Tag: legacy

Rise up a genuine leader

Rise up a genuine leader
Who is driven by moral character and integrity
Who commits to truth and responsibility
Who models personal discipline and accountability
Who earns respect by giving it
Who is humble in self-imperfections and gracious in others’
Who nurtures trust and collaboration

Rise up a genuine leader
Who is we-oriented, not me-oriented
Who articulates vision with clarity and infuses pride in purpose
Who disables barriers to people development
Who confronts social ills with positive solutions
Who seeks understanding and resolutions in contentions
Who fosters creativity and inspires hope

Rise up a genuine leader
Who can undo chaos and create order
Who is composed instead of clamorous
Who promotes diversity of viewpoints in unity of purpose
Who invests in people and worthy dreams
Who is transparent, trustworthy, and teachable
Who upholds faith in a better future and spurs actions toward it

Rise up a genuine leader
Who values people and ideas over profit
Who knows virtue sustains character, but its absence destroys it
Who is considerate instead of caustic
Who brings competence with candor
Who discerns realities with compassion and directs resolutions with care
Who influences people to mutually elevate lives, institutions, and ideals.

Rise up a genuine leader
Who is attentive to needs of the people and builds their spirit
Who overcomes personal ego, arrogance, and unethical behavior
Who rejects conflict mongering
Who is consistent and persistent in value-added contributions
Who equips and empowers other leaders
Who builds an enduring legacy of transformational results

An old friend died last week

God rest his soul

One of my unforgettable college memories didn’t happen in class, in the dorm, or even on campus. It did, however, involve a quite chilly night, a great snowy hill, a goofy bunch of friends, a slick toboggan, and a lot of carrying on in the dark on the farm of our hosts, Elna and Charles Antle. And as I recall, the rowdy antics continued indoors with some boisterous singing around Elna at the piano, and some spilling of hot chocolate.

When I met Charles, he was a Penn State statistics professor who loved working his farm, and the company of students—and he had a knack of bringing them together!

He effortlessly ensnared when he told me he had some work I could do for him on the farm. Which I did. It was hot and strenuous. I grew up on a farm, so the work was not strange to me, but it’s not like I was actually looking for a list of unpaid chores to do, either! Turns out Charles was a regular Tom Sawyer who convinced me I’d be doing myself a favor by helping him out. Several times!

What rang out so true in his memorial service yesterday, which was conducted entirely by his loving grandchildren, was his unflappable sunny optimism, his relentless cheerfulness, his extreme generosity, his thankful nature, and his loving spirit. What a guy!

Carol had the privilege of being his therapist and caregiver in the last seven years of his life. Together she’d get him to exercise his legs a bit, walk around the house, or drive him around to visit friends, or for a ride through the valley farms, or for a haircut, and even to McDonald’s for ten cheeseburgers at a time (which he’d freeze at home for later!) And she absorbed many of his stories about his time in Korea, his early life, farming, his family, and his unshakeable belief in all the goodness around him—even in his 93-yr-old frailty.  

To me, Charles was more of an influence on me than I realized until I had my own family—at least, in his penchant for enlisting free labor.

As our four grown children can testify, there was always some work to do outside as they were growing up on the Herd Homestead. On our few acres tucked up against the Blue Mountain and the headwaters of the Hokendauqua Creek, they—and this is the critical comparison—they and their visiting friends were often enlisted on some “short” project, that “won’t take long,” but usually did anyway. Whether it was hauling the maple leaves out of the front yard on a tarp; or weeding the garden; or removing the old rain gutters from the two-story garage (or even better—scaling the ladder to remove all the former maple-seeds-gone-to-black-gunk in the house gutters!); or to help to prepare all the materials for our company’s annual Staff Training Day, they didn’t escape. And in doing so, not only did they help me out, but they also developed a little personal keepsake called Real Character: A legacy gift, I’d say, passed on from a true gentleman farmer; a truly good man, our friend, Mr. Charles Antle.

A legacy in writing

Among the little things I inherited with the passing of my dad is what may yet prove to be a lifetime supply of No. 3 pencils, all embossed with his name, business and address. They’re modest, durable, and reliable—just like the man himself.

The Dean of weather forecasting

celebrating a legacy

I was a highly impressed freshman meteorology student when I first met the dean of Penn State’s College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, Charles Hosler. He regaled us with stories from when he was a professor of meteorology in the 1950s and 60s, conducting then-cutting-edge experiments in weather modification. He confessed that if it rained after an experiment, it was tremendously difficult to tell if was due to the experiment, or it would have rained anyway! So the experiments were abandoned, but not before he had aroused fierce opposition from local farmers who attributed everything they didn’t like about the weather to him and Penn State—even accusing the university of flying a black airplane at night to seed the clouds when no one would notice. Once he was even shot at.

Dean Hosler, as I knew him, died last November at the age of 99. Today, I attended the Celebration of Charles Hosler’s Penn State Life and Legacy on campus, in the building that used to house the weather tower on the eighth floor when I was a student (and which is connected to what is now named the Hosler Building).

In the college’s announcement of his passing, it noted that “Hosler was one of the early titans of weather forecasting. He created one of the first television weather shows when he started broadcasting weather forecasts from Penn State in 1957, with a goal of providing more accurate weather forecasts for Pennsylvanians.”

Dr. Hosler received many awards for his research and administrative excellence over his long career. After serving 20 years as dean of the Earth and Mineral Sciences College, he became Penn State’s senior vice president for research and the dean of the Graduate School, and acting executive vice president and provost before retiring in 1992. I was glad to have been inspired by his example and earn my degree under his leadership in the atmospheric sciences.

A legacy reminder

If I wind up turning into my dad, that’s the best thing I’ll ever do.

This is my Dad’s hand, wearing his Class of 1945 Nazareth High School ring. It’s a timeworn hand, showing its large veins, wrinkled skin, and various spots. It’s the hand that held me, disciplined me, praised me, and raised me.

Dad would have turned 95 years old today. That his birthday so closely aligned with Father’s Day each year was always fitting to me because his life epitomized Fatherhood’s ideals and principles.

As I’ve gotten older, people who’ve known us both have told me I sound like him. I’ve caught myself speaking with his inflection, singing with his phrasing, even laughing like him. I’ve been known to spout his style of “Dadisms.” And if I wind up turning into my dad, that’s probably both the best tribute and the best thing I’ll ever do.

I’m on my way: the actual hand pictured is my own. And every time I look at it, I think of him.

Longest tenure

I aim for a lasting legacy out of ambition to finish well: to enable those who follow to lead larger, to achieve wider, to soar where I cannot.

Earlier this week, I achieved my longest tenure in any one job of my whole career (not counting the years I owned and operated my own business).

In my earlier days, I switched jobs fairly frequently, due to changing circumstances and opening opportunities. But it was that very scheme that stretched my skills and expanded my experience, all to my future benefit—even these decades later. Each new position I started seemed custom-made to employ all I brought to it and challenge me for further growth.

And while my current position is quite fulfilling, this longevity is no laurel wreath. Instead, I yet aim for a lasting legacy—not for ego, nor for pride (…well, maybe a little!)—but more out of ambition to finish well: to enable those who follow to lead larger, to achieve wider, to soar where I cannot.

Messing around in a small town

the learning legacy of engaging peers in free-spirited, unsupervised outdoor play

Chapman Quarries is the smallest incorporated borough in Pennsylvania, with a population in the 2010 census of 199 people. It’s where my dad’s family was established, and where his dad, granddad, and nearly all his male relatives worked the slate quarries.

While I didn’t grow up in town, that’s where church was and where my cousins and grandparents lived and where I spent a good amount of time. And it was the only place apart from school recess where I was able to freely interact with a lot of other kids outdoors. Three childhood memories tell a connected story:

Ice skating on the dam. The nearby quarries both used and generated a lot of water, and before Hurricane Agnes’ flood broke it in 1972, the dam was an idyllic nook in the woods. All the kids would walk out the back of town down “the dam hill” to amuse ourselves on the frozen lake. (It was a good joke to tell the new preacher about “the dam hill!”) I wasn’t a very good skater and I remember my cousin Judy telling me that I spent more time lying on the ice than skating on it. The older kids would build a bonfire off to the side, and we’d spend the better part of the whole day freezing, thawing, and “just messing around,” as we called it, with never a grown-up in sight.

Skateboarding on Main Street. The town was founded on a great hill after slate deposits were discovered in the 1850s, which brought an influx of hard-working families from Cornwall, Wales and Devon to work the quarries. When the skateboard craze hit some hundred-plus years later, it drew all their young descendants to Main Street with short, metal-wheeled boards to mess around. (Metal wheels were the leftover technology from roller-skates, which took a special key to adjust on your feet. And—let me tell you—roller skating on uneven slate sidewalks just wasn’t even fun!) I remember my cousin Craig telling me I had to get a skateboard with clay wheels—they’d work a lot better and I wouldn’t be spending all that time lying on the concrete than riding atop it. Like sledding, we’d walk to the top of the hill and ride the boards straight down the center of town, pausing only when someone would yell “CAR!” The old folks in town wished we wouldn’t go so fast because they didn’t want to see us get hurt. But no one stopped us.

Swimming in Claude’s Pond. Deep, water-filled Fisher’s Quarry was the destination of choice for the older teen boys to go skinny-dipping and wash up when it was hot. (This had also been the common practice of all the previous generations.) But I had that opportunity only once, living out of town as I did. Instead, my pappy would occasionally drive me and my brother and sister and a couple of cousins to his friend’s farm pond where we’d go wading and swimming and messing around. The older teen boys would drive there themselves and bring a long wooden plank. They’d extend it over the deep end of the pond and secure it with one of their jalopy’s front wheels to create a perfect diving board. The bigger boys allowed me, as a non-swimmer, to take a few turns, and after some tentative jumps into the shallows, I ignored my own caution and jumped out as far as I could. I remember my cousin Robert hauling me out of the water, saying that I shouldn’t spend more time lying on the bottom than floating on the top.

I learned a lot from my cousins. And from going outside and getting involved.

Like mine, most Baby Boomers’ childhoods were characterized by the habitual frequency in which we engaged our peers in free-spirited, unsupervised, outdoor play. It was there that we learned leadership and cooperation in picking teams for a pick-up game, and creative problem-solving in building a treehouse over a creek. We exerted our bodies while managing risk, and stretched our imaginations while messing around. We discovered both ourselves and our places when we pushed our limitations and our possibilities. Our self-development sprung from self-reliance.

A copious body of research now proves what we then knew, but didn’t understand: that social interaction in connection to nature is essential for our physical and mental health and our intellectual and social development. May we extend that legacy to both encourage and enable it with our children—and theirs.

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