In April I wrote “Remembering the Departed of the Drucker World,” prompted by the news the previous month of the death at 72 of Cornelis A. “Kees” De Kluyver, the former dean of the Drucker School of Management, in Claremont, California. Kees was kind and helpful in my early years of research for my first book, Living in More Than One World: How Peter Drucker’s Wisdom Can Inspire and Transform Your Life. (I’m writing this on November 11, 2022; the 17th anniversary of Drucker’s death, which happened eight days before he would have turned 96.)
The deaths of De Kluyver and others whom I interacted with for the book inspired me to identify five lessons regarding important yet often fleeting interactions with people, especially those we don’t know particularly well, and may only meet once: (1) Seize opportunities when you can. (2) Appreciate people while they are still here. (3) Stay in touch with people, and be available to them, to the extent you can. (4) Learn what you can from people while they’re still here, but also after they are gone. (5) Cherish this encounter, for it will not come again. This comes from a Japanese term, Ichi-go ichi-e, which I learned from my longtime friend and Drucker School professor Jeremy Hunter.
These ideas, and memories of the people in my April post, came back to me upon learning of the death in August at 81 of Richard R. (Dick) Ellsworth, a former professor at the Drucker School, who team-taught the course “Leadership and the Making of Meaning” with Peter Drucker. Dr. Ellsworth was the second person I interviewed for Living in More Than One World, after his fellow professor, the late Joseph A. Maciariello, nearly 20 years ago.
I can’t say that I knew Ellsworth well, but he was generous and gracious when I interviewed him in his office at the Drucker School. Although I may have seen him briefly on the campus in later years, the only other, brief encounter I remember was seeing him at the celebrations for the 100th anniversary of Drucker’s birth in 2009, shortly after Living in More Than One World was published.
Ellsworth had an illustrious career as a professor for 23 years at the Drucker School after teaching at Harvard Business School for nearly a decade. In 2002, Stanford University Press published his book Leading with Purpose: The New Corporate Realities. Peter Drucker’s back cover endorsement reads as follows: “The unique strength of Richard Ellsworth’s book is that it presents the business enterprise in all its dimensions—as an economic institution; as a human organization; and as an embodiment of values—and carries all three dimensions in both clear theory and practical application.”
Two other deaths that recalled the five lessons are related to my second book, Create Your Future the Peter Drucker Way (2013). In the final chapter, “Build Your Future Beyond Your Current Workplace,” I wrote about legendary UCLA professor Alexander Astin, his teaching/research colleague and wife, Helen S. (Lena) Astin; their colleague Jennifer A. Lindholm; and their study, “A National Study of Spirituality in Higher Education: Students’ Search for Meaning and Purpose,” which surveyed more than 14,000 students at 136 colleges and universities nationwide.
It was conducted for the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) at UCLA (where Alexander Astin was the founding director), and collected in the 2010 book Cultivating the Spirit: How College Can Enhance Students’ Inner Lives. “While Astin may not be as well-known as Drucker or Huston Smith,” I wrote in Create Your Future, “he is still a tremendously influential figure, probably comparable to Stanford’s Albert Bandura, whom we met in Chapter 3 and will meet again in this chapter.” Last year, I wrote about Bandura’s death at 95.
I was saddened to learn that Alexander Astin died earlier this year, shortly before his 90th birthday, and that Helen Astin died in October 2015 at 83. Although we never met, I sent them an inscribed copy of my book, and received a couple of gracious emails of thanks from Helen, a year before she passed away.
Finally, two deaths (both Claremont-related), while tangential to my books, are still relevant for the above five lessons. Chris Darrow, a Renaissance man in music, art, and teaching, died at 75 on January 15, 2020. In 2008, a mutual friend at Claremont Graduate University connected me to Chris, a member of one of my favorite ‘60s rock bands, Kaleidoscope. We had a couple of interesting phone conversations when I was in town, but ultimately did not meet in person and eventually lost touch with each other. Two months before Chris’ death, on November 11, 2019, his father Paul Darrow, a well-known Southern California artist and longtime professor at Scripps College (part of the Claremont Colleges), as well as Claremont Graduate University, died at 98.
Regarding my lesson 4 above, there is much to learn from everyone in this post, even though they are no longer with us. Each has left a rich legacy of not only ideas and intellectual/artistic/musical expression, but also in the memories of people they encountered, in person and otherwise.
Returning to point five, for the people above that I met in person, I’ve tried to remember what my last encounter entailed. A major takeaway, however, is that in each case I did not realize it would be our final encounter.