Probably one of the reasons I titled this blog as I did is that at some point in my life I discovered that I was re-living the main outlines of my father's life.
If you have read my earlier posts you know that there were some obvious similarities between besides simply being white, American, and Methodist. (Dad was of solid German stock, not Anglo-Saxon. His forebears had emigrated from Germany in the early nineteenth century to Big Pond, Pennsylvania on the New York border. They lived there until my great-grandfather moved to Guthrie, Oklahoma, shortly after it became state capital upon statehood in 1907. My grandparents met at the German speaking Methodist church a couple of blocks from my great-grandparents' home.) Mother was the WASP -- her earliest ancestor arrived in Jamestown, VA, from England in 1619, a year before the Mayflower landed in Massachusetts.
When Dad and Mom started dating she was a fine physical specimen, but when they married she was damaged goods. She had been playing basketball and fell and (unknowingly) broke her back. The break was diagnosed properly after almost a year of pain and suffering she was hospitalized and it was basically rebroken to heal better: she spent a Dallas summer in an un-air-conditioned hospital in a neck to groin plaster cast. Ouch!
Despite her injury -- which would give her difficulty and pain for the rest of her life, Dad chose to marry her and he supported her and comforted her for decades despite her sufferings and the expense of her care. (Example: for seven straight years she had a headache which was only resolved by a neurosurgeon at Mayo Clinic. For those seven years she had three boys in grade school and Dad was working six 10-hour days a week as a retail baker. But meals were on the table -- we all came home for lunch -- the house was cleaned and our laundry was washed and ironed.) She set a high standard for pain tolerance, and he set a high standard for love and care.
When I met Karen Kay, she was in apparently fine health, but after we became engaged she was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, a disease which brought with it a high probability of colon cancer. The summer following (and before our marriage) her father offered me two things:
1) If I wanted to call off the engagement, the family would understand and would not hold it against me.
2) If I wanted to go ahead with the marriage, they -- despite their limited resources, were willing to assist with the costs, even if it meant mortgaging their home and business.
As most of you know, we married anyway, and before our 16th anniversary she was diagnosed with Stage IV adenocarcinoma of the colon and had everything below her small intestine removed. She was 38 at the time and our kids were in the 3rd, 5th, and 7th grade. I was terrified (how could I raise them without her?!) but she fully recovered and for 37 years simply lived uncomplainingly with the difficulty of defecating into a plastic bag attached to her body. She too had a great deal of pain, suffering, and inconvenience
Both my father and I had made good choices, and neither one of us seemed to have felt any regret at the choice we made.
But the similarity doesn't end there. Dad began working a shift in his father's wholesale bakery at about age 14. He worked there until after he and Mom were married and they had had three boys. Suddenly, at the end of WW II, his father decided to sell the bakery, leaving Dad without a livelihood. We moved from Chickasha to Muskogee (Yes, I am an "Okie from Muskogee") where he worked at another wholesale bakery. But shortly after that a loan from his younger brother enabled him to buy out the business of a Ponca City retail baker, and until all three of us were out of college, that Ponca was home to Mom and Dad. But she always suffered from the high humidity of spring, summer, and fall there in the Great Plains, so after my younger brother finished at OSU, Dad sold the shop and they moved to Phoenix in 1967.
Just as Dad had to pick up and move and finally start his own business to care for his family, so did I. After teaching at institutions in New York, Texas, and Indiana, the small institution in Indiana where I worked and taught went bankrupt. Aa colleague and I founded the nonprofit Environmental Management Institute here in Indianapolis. Tom moved on to other jobs, and despite many challenges, we became and remain one of the premiere asbestos and lead trainers in the Midwest. Our doors have been open for 28 years and we have trained well over 40,000 clients.
All of this is simply a prelude to telling you that all good things must come to an end. As many of you already know, Karen Kay finally gave up the struggle on November 20 of this year. We had her service on December 15 (which she largely wrote) and I was humbled but not surprised by the many people from all over the country and all stages of her life appeared to pay her honor.
Last summer she told me I had to give up my leadership of the Institute at the end of February, 2019, and tomorrow (December 21) my staff are having a retirement reception at the Institute from 2-4 p.m. (and I do not you to come).
But the best news of all is that thanks to one hardworking member of my board, the Institute -- unlike the Tasty Bakery -- will continue. The Indiana state community college System (IVTech) will incorporate the Institute into their operations. My energetic co-Trainer and Training Manager Joan Ketterman will become a Faculty Member and lead the effort for IVTech, so they should have a good shot at getting it well-grounded.
I leave you with one more thought. Several years ago I suddenly realized that all that I have ever achieved I owe to bossy women. I am basically lazy and extroverted, but they have insisted I will not be allowed to act that way around others. You have now met three of them: Mother, Karen Kay, and Joan. Maybe next time I will tell you about a fourth.
Showing posts with label Adolphe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Adolphe. Show all posts
Thursday, December 20, 2018
Sunday, December 25, 2011
Daddism #1: If You Haven’t Got Time to Do It Right, When Do You Have Time to Do It Over? Part II
Dad used to leave the house early, usually before 5 a.m., to begin the morning baking. He came home for lunch and took a nap, and then he went back to work until 6 p.m. when he locked up the shop for the night. And the shop was open six days a week. His staff was small (usually about three people with Mom pitching in on Saturdays). Time was important to him because baked goods are best fresh.
In all the hours I spent in the bake shop, I never saw Dad mess up a baking and have to toss it. He was careful, he was regular, he ran a clean shop and he expected the same from others.
Needless to say, it seemed oppressive to his growing boys. High expectations can bring high frustrations. Indeed, during his high school years my younger brother got expert at doing just enough to get by.
But it seems surprising that all three of us realized the message when we became adults. As someone chronically short on time, Dad had effectively modeled that knowing and achieving the goal on the first attempt isn't the only smart way to work: nothing else may work at all.
But it is a remarkably hard objective to achieve. Because it is often hard to know what is right. Running my own business, I understand how hard it was for Dad to do it for twenty years, even as retail bakers were disappearing everywhere in America. It is relatively easy to get the donuts right: use the right ingredients, measure carefully (including the dough mix and the temperature of the fryer), and know when the donut is properlyy cooked. But it is a whole lot harder to know how many donuts to make on this day and which donuts will sell. Each evening Dad would end his day with the 10:20 p.m. WKY-TV weather report, knowing that rain, snow, or hot weather would cut the demand for baked goods. Often Mom would have to wake him so he could watch before turning in for the evening. But it was his fundamental daily planning tool.
Dad was an introvert, so he deliberately decided to get more connected. He joined the Rotary Club (his dad was a Kiwanian) and took the Dale Carnegie Public Speaking course to increase his skills. A few years later he became President of the Oklahoma Retail Bakery Association, a position that led several years on to his being selected as bakery manager at Motorola Corporation. Motorola?!! Yes. At that time Motorola had over 19,000 employees at five Phoenix area plants, and they ran a three-shift cafeteria and a two-shift bakery. One year his staff turned out over 1200 pies for the annual Thanksgiving dinner.
"Doing it right" he taught us is not just about doing the routine work correctly. It is also about planning right and preparing for what is needed in the future. If you have a 60-hour workweek, why else would you ever think of enrolling for a night class?
Life is not something you get a do-over on. If you can’t do it right the first time . . . ?
In all the hours I spent in the bake shop, I never saw Dad mess up a baking and have to toss it. He was careful, he was regular, he ran a clean shop and he expected the same from others.
Needless to say, it seemed oppressive to his growing boys. High expectations can bring high frustrations. Indeed, during his high school years my younger brother got expert at doing just enough to get by.
But it seems surprising that all three of us realized the message when we became adults. As someone chronically short on time, Dad had effectively modeled that knowing and achieving the goal on the first attempt isn't the only smart way to work: nothing else may work at all.
But it is a remarkably hard objective to achieve. Because it is often hard to know what is right. Running my own business, I understand how hard it was for Dad to do it for twenty years, even as retail bakers were disappearing everywhere in America. It is relatively easy to get the donuts right: use the right ingredients, measure carefully (including the dough mix and the temperature of the fryer), and know when the donut is properlyy cooked. But it is a whole lot harder to know how many donuts to make on this day and which donuts will sell. Each evening Dad would end his day with the 10:20 p.m. WKY-TV weather report, knowing that rain, snow, or hot weather would cut the demand for baked goods. Often Mom would have to wake him so he could watch before turning in for the evening. But it was his fundamental daily planning tool.
Dad was an introvert, so he deliberately decided to get more connected. He joined the Rotary Club (his dad was a Kiwanian) and took the Dale Carnegie Public Speaking course to increase his skills. A few years later he became President of the Oklahoma Retail Bakery Association, a position that led several years on to his being selected as bakery manager at Motorola Corporation. Motorola?!! Yes. At that time Motorola had over 19,000 employees at five Phoenix area plants, and they ran a three-shift cafeteria and a two-shift bakery. One year his staff turned out over 1200 pies for the annual Thanksgiving dinner.
"Doing it right" he taught us is not just about doing the routine work correctly. It is also about planning right and preparing for what is needed in the future. If you have a 60-hour workweek, why else would you ever think of enrolling for a night class?
Life is not something you get a do-over on. If you can’t do it right the first time . . . ?
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Daddism #1: If you haven’t got time to do it right, when do you have time to do it over? Part I
For some years from now I have thought about writing short reflections on my father’s life. Much of what I can be proud of in my life, he and my mother taught me to be. But my father was a man of sayings. Many of them echo in my head to this day, and I have been writing them down, first on slips of paper and then in computer files, and I believe that the time has come to get started on putting them in order.
This will not be a regular column, since I am still more than fully employed in family, church, and work activities. But at the same time I hope that you will feel free to share your thoughts in the comments sections to amplify the effect of these recollections. For they are but recollections, shaded by time, emotion, and the possible inaccuracy of my sources, and therefore begging for comment.
From time to time I will give such biographical details as are important to the story, but up front I should give some basic life details.
Carl Adolphe Leonard was born September 3, 1913, in Guthrie, Oklahoma, the oldest (of four) children of Zadeth Dutcher Leonard and Carl VanEvery (sp?) Leonard. Dad always went by Adolphe (or C.A. for formal documents) because his dad was “Carl.” He was born and lived in the house built by his grandfather when the family moved to Oklahoma shortly after statehood in 1907. They came from a “Pennsylvania Dutch” community in Big Pond, Pennsylvania, not far south of Erie, NY where the Leonards had settled in the early- to mid-nineteenth century. The family spoke German, and Carl and Zadeth met in the German-speaking Methodist church only a couple of blocks south of my father’s first home. The church is still there, although no one there speaks German anymore so far as I know. My father never spoke German, so far as I know [I started teaching myself German in high school and he never offered to help] and I never heard his parents speak it either. Many German-speaking Americans completely abandoned the language after the United States entered World War I in 1917.
Years later my father sent us boys a couple of paragraphs about his life, and in it was one that is especially relevant to the intersection of world history and biography. “Only one time during the Second World War did anyone asking why I didn’t change my name. A competitor, Bill Hubbard, and I were in front of a grocery store [when he asked]. I asked him [why he hadn’t] changed [his name] during World War I when he was in France fighting Kaiser Bill? That ended the conversation. You make your own name and [besides] Hitler’s name was spelled Adolf, mine Adolphe.”
My grandfather was trained as a lawyer but he went to work as secretary to a prominent El Reno business man, moving the family there in about 1916. (I thought for a long time that Dad had been born in El Reno.) A few years later (anyone know when?) the family moved again, this time to Chickasha, Oklahoma. Pop’s (my dad’s name for his father; we called him Papa) employer had bought three bankrupt Bake-Rite (?) wholesale bakeries, and he sent Pop to Chickasha to manage the bakery and turn it around. Pop was so successful that he bought out his employer’s interest and managed it until about 1947, when he sold it and went into early retirement. [Pop was so bored with retirement that he started a second career and was so successful at it that when he died, at about age 75, he was on a visit to a customer.]
Dad went to the work for Papa at about age 14, working as a bakery employee. Dad learned the baking trade from the other men in the shop, and during high school he would go in at about 2 a.m., help with the baking, do early morning deliveries in a bakery step van, then go to high school. After school he would do his homework, go to sleep for a few hours, and repeat the exercise. On Saturdays he didn’t have school, but he still did his bakery route.
When he graduated from high school in about 1930, Dad commuted one semester to the University of Oklahoma in Norman where he planned to major in food chemistry. However, he said that he looked around and saw fellows with Masters degrees driving cabs and realized that he had a much better job than they did, so he gave up on his studies. (Although he never quit reading and studying.) A year or two later my mother, Emma Lee Godbey, came to Chickasha to attend the Oklahoma College for Women (now The University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma). They met at an Epworth League (Methodist) social and dated until she left to do her junior and senior year at the University of Texas in Austin. She finished a degree in Sociology, and shortly thereafter they were married. The lived in Chickasha in rented housing until they were able to design and built their own home just a couple of blocks from my grandparents’ home. My first memory (at age two, just as WWII was ending) is of staring out the back screen porch door at a pen where my folks were fattening a turkey and a goose. Later on a man came by to purchase them, and my brothers and I got war stamps for the purchase. I found out years later that we ate the goose that year; my parents didn’t want to upset us because we (I in particular?) had become so attached to them.
When Papa sold the bakery, Dad got on at a wholesale shop in Muskogee, Oklahoma [yes, I am an Okie from Muskogee], but three months later he was able to borrow the money from his brother Leroy to buy the equipment and goodwill in the Tasty Bakery in Ponca City. I was born in 1943 at the Chickasha General Hospital (as were my brothers in 1940 and 1944), and we moved to Ponca City. In 1967, for reasons I will save for later, my parents moved to Phoenix, Arizona, where they lived until about 1997. (I need some help on dates here). At that point Mom’s dementia and Dad’s health had declined to the point he realized that he needed to institutionalize her. They moved to Guthrie where my brother Joe had helped him find an excellent care facility and she died February 17, 2001, at age 85 and he died August 30 of the same year at age 88 (actually 87, but that’s another story).
This will not be a regular column, since I am still more than fully employed in family, church, and work activities. But at the same time I hope that you will feel free to share your thoughts in the comments sections to amplify the effect of these recollections. For they are but recollections, shaded by time, emotion, and the possible inaccuracy of my sources, and therefore begging for comment.
From time to time I will give such biographical details as are important to the story, but up front I should give some basic life details.
Carl Adolphe Leonard was born September 3, 1913, in Guthrie, Oklahoma, the oldest (of four) children of Zadeth Dutcher Leonard and Carl VanEvery (sp?) Leonard. Dad always went by Adolphe (or C.A. for formal documents) because his dad was “Carl.” He was born and lived in the house built by his grandfather when the family moved to Oklahoma shortly after statehood in 1907. They came from a “Pennsylvania Dutch” community in Big Pond, Pennsylvania, not far south of Erie, NY where the Leonards had settled in the early- to mid-nineteenth century. The family spoke German, and Carl and Zadeth met in the German-speaking Methodist church only a couple of blocks south of my father’s first home. The church is still there, although no one there speaks German anymore so far as I know. My father never spoke German, so far as I know [I started teaching myself German in high school and he never offered to help] and I never heard his parents speak it either. Many German-speaking Americans completely abandoned the language after the United States entered World War I in 1917.
Years later my father sent us boys a couple of paragraphs about his life, and in it was one that is especially relevant to the intersection of world history and biography. “Only one time during the Second World War did anyone asking why I didn’t change my name. A competitor, Bill Hubbard, and I were in front of a grocery store [when he asked]. I asked him [why he hadn’t] changed [his name] during World War I when he was in France fighting Kaiser Bill? That ended the conversation. You make your own name and [besides] Hitler’s name was spelled Adolf, mine Adolphe.”
My grandfather was trained as a lawyer but he went to work as secretary to a prominent El Reno business man, moving the family there in about 1916. (I thought for a long time that Dad had been born in El Reno.) A few years later (anyone know when?) the family moved again, this time to Chickasha, Oklahoma. Pop’s (my dad’s name for his father; we called him Papa) employer had bought three bankrupt Bake-Rite (?) wholesale bakeries, and he sent Pop to Chickasha to manage the bakery and turn it around. Pop was so successful that he bought out his employer’s interest and managed it until about 1947, when he sold it and went into early retirement. [Pop was so bored with retirement that he started a second career and was so successful at it that when he died, at about age 75, he was on a visit to a customer.]
Dad went to the work for Papa at about age 14, working as a bakery employee. Dad learned the baking trade from the other men in the shop, and during high school he would go in at about 2 a.m., help with the baking, do early morning deliveries in a bakery step van, then go to high school. After school he would do his homework, go to sleep for a few hours, and repeat the exercise. On Saturdays he didn’t have school, but he still did his bakery route.
When he graduated from high school in about 1930, Dad commuted one semester to the University of Oklahoma in Norman where he planned to major in food chemistry. However, he said that he looked around and saw fellows with Masters degrees driving cabs and realized that he had a much better job than they did, so he gave up on his studies. (Although he never quit reading and studying.) A year or two later my mother, Emma Lee Godbey, came to Chickasha to attend the Oklahoma College for Women (now The University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma). They met at an Epworth League (Methodist) social and dated until she left to do her junior and senior year at the University of Texas in Austin. She finished a degree in Sociology, and shortly thereafter they were married. The lived in Chickasha in rented housing until they were able to design and built their own home just a couple of blocks from my grandparents’ home. My first memory (at age two, just as WWII was ending) is of staring out the back screen porch door at a pen where my folks were fattening a turkey and a goose. Later on a man came by to purchase them, and my brothers and I got war stamps for the purchase. I found out years later that we ate the goose that year; my parents didn’t want to upset us because we (I in particular?) had become so attached to them.
When Papa sold the bakery, Dad got on at a wholesale shop in Muskogee, Oklahoma [yes, I am an Okie from Muskogee], but three months later he was able to borrow the money from his brother Leroy to buy the equipment and goodwill in the Tasty Bakery in Ponca City. I was born in 1943 at the Chickasha General Hospital (as were my brothers in 1940 and 1944), and we moved to Ponca City. In 1967, for reasons I will save for later, my parents moved to Phoenix, Arizona, where they lived until about 1997. (I need some help on dates here). At that point Mom’s dementia and Dad’s health had declined to the point he realized that he needed to institutionalize her. They moved to Guthrie where my brother Joe had helped him find an excellent care facility and she died February 17, 2001, at age 85 and he died August 30 of the same year at age 88 (actually 87, but that’s another story).
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