I am grateful for the opportunities to grow I have had throughout my life and the greatest influences have been people.   Clear in my mind are the teachers who taught me to read and write, the pilot who taught me to fly, the woman who taught me how to love and even those who taught me what not to do by me watching them do those very things.  Yet beyond the many who contributed to the quality of my life, there are the very few who had tremendous impact on me.  Right at the top of that list is DK, my first mentor.

DK was an inspiration to begin with when he hired me as a first time department manager when I was only 23.  Only a few years before he had overcome a severe drinking problem that had left his personal life a mess.  He told me once “I screwed up my first marriage by becoming a drunk and screwed up my first marriage to a drunk when I quit drinking”.  I knew him a few years later when he met a nurse who became his 3rd wife while he was in the hospital for a serious surgery.  I was a witness to the happiness he found with her during the rest of his years and the two children they had together.

I have great respect for DK and what he had overcame.  But to an even greater degree I hold him in high esteem for what he taught me about business and people.  Of the many things I learned from him in the seven years he was my boss, at the very top of the sizable heap is that businesses succeed or fail from the inside out.  He taught me that there on the “inside” people are what make or break a business.  “Hire good people, ask a lot of them and treat them as well as you possibly can” are his words that are imprinted deeply within me.   The image of the framed item at the top of this page is an example of his philosophy.  This frame  hung in DK’s office and his family gave it to me after he passed away.  Now a decade later it is displayed proudly in my office and I hear his voice in my head still guiding me just about every day.

There came a point when he confided in me that in six months he was moving on to a different job and one where he could not take me with him.  In our time together and with DK’s help I had managed to create success that was written about nationally in trade magazines.  There had been a number of previous offers of employment, but none that could attract me away.  Now a good job offer came along within a couple of months and I accepted it as I could not imagine being in my present position reporting to someone else.  Like DK said “Kid, its time to go”.

On my last day DK asked me to come to his office when I had all my stuff in my car and was ready to leave.  So there I was sitting with him just after 5pm wanting badly to express my gratitude for his belief in me and all he had taught me.  I asked him “How do I repay you for all you have done for me?”  He replied, “You can’t Kid”.  DK must have seen the perplexed look on my face, so he continued.  “Someone saw the spark in me and gave me opportunity and taught me.  I saw the spark in you and brought you along.  It’s your responsibility to take the time to teach and bring along those you see the spark in.  That’s how you repay me”.

So here I sit misty eyed as I always get when I tell this story, grateful beyond my ability to express it to a man I will never forget.  In later years at a business I managed I was able to hire and mentor DK’s son who was floundering in life.  Somehow it is fitting that the last time I saw DK was when he was in town helping his son move to start that job.  I know he would be proud of his son’s success today.

Most of all Don taught me to “play it forward” at least 10 or 15 years before I ever heard that phrase.  With a grateful and happy heart I will be “paying him back” for the rest of my days.

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.  Henry Adams