Common decency, common courtesy, common sense � these were
the ingredients for success in the life of a good man and a great mentor.
Many
of us have a role model, or a trusted advisor, or a close friend. I�m one of
a lucky few to have had all three. And in one person, no less: my mentor,
Bill Dietrick.
Bill passed away 15 years ago this month, after a
distinguished record of military service in Korea ... an outstanding career
as a public relations practitioner ... a stellar tenure as a college
instructor ... and a long run as a sly, insightful writer of this magazine�s
closing feature, a column we called �The Last Word.�
Far more important to Bill than his career, though, was
his long and happy marriage to wife Rosemary (who for 25 years has written
our travel column), especially experiencing with her the difficulties and
delights that accompanied the successful raising of three fine sons.
I first met Bill at the University of Richmond in the
mid-1970s, as a junior majoring in journalism who hoped that taking a public
relations class would broaden what I felt were iffy job prospects. During
that crazy decade of Watergate and oil embargoes, of runaway inflation and
interest rates, the job market was tight in lots of areas, few more so than
in journalism. In an era awash in young journalists vying to be the next Bob
Woodward or Carl Bernstein, newspapers and magazines enjoyed a strong
buyer�s market for talent.
So, the option of a career in public relations seemed like
a sound back-up plan for someone who was more interested in being paid to
write, than in who signed the paycheck.
To the eclectic blend of full-time students and older
career people populating that �basics of PR� night class in the winter of
1977, Bill looked and acted different than the usual sweatered, shambling
faculty member. He wore a suit, for goodness� sake, under his close-cropped
haircut and patient smile.
More than anything, though, he didn�t ride a podium while
dispensing facts and theories and thoughts to a multitude of earnest
scribblers. No, he actually made us work, and think, and interact with each
other. He often delivered more questions than answers, and was fond of
recounting actual scenarios, asking us to figure out how to handle them,
before telling us how he had.
He worked the classroom like a glib host circulating among
guests, making each of us feel special. What he was selling, really, was not
knowledge, but something better: independent thinking. His roaming, probing,
questioning style sparked in me a passion for the art of communications, as
he encouraged all of us to be good students, sure, but to be something even
more important: good human beings.
Though he was smooth, he was never slick. And though he
was entertaining, his teaching was always grounded in the overriding
importance of personal integrity. Doing what you say you�ll do. Practicing
daily what you preach. Living life with passion and purpose. Helping others
along the way.
Thinking for myself, and trying to
live with integrity, were lessons that Bill taught me, lessons I still
remember long after his passing, and more than 13,000 days since that night
class so long ago.
There is one more lesson that Bill taught in that class,
though, an important one he repeated often in the years after I graduated
from college, as our relationship shifted, from teacher and student, to
colleagues and friends. Bill spoke often about the importance of �The Common
Denominators�: common decency, common courtesy, common sense. In his deep
baritone voice he would say, �If you give the janitor the same respect you
give the CEO, you�ll be successful.� And he was right.
Even today, if you�ll scratch just a bit beneath the grimy
surface of grim headlines and dire warnings, junk emails and tawdry texts,
and reality TV profiles of psychos and misfits ... you�ll find the real
America. The one with thousands of charitable organizations and millions of
volunteers helping their neighbors every day, filling needs for health care,
food, clothing, shelter and transportation.
And, of course, the America with member-owned,
not-for-profit electric cooperatives serving 42 million people in over 900
local communities across the country.
In any place that calls itself a community �with neighbors
rather than merely residents �you�re sure to find the common denominators
that Bill Dietrick talked about in that college classroom so long ago.
