My Father's Son

My father’s desk is covered in piles of paper, but he knows where everything is. I smile when I see that, because my desk is the same way, and I know where I got it from. (Our spouses do not smile at what they unjustly perceive as a horrendous mess.) My father is one of those rare people who gets pleasure in putting numbers into the right boxes, so it totally made sense for him to take up being a tax preparer and enrolled agent as a part-time gig to keep himself busy after retirement. I inherited that too – you can look at my Quicken and find every expense categorized and even see how much cash is in my wallet. I hope I’ve inherited so much more of him, because over the years, my admiration for my father has only grown. In his long career at TRW, he started as an engineer, but moved into business development and found a niche in being TRW’s point man with the business they did with Japan. In the 1970s when Japan was still a fairly new and mysterious place to do business, Dad’s ability to listen and learn, and his sensitivity to differences in culture and communication earned him much respect on both sides of the Pacific. When I was a kid, he would share stories about his dealings that were exotic and sometimes funny; only much later would I come to realize the communications skills that he had been gently teaching in those stories. Initially as a side gig, he become involved with the TRW Credit Union, serving on the board and eventually becoming chairman. He has continued in that role long after his retirement from TRW, where he has overseen their growth through several mergers to where the credit union (now called Unify FCU) is now a top 100 national credit union with 245,000 members and $3 billion in assets. Over Sunday night dinners, he has shared many stories about decisions the board has made, stories which share a consistent thread of concern for the members’ best interests, of care for their employees being treated well, of extraordinary actions the credit union has taken in response to local disasters to help out their stakeholders, and of negotiating challenges to everyone’s best interest. He won particular regard for negotiating their first merger, between two equal sized credit unions, with many thorny issues around leadership, organization, and even the name of the merged entity, and finding a solution that everyone was happy with. So many times I just thought I was hearing an interesting story over family dinner, when really I was getting a business school education, and life lessons in successful win-win negotiation. As he closes in on 90, Dad has had the mixed blessing of his own longevity and good health surpassing most of his dearest friends. In that time, I have seen him be an exemplary friend when his friends became incapacitated, with countless faithful visits to nursing care facilities, being there for his friends and their families in their most challenging times. And as Mom struggles with Parkinsons, he has shown himself a great caregiver, helping her to do the things she is still able to do, and picking up where she no longer can. I am so lucky and so grateful to be my father’s son, and to continue to learn from him.