here is the deepest secret nobody knows
As Facebook reminded me yesterday morning, I have four friends born on September 18th. Like most days, initially, I reflexively prepared to move on to the next notification, but then something caught my eye and I paused to appreciate it: it was the day that four special people, each of whom has played a unique role in my life, were born and now that only three of them are still with us physically, I stopped to ponder a moment over the blessing that each has been and is. In this spirit, I’d like to share my reflections with you, in hopes both that they touch you in the present and, more importantly, motivate you to reflect on, appreciate and celebrate those in your life whom you hold or have held dear.…
I’ll start with Vinnie Wilmot, a college friend and fellow DJ whose moniker at the time was “Neon”: as I remember it, a sly reference to the reality that he’s one of the highest-yellow African-Americans you’ll ever meet. He was also one of those scary-smart people who wasn’t the most socially graceful but was uniquely capable of casually dropping a powerful observation or insight into a conversation and moving on as if nothing of consequence had occurred.
Honestly, I don’t know when the last time I’ve seen Vinnie is, but I suspect that it wasn’t this century, which means that it’s been quite a long time indeed. He’s a great example of why I’m so thankful for Facebook, despite its myriad flaws, because he and I reconnect through this medium on occasion and I’m reminded of the many, many times Neon would drop some knowledge on us or, even more often, a humorous observation, anecdote or joke that would keep us laughing for days. If memory serves, he’s in the DC area now and doing some sort of consulting or engineering or other endeavor where he’s using that powerful mind of his.…
Julie Devine is a college classmate of mine whom I came to know when she went by her maiden name, Friedli. I always thought of this as a variation of the word “friendly,” because that she surely was and is. In fact, she’s one of the most effervescent people I’ve ever known and, in her adulthood, has matured into one of the most compassionate and passionate as well. It’s funny how life works, but at college she met a high school friend of mine, one year our junior, and married him. The college sweethearts have been together for decades now and raised a family, several members of whom have attended our alma mater as well.
And there’s more to the story: that friend of mine whom Julie married is actually the younger brother of my high school classmate to whom I lost the election for the presidency of our student senate. It was a crushing blow at the time, compounded by the infuriating reality that I lost by a handful of votes but about ten of my classmates whom I considered friends had skipped school that day and missed the election: man, did that suck!
More representative of how funny-wonderful and strange life can be, a year later that younger brother ran to succeed his older one – who had, in fact, succeeded an even older one – and his opponent, now a Jesuit priest, asked me to give his nomination speech. There was a bit of a kerfuffle when word got out that I had agreed, to the point where the administrators in charge of the election actually censored my speech. But Tim went on to win and serve brilliantly in the role and then join Julie and me in Cambridge a year later … and the rest, as they say, is history: he and Julie met, they’ve been together ever since and had a wonderful life together and Tim has gone on to enjoy great success in his career as an attorney, including in its latest iteration focused on the public interest.
It’s funny how life works, but I’ve seen Tim and Julie just a few times in the past few decades, but, again, via the medium of Facebook, have come to know them even better as adults than I did when we were students together, and, even better, my esteem and admiration for them has grown even more so.
One of the most indelible memories of our last class reunion is reading Julie’s heartfelt, raw and amazingly honest meditation on her concern for our society and the role she felt compelled to play in addressing its challenges in our Class Report. As I read it, I couldn’t help but think that she couldn’t have found a better and more aligned life partner than Tim, which brings me joy to this day. I’m so happy that they found each other and that I’ve been blessed to know them individually and as a couple throughout this journey of our shared adult lives.…
The person whose birthday notice caught my eye and drew me in was none other than Jon Isham, a dear college friend who’s now a professor at Middlebury. Jon and I were cool but not especially close in college, though I shared one of my most memorable adventures with him back in the day. Since our time together, he’s gone on to craft an impressive and impactful career in academia, highlighted by his application of economic science to real world social issues and concerns. How do I know this since I haven’t seen him this century? Yep, Facebook.
In addition to his sterling and contributory career, Jon’s raised a family, shared a sabbatical year with them teaching in Africa and become an influential and socially aware and engaged pillar of the community in Vermont. But when I first got to know him, he was my club brother who lived in Central Square – which, at the time (long before it was gentrified), was considered a bit seedy – and commuted to campus via bicycle. And he always looked a little shaggy and, dare I say, ‘informal’ (read = scruffy), so I assumed that, like me, he was a working- or middle-class kid work-studying his way through our tony Ivy League college.
Wow: how very wrong I was, it turned out! Which has been a lesson that’s stayed with me ever since.
In reality, Jon is about as WASPy as one can be, the scion of a distinguished family from Newport, Rhode Island. I can only speculate as to their wealth, but what was most impressive is that it was so old that they’d reached the stage where rather than advertise it, they lived simply and humbly so as to seem without it.
But one weekend I was treated to a fabulous adventure: as part of its pledging process, our club decided to have a series of weekend road trips, including two in which I participated, one to New York City and one to Newport. The latter would not only reveal a completely contrasting picture of the one I had of Jon to that time, but it proved so indelible that I’ve never forgotten its lesson: never, ever judge a book by its cover or a person by his or her appearance. Here’s why:
We piled into somebody’s car – or possibly Frank Foster’s dad’s customized, carpeted and tricked out ‘n’ tacky Econoline van (you know, just like the one you’d expect every uber wealthy, patrician Texan to have) – and proceeded on the less than two-hour jaunt to Newport. We would be staying at Jon’s house, which, given how modestly he lived, struck me as a perfect venue for a bunch of rowdy college bros and their aspiring associates. As we arrived in town, we took a left turn onto Ayrault Street. Sitting in the front passenger seat, I gazed ahead and saw one of those beautiful mansions at the end of the street, the kind that make you look twice and think to yourself “Wow, whoever lives there must be rich as hell!” And then Jon instructed us to pull into the driveway!
How incredible was his family abode? Let’s just say that it’s the only home in which I’ve been – and Lord knows I’ve been to many incredible homes as well as lived in a few myself – that featured a central five-story spiral staircase with a glass skylight at the top that we let in sunlight so radiant that the entire place glowed warmly. In a word, the Isham abode named, appropriately, Ayrault House, was splendiferous! In fact, the only memory I have of it now, in addition to first seeing it positioned strategically and majestically at the end of its eponymous street, is that incredible spiral staircase which, for a poor boy on work-study and financial aid from inner-city Detroit became my inspiration: someday, I promised myself, I would live in such an incredible mansion.
That Jon was embarrassed to be found out was one of my favorite memories of the trip: no, he wasn’t some regular kid workin’ his way through college, he was a silver spoon scion too down to earth to ever let anyone know … until he hosted that pledging party, that is. Thereafter, I could kid him legitimately, because it turns out that he was to the manor born but playing a working-class kid on the make, while I actually was one.
What I didn’t realize at the time was just how intellectually aligned Jon and I were. Sure, we had many pleasant conversations about things somewhat meaningful to twentysomethings as well as about trivial ones, but we never really discussed our shared intellectual and academic interests. It’s perhaps ironic that Jon took more African-American history courses in college than I did, but, I’m happy to report as an adult that he, too, is a passionate student of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., among other shared heroes, and is one of the most socially concerned and influential of my friends.
Not surprisingly, my appreciation for Jon has grown greatly in recent years, but, so, too, has a sense of regret: man, what a missed opportunity it was for us not to connect on our shared academic and intellectual passions back when we had hours of free time to indulge them! We chat occasionally over Facebook (Messenger) now and I find myself invariably Liking or otherwise responding to his posts, but I’m ever mindful of what could’ve been: imagine how much closer we could have been and could be as friends had we fully appreciated our shared interests and passions before the world and our adult lives took us on such widely divergent paths. Simply put, Jon’s among a select group of college friends who remind me just how blessed I was to come of age physically, emotionally and intellectually in such a fertile environment with such incredible and incredibly gifted people. I’m thankful for them every day, even though the gift of them dates to a century and a decade long past.…
The fourth and final of my friends for whom September 18th was his birthday is the hardest to write about because, even a decade later, his passing still hurts. He was a young man of such promise who didn’t live to fulfill it fully; indeed, a tragic loss for us all.
Dominic Morabito was on my leadership team and served as our in-house tech guru. Simply put, Dom had a gift: I don’t know how he did it, but he seemed to be able to figure out just about anything having to do with technology eventually, so I both admired him as a young professional and felt undeservedly fortunate to have such an incredibly talented young man on my team.
Don’t get me wrong, Dom wasn’t an angel: as savants are wont to do, he had to learn to overcome his innate impatience with those not technologically inclined either from a skill or will standpoint. Suffice it to say that I had to intervene more than a few times with several of my most senior and influential financial advisor colleagues whom he had managed to anger with his precociousness. Yep, one of Dom’s “developmental opportunities” was to develop the ability to serve others far less gifted as well as less inclined to learn, at least about his domain of mastery. After several quite candid and even pointed conversations, he began to take my guidance to heart and thereafter was a joy to behold: sharing his gifts so freely but more effectively was an inspiration to us all.
Like most tech geeks, truth be told, Dom was a bit socially awkward. Once you got to know him, you couldn’t help but love him … but he wasn’t the easiest person to get to know, at least initially. In other words, he was an older version of my eldest son, who at the time was entering his double-digit years with incredible gifts with respect to technology, music and automotive pursuits but was not exactly particularly socially adept. He and Dom hit it off immediately, and I made an effort to include Junior in as many opportunities to hang out with Dom as I could. On occasion, I would bring my son to conferences that I sponsored so that he could hang out with Dominic and help him run the tech infrastructure that animated the event. They were both in their glory.
So when Dominic passed away a few years later after some struggles with depression, it devastated both of us and all who knew and loved him. To this day, I think back to the last conversation I had with him the week before he died in which he expressed pride in having mentored a family member successfully to make positive choices in his young life. He was really looking forward to being this young man’s older brother by proxy, a role that I hoped he’d also play in my son’s life as well. But it was not to be.…
A few years before I retired and left the company, one of my last adventures was to treat my wonderfully diverse, extremely hard-working and supremely successful team to a half-day paintball extravaganza. Even those of us who’d never indulged in this pursuit previously, or had any awareness of the huge subculture associated with it, had a blast. And I learned something about my protégé on that day: Dom was a paintballer, and a highly skilled one at that. Though we switched up the teams several times, I had the opportunity to benefit from his exceptional skill more often, thankfully, than I was subjected to it.
Someone took a picture of the two of us, mid-stroll, reviewing our learnings from the last session and plotting our strategy for the next. It’s one of my most treasured memories of him and every year when it pops up in my Facebook feed, I smile broadly and then begin to cry. I miss my friend and protégé dearly and am so saddened for all of us who knew and loved him and for the world that he didn’t live to manifest his beauty and brilliance fully. He deserved that, as I hope, did we.
But my most indelible memory of Dominic is a private one: he called and asked if we could meet, just the two of us, because he wanted to seek my guidance. It turns out that after the tragedy of 9/11, he’d been searching for a way to be of service and to help heal the wound that we all felt, lingering so long as it did after that fateful day. He had considered pausing his career and joining the military, but instead decided to become a volunteer paramedic.
In order to do this, however, he needed a favor from me: his training would interfere with his regular work schedule and he needed me to approve a modified one so that he could pursue both of his service passions. I look back and laugh a little about his discomfort asking me: he was truly nervous that I might say no. I laugh because there was never any chance of a negative response given that his choice filled me with such pride that I was honored to be able to grant his wish.
He went on to serve for several years with distinction before he met his own untimely end. Truth be told, I don’t know that any of us who knew and loved him have fully recovered since….
So on September 18th each year, I thank God for the blessing of Vinnie and Julie and Jon in my life and shed several tears for dearly departed Dominic. Collectively, they represent the wonder and wounds of life: beautiful people who’re blessings but also gifts whose term is unknown, as is our own.
Yesterday, I cried a little more than usual as I realized that Dom’s been gone for a decade now, though I’m also heartened by the continuing and ever-increasing realization how great a blessing he was in my life. So I carry his spirit forward with me and remind myself to slow down occasionally and revel in the continuing gift of his fellow Virgos, a diverse and wonderful bunch they are.
Each of them remains forever in my heart and, I hope, in
yours as well, though for you they’ll have different names and have gifted you
with different memories and moments of meaning. Ah, youth: that time of life
when we’re bestowed with so many blessings and yet too often insufficiently
mature to appreciate them fully.
While I can’t go back and change the past, I can be sure that I carry these cherished souls with me now and into the future with an ever greater appreciation for who they were and are as unique souls and beautiful human beings as well as for the profound sense of gratitude that they’ve engendered by being such blessings in this, my one and only life.…
For auld lang syne, my dearFor auld lang syneWe'll take a cup o' kindness yetFor days of auld lang syne
- Robert Burns (Traditional, 1788)
No comments:
Post a Comment