Pat’s Eulogy for Robert

 Pat’s Eulogy for R. F. Laird

Here I am, in the same church where he grew up watching the tale of the pastor who died at sea, where he learned from the main man in his life that in my father’s house there are many mansions.”

My husband spent his life exploring the many mansions and much else besides. He was a great warrior against the counter-culture anarchists he recognized for the first time when he was 16 years old. But he was also a great writer, maybe the greatest of the second half of the 20th century and the first part of the 21st.

How do you measure a writer? Height, width, depth? Also fearlessness, greedilessness (yeah, try saying that), purity of soul, lovingkindness. He had all of that, not always in equal measure. He was no saint. But he was a lot closer than most.

Robert died poor. I stand before you to attest that simple truth. 

His dream of this day, which he told me repeatedly, was that he would be without ceremony at his funeral, like Edgar Allan Poe and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, forgotten and unmourned.

But some of you are here, and so I have an obligation to tell you why you should be here.

I said he was a great writer. Yawn, right? What if I told you the same guy wrote the longest poem in the history of English literature and also a sonnet timed from first to last in 30 seconds.

But was he any good? Here’s one of my favorite poems by R. F. Laird. (Others are too long to read or too brief to penetrate.)

Portents

“The raceme was longer than an age…”

And another one you all might relate to better. Robert thought it was a letter…

Jaysong Yes, it was a prayer…

Jaysong

Guy named Jay

Crackle guy

Give you grief for

Oh, being young old 

Not from his county

Wife named Sue

Crackle girl 

Give you grief for

No particular reason,

Doesn’t keep her bargains

But always kens the seasons

Girl named Anna

Streamy girl

Took photos at Longwood

Red particular flowers

Smartest of the brood.

Jay is on the left, quivering 

Jay is on the right, hovering,

He is maybe listening, knowing 

Anna’s the story to write:

Guy named Robert

Lost his knees but not his way

Did not earn the life of Jay

Daughters, labor, current strife

Or at any point the pain-free life.”

And now we jettison the rhymes and poetry…

We did it, Jay, we ran the bikes all the way to the Delaware Bay Shore

Remember how the salt smell came and went

Through the bleak we saw so so flat

I had the bigger bike that day

But you didn’t care about that.

What we saw

What we saw

What we saw

Seagulls swooping singing, rocks and waves and no one there-ing.

Salt smell. Sand. Throttle up. We rode two monsters home.

That day was just you and me

You saw an ocean you hadn’t known

Private lovely bay shore wild

And we rode and rode down upward

To the mighty Delaware

The lovely edge of where

I owe you a Harley. It is yours.

I just want you back to that old

Hale hearty husband role

No excuses, 1200cc cooold.

Sportster boy, fairly old.

Brothers. All we ever were. Me 10 years older and colder. You, ten years younger and wanting my Harley. Who was colder? 

I don’t care. You can have it if you get off that awful, sterile, godawful bed and go home to Sue and Anna.

Yours,

R

Life. He knew life was a bitch. You probably don’t know about his. His whole thing was to seem boring, so you wouldn’t ask. Everyone here knows life is a bitch. Like most, you probably think he was some rich kid who got lucky and found Pat to provide for him.

Things I’ll tell you about my husband Robert you never knew and he never boasted of.

He was a clear genius, not the technically MENSA kind, all show and no go. He skipped second grade and when he went to the prep school his father insisted on (his), they wanted him to skip to tenth grade. But he was still just 13 and his dad demurred. 

He graduated from Harvard at 19, having been not a Rhodes Scholar but a Final Club President because he was the best looking guy in the silver spoon set who wasn’t gay. He was always beautiful physically. And in his last of three years at Harvard (yes, he graduated in three), he came very close to dying. Fifth floor of the back of the infamous Porcellian Club, opposite the Porcellian Gate, he took the next step off the railing in order to see inside. There was nothing inside.

Then he went to Cornell Business School and blah blah blah, until he made determined efforts to kill himself at high speed in cars. 

When I met him. He was 27, down on his luck, and I was a hiring manager. I had the worst of all hires, a failed, pissed-off Harvard grad who was going nowhere. 

But he was a rocket. He says his number is 19. The facts say his number is 17. He left stone & Webster after a year and five months when one of the supervisors tried to seduce him, and then he went to Datapro research Corporation, where he spent a year and five months graduating to NCR Corporation, where he spent a year and five months rising from the position of analyst to top consultant in the effort to learn from senior executives on the top floor of HQ how to learn from the debacle his division had become. 

Then he did the same rocket job at General Motors, ultimately, within months, rising from the be-all and end-all of JIT manufacturing at Inland Division (where the Wright Brothers played, to Inlnd Fisher Guide Division, where he made the Europeans play ball, winding up writing a speech for the president of the Automotive Components Group, at that time the 8th largest manufacturing corporation in the U.S. As a side note, he became the only outside consultant ever to be named a member of the prestigious UAW/GM Quality Network. That took more than a year and five months. He quit when it turned out the UAW  was every bit the leg-breaking mob he’d always suspected them of being.

From there he went on to Whirlpool Corporation, where he pioneered, led, developed, and delivered training to teach international communicators how to, uh, think, based on a company wide improvement model he had scrawled on a napkin in a bar in Italy. Climax? – A call from his client on Christmas Eve. The Harvard Business Reciew had a scheduled interview with the newly global Whirlpool CEO that made him sound dumb. Could he fix it? In 24 hours?

“The HBR editor was extremely skeptical. “We don’t work with outside consultants.” I said, “I know this company, know this man, and I can fix it. And you don’t have none who can do this kind of rewrite in one day.”

Exactly 24 hours later, the HBR editor apologized and offered me a job. I pitched him a breakthrough story about corporate conscuiousness he was inclined to accept. Then he got let go and I decided to quit consulting. How life turns,,, 

He, meaning “I,” failed. You can’t teach people how to think. He met a man on an airplane who told him he was done. The man was right. Robert fell into the hands of a woman who, typically, thought he was beautiful.”

Result? He now has a belovèd stepdaughter. And he has me. Because he called me when he was at lowest ebb. And we’ve never looked back. Since we’ve been together, we’ve produced 22 books, more than a hundred videos, and he has been working too hard to fight his 50 year war. Ask me about that before you dismiss him as a snotty fool. He also said, at the end of his Jay poem:

“I owe you a Harley. It is yours.

I just want you back to that old

Hale hearty husband role.”

A lot more people at Jay’s funeral than my husband’s will get. He’d actually be pleased with that. The way he was.

Took photos at Longwood

Red particular flowers

Smartest of the brood.

Jay is on the left, quivering 

Jay is on the right, hovering,

He is maybe listening, knowing 

Anna’s the story to write:

“Guy named Robert

Lost his knees but not his way

Did not earn the life of Jay

Daughters, labor, current strife

Or at any point the pain-free life.”

And now we jettison the rhymes and poetry…

We did it, Jay, we ran the bikes all the way to the Delaware Bay Shore

Remember how the salt smell came and went

Through the bleak we saw so so flat

I had the bigger bike that day

But you didn’t care about that.

What we saw

What we saw

What we saw

Seagulls swooping singing, rocks and waves and no one there-ing.

Salt smell. Sand. Throttle up. We rode two monsters home.

That day was just you and me

You saw an ocean you hadn’t known

Private lovely bay shore wild

And we rode and rode down upward

To the mighty Delaware

The lovely edge of where

I owe you a Harley. It is yours.

I just want you back to that old

Hale hearty husband role

No excuses, 1200cc cooold.

Sportster boy, fairly old.

Brothers. All we ever were. Me 10 years older and colder. You, ten years younger and wanting my Harley. Who was colder? 

I don’t care. You can have it if you get off that awful, sterile, godawful bed and go home to Sue and Anna.

Yours,

R

Life. He knew life was a bitch. You probably don’t know about his. His whole thing was to seem boring, so you wouldn’t ask. Everyone here knows life is a bitch. Like most, you probably think he was some rich kid who got lucky and found Pat to provide for him.

Things I’ll tell you about my husband Robert you never knew and he never boasted of.

He was a clear genius, not the technically MENSA kind, all show and no go. He skipped second grade and when he went to the prep school his father insisted on (his), they wanted him to skip to tenth grade. But he was still just 13 and his dad demurred. 

He graduated from Harvard at 19, having been not a Rhodes Scholar but a Final Club President because he was the best looking guy in the silver spoon set who wasn’t gay. He was always beautiful physically. And in his last of three years at Harvard (yes, he graduated in three), he came very close to dying. Fifth floor of the back of the infamous Porcellian Club, opposite the Porcellian Gate, he took the next step off the railing in order to see inside. There was nothing inside.

Then he went to Cornell Business School and blah blah blah, until he made determined efforts to kill himself at high speed in cars. 

When I met him. He was 27, down on his luck, and I was a hiring manager. I had the worst of all hires, a failed, pissed-off Harvard grad who was going nowhere. 

But he was a rocket. He says his number is 19. The facts say his number is 17. He left stone & Webster after a year and five months when one of the supervisors tried to seduce him, and then he went to Datapro research Corporation, where he spent a year and five months graduating to NCR Corporation, where he spent a year and five months rising from the position of analyst to top consultant in the effort to learn from senior execuTives how to learn from the debacle his division had become. 

Then he did the same rocket job at General Motors, ultimately, within months, rising from the be-all and end-all of JIT manufacturing at Inland Division (where the Wright Brothers played, to Inlnd Diaher Guide Division, where he made the Europeans play ball, winding up writing a speech for the president of the Automotive Components Group, at that time the 8th largest manufacturing corporation in the U.S. As a side note, he became the only outside consultant ever to be named a member of the prestigious UAW/GM Quality Network. That took more than a year and five months. He quit when it turned out the UAW  was every bit the leg-breaking mob he ‘d always suspected them of being.

From there he went on to Whirlpool Corporation, where he pioneered, led, developed, and delivered training to teach international communicators how to, uh, think, based on a company wide improvement model he had scrawled on a napkin in a bar in Italy. Climax? – A call from my client on Christmas Eve. The Harvard Business Reciew had a scheduled interview with the newly global Whirlpool CEO that made him sound dumb. Could I fix it? In 24 hours?

The HBR editor was extremely skeptical. “We don’t work with outside consultants.” I said, “I know this company, know this man, and I can fix it. And you don’t have none who can do this kind of rewrite in one day.”

Exactly 24 hours later, the HBR editor apologized and offered me a job. I pitched him a breakthrough story about corporate conscuiousness he was inclined to accept. Then he got let go and I decided to quit consulting. How life turns,,, 

He, meaning “I,” failed. You can’t teach people how to think. He met a man on an airplane who told him he was done. The man was right. Robert fell into the hands of a woman who, typically, thought he was beautiful. 

Result? He now has a belovèd stepdaughter. And he has me. Because he called me when he was at lowest ebb. And we’ve never looked back. Since we’ve been together, we’ve produced 22 books, more than a hundred videos, and he has been working too hard to fight his 50 year war. Ask me about that before you dismiss him as a snotty fool.

I

Give you grief for

Oh, being young old 

Not from his county

Wife named Sue

Crackle girl 

Give you grief for

No particular reason,

Doesn’t keep her bargains

But always kens the seasons

Girl named Anna

Lost his knees but not his way

Did not earn the life of Jay

Daughters, labor, current strife

Or at any point the pain-free life.”

And now we jettison the rhymes and poetry…

We did it, Jay, we ran the bikes all the way to the Delaware Bay Shore

Remember how the salt smell came and went

Through the bleak we saw so so flat

I had the bigger bike that day

But you didn’t care about that.

What we saw

What we saw

What we saw

Seagulls swooping singing, rocks and waves and no one there-ing.

Salt smell. Sand. Throttle up. We rode two monsters home.

That day was just you and me

You saw an ocean you hadn’t known

Private lovely bay shore wild

And we rode and rode down upward

To the mighty Delaware

The lovely edge of where

I owe you a Harley. It is yours.

I just want you back to that old

Hale hearty husband role

No excuses, 1200cc cooold.

Sportster boy, fairly old.

Brothers. All we ever were. Me 10 years older and colder. You, ten years younger and wanting my Harley. Who was colder? 

I don’t care. You can have it if you get off that awful, sterile, godawful bed and go home to Sue and Anna.

Yours,

R

Life. He knew life was a bitch. You probably don’t know about his. His whole thing was to seem boring, so you wouldn’t ask. Everyone here knows life is a bitch. Like most, you probably think he was some rich kid who got lucky and found Pat to provide for him.

Things I’ll tell you about my husband Robert you never knew and he never boasted of.

He was a clear genius, not the technically MENSA kind, all show and no go. He skipped second grade and when he went to the prep school his father insisted on (his), they wanted him to skip to tenth grade. But he was still just 13 and his dad demurred. 

He graduated from Harvard at 19, having been not a Rhodes Scholar but a Final Club President because he was the best looking guy in the silver spoon set who wasn’t gay. He was always beautiful physically. And in his last of three years at Harvard (yes, he graduated in three), he came very close to dying. Fifth floor of the back of the infamous Porcellian Club, opposite the Porcellian Gate, he took the next step off the railing in order to see inside. There was nothing inside.

Then he went to Cornell Business School and blah blah blah, until he made determined efforts to kill himself at high speed in cars. 

When I met him. He was 27, down on his luck, and I was a hiring manager. I had the worst of all hires, a failed, pissed-off Harvard grad who was going nowhere. 

But he was a rocket. He says his number is 19. The facts say his number is 17. He left stone & Webster after a year and five months when one of the supervisors tried to seduce him, and then he went to Datapro research Corporation, where he spent a year and five months graduating to NCR Corporation, where he spent a year and five months rising from the position of analyst to top consultant in the effort to learn from senior execuTives how to learn from the debacle his division had become. 

Then he did the same rocket job at General Motors, ultimately, within months, rising from the be-all and end-all of JIT manufacturing at Inland Division (where the Wright Brothers played, to Inlnd Diaher Guide Division, where he made the Europeans play ball, winding up writing a speech for the president of the Automotive Components Group, at that time the 8th largest manufacturing corporation in the U.S. As a side note, he became the only outside consultant ever to be named a member of the prestigious UAW/GM Quality Network. That took more than a year and five months. He quit when it turned out the UAW  was every bit the leg-breaking mob he ‘d always suspected them of being.

From there he went on to Whirlpool Corporation, where he pioneered, led, developed, and delivered training to teach international communicators how to, uh, think, based on a company wide improvement model he had scrawled on a napkin in a bar in Italy. Climax? – A call from my client on Christmas Eve. The Harvard Business Reciew had a scheduled interview with the newly global Whirlpool CEO that made him sound dumb. Could I fix it? In 24 hours?

The HBR editor was extremely skeptical. “We don’t work with outside consultants.” I said, “I know this company, know this man, and I can fix it. And you don’t have none who can do this kind of rewrite in one day.”

Exactly 24 hours later, the HBR editor apologized and offered me a job. I pitched him a breakthrough story about corporate conscuiousness he was inclined to accept. Then he got let go and I decided to quit consulting. How life turns,,, 

He, meaning “I,” failed. You can’t teach people how to think. He met a man on an airplane who told him he was done. The man was right. Robert fell into the hands of a woman who, typically, thought he was beautiful. 

Result? He now has a belovèd stepdaughter. And he has me. Because he called me when he was at lowest ebb. And we’ve never looked back. Since we’ve been together, we’ve produced 22 books, more than a hundred videos, and he has been working too hard to fight his 50 year war. Ask me about that before you dismiss him as a snotty fool.