A Life Wasted

1989

I'd known for years that my biological father lived in Denver, but I'd never attempt to contact him.  As you will recall he and mom divorced when I was two.  I had never seen him again so had no memory of him.  I've always wanted to contact him and get to know him, but through my mom I knew he had no interest in his only son.  So when I found myself in Denver selling software to an A.L. Williams customer I couldn't resist driving by his house.  Just to take a look.

I don't have any memory of stopping.  I certainly hadn't intended to do so.  Yet there I was at my father's front door, ringing the door bell.

I was in a daze, so I didn't know what to say when my wife opened my dad's front door.  At least that was my first thought.  The woman that answered the door looked so much like my wife that I could only stare.  This was my father's wife, and she looked like Mary, only a few years older.  "Can I help you," she asked.  I stuttered for a minute then gave her my name.  Even though my father and I had different last names, she immediately knew who I was.  "One minute," she said nervously.  She closed the door and went back into the house.  I can't even begin to understand the dynamics that would lead my absentee dad and I to marry similar looking women.

Enough time passed that I was about to leave when a man opened the door.  My biological dad.  Our first meeting.  The first words out of his mouth were, "What do you want."  It went down hill from there.  He denied he was my dad.  Claimed my mom had cheated on him and that my real dad was someone I'd never heard of.  He cursed my grandparents and my mom.  I told him to watch his mouth. 

I've never seen nor heard from him again.  My mom is now eighty years old.  If my father is still alive, and I have no idea if he is or not, he'd be eighty-four.  I still regret that we never got to know each other and would make contact with him if I could.

One day we were all in the van driving home from church while Mary and I discussed the need to get Clay into Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.  To get them to see him we'd need a referral from his cardiologist, who was in Cleveland, but they were hesitant to make the referral.  While discussing this we drove up Interstate 75 North, towards our home.  Without consciously doing it, I passed the exit for our home.  Two exits north we realized this, then decided to keep going and drive to Mayo Clinic.  So on our way home from church, without even stopping at home for a change of clothes, we drove 1069 miles to Rochester, Minnesota.  To make this even crazier, once there our plan was to see one of the world's top pediatric cardiologist, at one of the world's top hospitals, without a referral or appointment.

As per our normal mission mindset we drove all night and arrived at Mayo Clinic the next afternoon.  The wonderful staff of Mayo Clinic weren't real surprised to have us show up as we did.  We were prepared to camp out in the waiting room until they would see us, but that was hardly necessary.  Within an hour we were interviewed by the doctor we sought out.  He accepted Clay as a patient and spent the next few days running him through a series of test.  They could not have been more kind.  The fact that we lacked medical insurance mattered little to them.  I can't stress enough how wonderful these guys were. 

Their determination was that Clay didn't need surgery yet, but would within the next year or two.  We drove back to Atlanta with complete confidence that our son would receive the best possible medical care.  That spontaneous trip was one of the smartest things we've ever done.

Through all of this sales were growing with our A.L. Williams customer base.  This all came to a sudden and unexpected stop one Monday morning.   Art Williams, the founder and CEO of A.L. Williams Insurance was a great deal like Donald Trump.  Art Williams was not rude or mean, but he did run his growing company with flair and charisma.  He also kept a firm hand on things.  All of his 5,000 plus field offices were outfitted with a satellite dish connected to corporate headquarters in Atlanta.  The satellite connection was used for connected computer quotes and sales, which was pretty impressive in the pre-Internet days.  But what I was most impressed with was that every Monday morning that satellite connection was used to broadcast a live manager's meeting to all of his agents nationwide.

Though neither Lance or I worked for A.L. Williams, we tried to make as many of those Monday morning meetings as possible.  Art Williams liked to make changes in the system used by their sales force. Sometimes this was the result of a new product and sometimes it was the nationwide implications of a new way to make sales or to manage your down line force.  What ever the change, you could just about always count on some form of change announced by Art Williams at one of these Monday morning meetings.

Often these changes required us to update or modify our software.  Since Lance was now doing all the programming, it became increasingly important that we keep up with Art's latest proclamations.  I didn't need to attended the meetings as much as Lance did, but I did when it was convenient to do so.

This particular Monday morning I was in Las Vegas and had just completed a sale to one of A.L. Williams' top producer, Jeff Miles, an impressive young fellow.   As I sat next to Jeff to see what mischief Art Williams would be up to, I had Jeff's large check in my pocket.  Jeff was installing a large multiuser Altos computer with our software and we had the contract for both.  It was a great sale.

As Art Williams was going through his regular spiel he threw in a final proclamation that ruined our computer business.  Art announced that corporate headquarters had developed sales software for the field offices.  Software that every office would be required to use.  If that wasn't bad enough he prohibited use of any third party software, mentioning our company, USA Computers by name.   Without a word I handed Jeff his check.  He said, "I'm really sorry."  Me too, because we were done.

We had options.  We had two other software packages fully developed that we could push and we had the experience and capability to write others.  There was no shortage of work for an experienced pair of software developers in 1989.  Lance was eager to move forward, but I was done.  I was completely burnt out.  I was sick of travel and I was sick of computers.  Lance decided to continue working with the A.L. Williams customers we had who were willing to secretly defy Art's order, but I couldn't do even that.  So Lance and I dissolved our partnership on good terms.  He stayed in Atlanta and I moved my family to Alaska.  For several years I had dreamed of being an Alaskan Bush Pilot and this seemed like the time to make that move.  With Mary's blessing and encouragement we went north to Alaska.