Remembering My Father

My father – Clyde Horne — died just over 4 years ago. It was painful enough losing him without having it happen a few weeks before Father’s Day. You know, you already have plans to visit him and a gift and then suddenly you just have a big hole in your heart!

Anyway, this week I thought that I’d pay him a little tribute by sharing three great career lessons I learned from him.

Clyde Horne

As I’ve mentioned in the past, my father grew up as a poor immigrant during the great depression.  He never thought about his career – his teenage priority was earning small change to help feed the family. But he did end up creating an incredible rags to riches career – rising to the ranks of Vice President in a number of companies My father had a very unusual leadership style.

I think it was best summed up by the words of one of his friends at his retirement roast — they said:

“The best thing in the world was to be Clyde’s friend – and the worst thing on earth was to be his enemy.”

The first time I saw this was when I was in second grade. An older kid down the street – “Bobby,” had gotten a couple of friends to beat me up on the school bus – probably because of my stupid haircut.

Anyway, my father came home from work and I told him. He called “Bob” – Bobby’s father, and told him he needed to talk to him. So Bob and Bobby came over to my house and the next thing I know, we’re all standing behind the garage. I remember it all so clearly. My dad was doing everything he could to stay calm, but I could see his blood vessels starting to bulge.

Then old Bob says “come on Clyde – take it easy, it’s just boys being boys.”

And with that, my father grabbed him by the throat and lifted him up off his feet and said:

“If your boy ever touches my son again, I’m going to kick the crap out of him and then I’m going to come after you.”

Then he turned told me to come with him and we left them both standing in the back yard.

Now, that was a little extreme – very cool, but a little extreme.

But over the years, I met dozens of people who told me stories about my dad going to bat for them – and that was the first lesson of leadership I learned from my father:

Fight for your people like they were family.

The second lesson I learned was to love the underdog. I don’t know if it was his own humble upbringing, or something else, but my father had a huge heart for the underdog.

In the early 70’s I was a pretty wild kid and I hung around with a bunch of other wild kids. Not bad, but just wild – the kind of kids no one wants to hire.

My father was vice president at a good sized local company called General Radio and he knew a few of my friends. He liked them and he felt bad that they couldn’t find work.

So, he started hiring all of my underdog friends at General Radio. He didn’t just hire a few, he hired all of them – probably 15 or 20 kids. It was a great thing to do and it really made me proud to be the son of such a good hearted man – and all of my loser friends learned a lesson and became better men because of it.

Love The Underdog – They’ll Never Forget It

The final lesson I learned from my father was “to get off the stage while the audience is still applauding”

What he meant was that you should wait until you’ve completed a major accomplishment in your career before you look for a new job – which is counterintuitive, but great advice.

But 4 years ago I saw him demonstrate this principle in a manner I could never have imagined in my wildest dreams.

My father was suffering from lung cancer. He fought the good fight for almost 18 months, but on the night of June 5th 2005, he fell down and my mother couldn’t help him up. She called the ambulance they took him to Emerson Hospital in Concord Massachusetts.

The next day my mother started calling everyone in the family to tell us that the end was near, so we all headed to Emerson and huddled around his bed for most of the day, just praying with him and telling him how much we loved and admired him.’

It was like a fairy tale farewell – I remember at one point, it was just me and my 2 brothers in the room with him and he said “well boys, this is it, I’m ready to go.”

About then I remembered that his will and trust were all messed up and I had been working with his estate lawyer to get them cleaned up, but it wasn’t done and if the end was near – we needed to act fast.

I ran out to my car and called the attorney – and I have to say, she flew into action. She asked me a few questions and then told me that they’d work through the night to draw up all of the new documents. She said she expected to have them ready in the afternoon and that she’d need to bring in 2 witnesses to attest to my father’s sound mind, and so we scheduled it for 3:00 the next afternoon.

The next morning, my mother called me at 8:00 and said that my father had been talking to his doctor and they were about to stop the life sustaining support  he was on – my father wanted it to end as soon as possible.

To which I said:

“Mom, he can’t die — we haven’t fixed his will yet!”

She said, okay I’ll tell him, but you better hurry, he may be gone by 3:00.So I called the lawyer and fortunately, they were just about done preparing the new docs. They said they could come over for the signing at 10:30 and so I called my mom and set it up. Anyway, they showed up at 10:30 – the attorney and the 2 witnesses.

My father executed a stack of documents and made a joke or two. They left the hospital room and my father turned to my mother and smiled. Then he took a final breath and died – 5 minutes after signing his new will.

He left the stage while we were all still applauding

This Week’s Career Mechanic Show – “Take Me To Your Leader”
Click HERE to Listen

Are great leaders really the same as the rest of us, or do they have unique traits that make them do what they do? This week, we’ll look at the “Inside Secrets of Great Leadership.” Dave will be joined by author Jennifer Kahnweiler, who wrote the book “The Introverted Leader” and business strategist Doug Smith.