This letter is mostly about a trip to Costa Rica back in March. But, being a Potpourri, I also wrote about the US elections, actually the primaries back then, and the passing of Patty Duke.
It is kind of a fitting end to 2016 which is a year that bothered a lot of people. Many were upset by the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States and this is a central part of their condemnation for 2016. While I wish him well and hope that he will make a positive difference, I stand by what I wrote back in March.
Another reason some folks were glad to see 2016 end is because of number of celebrities that passed last year. Patty Duke was one of them. She passed away in March. With the passing of David Bowie, Prince, and the very sad mother/daughter passing of Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher, I am not sure many remember that it was the year in which Patty Duke passed as well. I had reflected, in my own This Side of Fifty way, on my admiration for the actress.
Cost Rica: At one point in the twelve years of e-letters that evolved into a blog, I thought about dedicating certain month’s letter to certain themes. February was always the anniversary letter and I tried to make June the Health and Fitness letter. My second letter, March 2004, was a Letter from Buenos Aires. Vive! Mexico was the March 2005 letter. I thought to make each March letter a travel letter. That did not happen as planned.
This month, however, I did go to Costa Rica and I am delighted to report a bit on that wonderful trip to a fantastic country.
It was my first trip out of the country since 2010 when I went to Istanbul. It was my first trip to Latin America since 2007. I was excited for the opportunity to return one of the places I had spent so much time.
This trip was organized by the School of Business and Nonprofit Management at North Park University. Every year, during spring break, we organize a trip to country to learn how local businesses and nonprofits operate, learn about their challenges, and to broaden our perspective. There is, of course, ample time for tourism. The size of the contingency is somewhere between 8 -12 and is made up of graduate students, alumni, professors, and friends. In recent years, they have visiting Vietnam, Turkey, South Africa, Greece, and Argentina.
Our Dean, Wes Lindahl, organizes these trips and always chooses a co-director to assist with organizing the site visits and other logistics. I was fortunate to get that responsibility this year because of my experience and connections in Costa Rica. I was excited for the opportunity and looking forward to connecting with some old friends.
There is something special about Colgate people. There is a bond that is different than other companies I have worked for. Even if we have not been in touch for years, it doesn’t matter. One email and it was like we have not skipped a beat. This was the case with four wonderful people.
Jim Gerchow is one of my oldest Colgate friends. We met on my second overseas trip for the company to Venezuela. It was a different and more prosperous country back then in 1991. Jim was the manufacturing director at
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| Jim Gerchow is standing on the left |
When I called Jim, he immediately responded, like I knew he would. He offered for us to visit his brother in-laws company, Financiera Desyfin, for which he was a board member. He also arranged for us to visit the Federación de Organizaciones Sociales which is basically the organization of nonprofits and social enterprises in Costa Rica.
On top of this, Jim and lovely wife Vicky opened up their home to our group. It was a most lovely evening of food, drink, and conversation at their magnificent home, right out of Architectural Digest, overlooking San Jose. It was so warm and generous of them to do this.
Oswaldo Arias is another great Colgate friend. He even was a direct report of mine for a few years when we were working on improving the performance of SAP in Latin America. While he reported to me, working with Oswaldo was truly more like a partnership. Oswaldo was one of the best IT folks I have ever worked with. He is brilliant but with the calmest demeanor you could imagine which came in handy when he was explaining the intricacies of data structures to me. He is as expert as anyone in SAP Order to Cash that I know. He currently works for HB Fuller in their Shared Services Center for Latin America. He hosted us there and gave a great overview of what a shared service organization is and what they are capable of.
Oswaldo, who always does his homework, realized it was the 125th Anniversary of North Park University. So, amid the lavish buffet he arranged for
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| Oswaldo is third from the left |
Ralph Dias is a great friend. He never worked at Colgate but rather with us, but he was an essential part of our global logistics team. Ralph is the account executive from DHL assigned to Colgate. Ralph is an excellent man and a good friend. When I wrote him, he arranged a visit to DHL Costa Rica where, Arnoldo Carranza, another old friend is General Manager. Arnoldo was gracious in hosting our group and gave a tremendous overview of running a 3rd party logistics company in Central America.
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| Arnoldo is the second from left in the back |
Maria Royo is simply amazing. I had neither seen nor talked to her since 1997 or maybe even earlier than that. In January, we connected on Facebook. It was good to be in touch her again. She was always a bundle of energy in managing IT for Colgate Costa Rica. In fact, two of her team, Oswaldo Arias and Gerardo Cambronero moved on to global IT positions in Colgate. A few weeks later I got the Costa Rica assignment. When I wrote and told her about this trip, she was all over it making wonderful suggestions of companies and organizations to visit. She organized three visits for us.
Unfortunately, I did not get to see Maria on this trip. Maria runs her own IT consulting firm and also is the President of GS1 in Costa Rica. We were scheduled to spend half of our first day in country visiting a nonprofit she had arranged for us to visit and then end up at her offices for an overview of GS1. Sadly, our connection in Dallas was tight, our flight from Chicago to Dallas was delayed, and we missed our first day. Maria was unavailable due to business commitments and I am sorry I did not get to see her.
Juliana Holguin is the current General Manager of Colgate Costa Rica. I got to know Juliana, who started in Colgate Colombia, when she was a Marketing
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| Juliana Holquin |
The trip was a great blend of the old and the new. While it was a great pleasure to reconnect with old friends, it was just as special to make new friends of students and alumni on this trip as well as to get to know valued colleagues better. It was great to spend a lot more time than normal with our Dean, Wes, his wife Deb, and Dr. Pier Rogers who is the Director of our Axelson Center for Nonprofit Management. You get to know folks better on such a trip.
I appreciated the younger crowd of Max Sluiter, Rhianna Giberson, Cheryl Devenny, Heidi Bush, and Fran Caan who were gracious in allowing me to hang out with them and remember when I was their age. We were also joined by Maree Bullock and Zofia Lutnicka two friends of North Park and now friends of mine.
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| Maria Royo |
Life is constantly changing. People come in and out of our lives. When it is all said and done, no matter what one’s accomplishments are, it is truly the people that we meet and work with that make all the difference. The people make for the best and most lasting memories. It was a great pleasure in to reconnect with wonderful Colgate and DHL folks and have them meet and mingle with the folks I currently work with.
Is this the best we can do? 2016 is a Presidential Election year in the US. Maybe it is just a function of age but I find myself asking a very simple question, over and over again: “Is this the best we can do?”
The Democrats are offering up Hilary Clinton or Bernie Sanders. The Republicans seem to only have Donald Trump much to the dismay of the party leadership. Does this become a year, where as a voter, I am picking the best of the worst? Is it a year where my vote for one candidate is really a vote against the other candidate? Both of these are, how do they say it? Ah yes. Lame.
In my opinion, it is a sad state of affairs.
Let’s get this out of the way. I do admire one of the candidates: Bernie Sanders. Yes, I admire Bernie Sanders. Why? How? It is not for his political views. He is a bit too socialist for me and I say this as I get a bit pinker with each passing year. I am just too much of a free market and fiscal soundness person to ever be a socialist. But, I admire Bernie for one reason. It is clear what he stands for. It is clear what he believes. It is clear what he will try to advance if he defies the odds and ever becomes President. Bernie Sanders will not change his views because of any poll results just to get more votes. In this day and age, this is a refreshing trait in American presidential politics.
Hilary on the other really wants to become the president. I believe she will say anything to get elected. She will change any view she has if poll results suggest she will gain more votes in a significant demographic.
The Republicans? Oh my. The Donald. Really. When I saw he was running early on, I figured he wouldn’t even make it to the Iowa Caucuses. Boy, did I ever figure wrong. He can say any ludicrous thing he wants contradicting other ludicrous things he may have said and people are eating it up.
I think people are eating up what Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are selling because there are significant segments in this country who are disenfranchised. We have most definitely come out of the Great Recession a different country. Many of the Trump supporters are simply no longer working or underemployed. These folks were off the radar screen of the mainstream of both parties and Trump, simply, resonates with them.
Sanders also resonates with a different group of disenfranchised Americans. He has great appeal with the youth who do not see the career and lifestyle prospects that other generations enjoyed.
When I think of this election and the dearth of choices, I am wondering if we are in the era of 1837 – 1861 when we had a rash of Presidents between Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln who, to me, seem entirely inconsequential.
Martin Van Buren, 1837-1841I am certain that these presidents had some attributes. Perhaps, if I were to read up on this, I might even change my opinion. But, none of them were really covered or emphasized in any US History course I ever took.
William Henry Harrison, 1841
John Tyler, 1841-1845
James Knox Polk, 1845-1849
Zachary Taylor, 1849-1850
Millard Fillmore, 1850-1853
Franklin Pierce, 1853-1857
James Buchanan, 1857-1861
So, I think we are electing another Millard Filmore or Franklin Pierce. In this great nation of 320 million people, is this the best we can do?
Patty Duke (1946 – 2016): Patty Duke passed away on March 29. She was 69 years old. She was a great child star back in the day. I had not heard much about her in recent years, but she was highly regarded mostly for her amazing role as Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker.
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| Patty and Cathy |
I knew that she was married to John Astin. I knew that Sean Astin, of Rudy and Lord of the Rings fame, was her son. Until I read her obituary and biography, I did not know of her troubled and hard childhood. It seems that is often how it is for child stars. I did not know that she suffered from bipolar disorder and became an advocate for mental health causes. I also did not know that John Astin was Sean’s adoptive father not his biological one.
I write about Patty Duke because I liked and watched here TV show: The Patty Duke Show. It aired 104 episodes from 1963 – 1996. The show was about two teenage girls, cousins in fact, who looked remarkably alike. Patty Lane was a typical American teenager living with her family in Brooklyn Heights. Wikipedia called her chatty and rambunctious. Cathy Rowan Lane was the cousin from Scotland who came to live with her cousin. Cathy was kind of the flip side of Patty. Wikipedia referred to her as “sophisticated, brainy, and demure.”
Being only ten years old, I watched and liked the show because I was kinda sorta attracted to Cathy. I liked that she was sophisticated and brainy. I did not really like the Patty character as much… she made me nervous.
I thought they were two different people played by two different actresses. I felt foolish when I realized Patty Duke played both characters. Now, in hearing of her passing, I smiled on my naiveté. It was certainly a testimony to her acting skills…
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