Bob Updegraff, as his friends and clients called him, was a business counselor serving as a personal advisor over a period of forty years to the top management of such leading companies as: Aluminum Company of America; American Brake Shoe Company; General Foods Corporation; W. T. Grant Company; John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company; Hart, Schaffner & Marx; Jewel Companies, Inc.; Kellogg Company; Lever Bros. Company; Shaw-Walker Company and Westinghouse Electric Corporation.
He also carried out a special project for Reader's Digest to which he had contributed several articles under various pen names. He served as Director for Scarsdale National Bank for 32 years; Jewel Companies, Inc. for 25 years; and W. T. Grant Company for 18 years. Although he resigned from all boards at age seventy as a matter of principle, he remained associated with several of his long-term clients well into his eighties.
He was still writing articles and drafting books he hoped to publish at the time of his death at 88.
“Success is a journey, not a destination.”