“Dwight Rounds was always in limbo,” Merlo said, “he could not focus on one thing very long.” Merlo recalled Dwight telling him that in Wichita he would go out from the lumber yard “to the graveyard to shoot crows.” Neither Dwight nor Bill was a familiar sight at the Rockport office. “Dwight and Bill might show up twice a year at Rockport,” recalled Merlo. Dwight lacked the capacity to take interest or satisfaction from day to day operations of the business. He often seemed at loose ends. “Dwight was never happy even when things were going well,” Merlo pointed out, “and he didn’t want to pay attention to business.” In contrast to Merlo himself, “Dwight didn’t get any fun out of business.” Merlo, on the other hand, felt that to be successful in the timber business or, perhaps, in any business, you had to “love sales, learn sales, and know sales.”

When 46-year-old Dwight committed suicide in 1972, his wife Betty took over Rounds and Porter Lumber Company in Wichita, KS. Without any aptitude for business, she ran the company that Dwight’s grandfather had founded into bankruptcy. This was especially tragic for Merlo because it had been “a company that had made a profit for 80 years.” Out of respect for Ralph Rounds, who had died in 1960, Merlo paid $6 million to bankruptcy court and bought Rounds and Porter. This is the only purchase that Merlo said he made for sentimental reasons. Years later Rounds and Porter was sold.