Retired

We took the afternoon off today & went to my Dad’s retirement party. Twenty-seven years at the same company. It was a pretty cool afternoon. Mostly we sat there, though we did partake of the banana splits. Actually we sat there as streams of people walked by and practiced on us what they wanted to tell my Dad, as well as to let us know how highly they thought of him. A lot of people coming by saying things like, “Your Dad is the best boss I ever had,” & “You must be proud of him,” & on & on & on. One lady came up to me to tell me about him, I shook her hand — and she didn’t let go of it the entire time she talked to me. Another lady came up & told me a story about a present I’d given to my sixth grade teacher. Obviously he’d relayed this information to the people he worked with (much like I do with my kids)… When handed microphone, people had the sweetest tributes. A lot of people think very highly of him.

One lady who had been one of his first hires, 27 years ago, had this story to tell to explain why she & three other women were all wearing black skirts with white shirts. My Dad went to Japan in the mid-80’s to study Japanese management techniques back when that was all the rage. When he got back, he told people what he learned & one of the things was that people there wore very much a uniform-type thing, so as not to distract from the work at hand (or something like that). So she organized three other women & they all started wearing black skirts & white shirts to work. He didn’t notice because that’s not how he rolls, until she made all of them line up in front of him & said, “Do you notice anything?” “Yeah, why are you all wearing black skirts & white shirts?” She had to explain it to him. I think he appreciated it. So, they all did it again today.

His “buddy-san” from the Japanese expedition was also on hand — he put together a little booklet of their experience & was kind of the master-of-ceremonies, informally. Every table got a book & I brought one home. It’s a cute little summary of the trip. One of the fellows who originally hired my Dad was also there, though he’d been retired for seven years. There were a number of other retired folks who also came back for the party.

There was one guy there who was somewhat younger than most of the crowd. His tribute was that my Dad had provided a lot of good advice to him & that you could tell when you were going to be listening to the advice for a while. This guy’s parents would say, “when I was your age,” his grandparents would say, “That reminds me of this story,” & apparently my Dad’s saying was, “well, I have an opinion on this…” This guy seemed to think that would be the line he used at home as well, but we always get, “Well, I’m going to tell you something…” On the upside, he’s usually right.

I’m pretty sure there were some rough spots over those 27 years, but in the end, today was a touching tribute to, essentially, a job well done. He’s set a high bar for us (us = my generation of this family), but at least when we need someone else’s opinion on something, we’ll know a good resource for “an opinion.” It was a good day. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.