduced myself to him he responded, "Andrew: Active Noteworthy Dynamic Resourceful Energetic Winning." (When performing this trick on a woman, he advises, be sure to avoid using any adjectives that might send the wrong message.) Another way is to form mental images. If you meet a librarian named Don Painter, visualize him painting a library at dawn. (Fine, I reply, but what about a name like Wocyzkowsi? Without pausing he answers: "Picture a wise cow on skis.")

For lists of numbers, Hersey uses a code originally developed by the 19th-century memory expert Gregor von Feinaigle, whose name gave rise to the term "finagle." Each digit is assigned a letter; these letters are used to form words and then pictures. If this process seems somewhat arcane, it relies on the same principle behind the phone-number mnemonics used in commercials: people are much more likely remember a fact if it has meaning.

Having mastered these techniques, Hersey went into business on his own, conducting seminars for government agencies, including NASA, and companies like IBM. The most popular subject was "Names and Faces," but he also taught clients how to retain headlines, recall figures, and learn essential phrases for business travel.

His methods were essentially updated versions of rhetorical devices that date back to classical orators like Cicero. The same arts of memory were used in the vaudeville era by entertainers like the Mr. Memory character in Hitchcock's film The 39 Steps. Later, they became the basis of innumerable self-improvement books. But Hersey distances himself from the showy techniques of the celebrity performers. To him, that is "fakery." His whole approach is rooted in an unpretentious populism. Anyone can learn to have a better memory: "People don't want to be thought foolish."

Instead of the razzle-dazzle illusion of genius, Hersey offers a more plain-spoken message: whoever you are, a better memory can help you remember how to be the person you want to be. Better recall is "the golden key to self-improvement." His book explains how mnemonic devices can help you stop smoking and lose weight (each time you go for a Ring-Ding, remember the acronym CAKE: Creates Apathy Kills Expectation).

In the past 15 years, Hersey has turned his attention to a wider cause: he distributes self-published pamphlets that make the Constitution easier to remember by translating it into everyday English and Spanish. His tract, subtitled "Your Handbook to the American Dream," reads like a crib sheet for a college con-law class. Two years ago, he published a rhyming Constitution for schoolchildren; recently, he sold some to the Raynham, Massachusetts public schools.

This effort has led Hersey to lobby members of Congress, and also to approach the Sulzberger family (who publish the New York Times) and Ross Perot about the social benefits of memory. To hear him tell it, problems as disparate as low voter turnout and racial profiling could be solved through something as simple as a mnemonic device. This practically limitless belief in a can-do, self-starting perfectibility recalls a bygone era -- with his penchant for quoting figures like John Adams, Hersey comes off as the very picture of home-grown enlightenment. After a few hours in his company, I wouldn't be surprised if he broke off a monologue on natural science to produce a Leyden jar for my inspection.

FULL DISCLOSURE: the preceding section, while factually accurate, is misleading. It makes Hersey's story sound orderly and uniform. It isn't at all.

Over the course of some four hours, Hersey cites theories, aphorisms, and various precepts of management strategy. He recites odes, popular songs, constitutional amendments in rhyme, and bits of doggerel, including a verse about a boy from Indiana who moves away but still grows nostalgic whenever he smells an outhouse.

If the past is another country, our conversation is like a long cab ride from that country's airport with a driver who might not have any idea where he's going. I hear a familiar phrase and think we've come full circle, only for us to take off in an unknown direction. But the thing about traveling back in time is that your currency is much stronger. You can spend months, years, decades in the past while losing only hours of present time. So even though I know Hersey is taking me for a ride, I never feel I'm being ripped off.

One sample page of my notes finds Hersey hopscotching between these topics: the insidious effects of commercials, President Bush's choppy speaking style, a popular Spanish proverb, and a Texas oil man's attempt to combat socialism by using mnemonics to teach British schoolchildren the principles of free-market economics.

Later, he waxes philosophical, telling me that you can never know harmony until you learn to obey the laws of nature: "You have to learn to cooperate with gravity, or it will kill you." The same, he says, is true of time. He reinforces his point with a couplet: "One hour alone is in thine hands/The Now in which the shadow stands." When I ask if this is the key to his good health, he gives me the recipe for the cocktail he drinks every morning: dissolve one tablespoon Metamucil in six ounces of orange juice. Add one raw egg. Stir.

I can't remember when I ask Hersey the last time he forgot something, but I do write down his answer: "Why, this morning I forgot to put in my hearing aid." Sometimes, he says, he needs to clear out useless memories in order to make space for new ones. His trick is to picture draping the item with a dark cloth.

A routine for forgetting would sound strange coming from anyone but a man who compares memory to a file clerk, a man whose insistent mention of details -- the hour of sunrise, the time of his favorite TV show, the amount of salmon he usually buys -- makes him occasionally sound like a talking almanac. But, as I have multiple occasions to realize during our interview, this painstaking order is subtly undone by the digressive, haphazard tangents of actual remembering. It's enough to make anyone doubt whether the meanings that make a memory "stick" can ever be reduced to acronyms, images, or codes. At one point Hersey himself sheepishly tells me, "I have a bit of a butterfly memory."

Happily, though, efficiency of recall doesn't always seem to be his chief concern. Before I leave, I ask Hersey if there's anything he forgot to mention. He chuckles, smiles wistfully, and replies: "Only that it's been a whole life full of positive and productive memories."

Andrew Weiner remembers where you put your keys. Ask him at weimar99@yahoo.com.