The Peripatetic Philosopher Reminisces about A Brakeman's Son

A BRAKEMAN’S SON

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© March 9, 2019 

REFERENCE:

This was originally published on this blog June 21, 2010.

Sometime in September 2010, after Labor Day, I hope to return to my hometown of Clinton, Iowa to visit friends of my youth; to have dinner with fellow Clintonians from all walks of life, and to share with them what a native son without portfolio now in the autumn of his years has experienced in life.  The lessons learned cover four continents and more than four decades. What follows here is a sample of this reminiscence.

Clinton, Iowa in my fiction is known as "Crescent City," as it winds down the center of the United States as the "Mighty Mississippi River," momentarily arching to form the facsimile of a proboscis as the farming Midwest meets the industrialist East at the Iowa border, then continues its way down the middle of the country as "The Father of Waters," as it was called by the Indians, to dump into the Gulf of Mexico at New Orleans.   

* * *

THE MIND IS ITS OWN PLACE

If we are part of a human web, and he I thinks we are, then it makes sense that everyone is at no more than six steps away from any other person on earth. This has been described as “six degrees of separation.”

Given this, it should come as little surprise that a lower class Clinton, Iowa boy could have the life experiences that he has had.

In a strange way, his life has made the fantasy drama of Forrest Gump seem real. Can you identify with his experience? Here succinctly and selectively is an ordinary man’s odyssey of sorts.

In high school, as a member of Iowa Hawkeye Boys State (1950), he was campaign manager for the Federalist Party, and on the dais nightly with such notables as the Iowa Governor, a US Senator, or an Iowa member of the US Congress. He also managed to be elected to the office of Secretary of State, and held that office in the Iowa State Capitol in Des Moines for one day.

A University of Iowa education (1951 – 1956) was possible through summer employment at Standard Brands, Inc. (a Clinton, Iowa chemical corn processing plant) during his college years, winning a merit scholarship which paid his university tuition, being a conscientious student and having a faculty for frugality, attributes which would follow him wherever he went in the world or whatever he was doing. Consequently, he had no college loans debt to pay when he graduated.

* * *

After graduation, he joined Standard Brands, Inc. as a chemist. While attending a 1956 conference in Chicago for the company, he accidentally encountered the world beyond the confines of his hometown, being abruptly pushed aside as he attempted to enter the Palmer House Hotel's elevator.

Media flash bulbs blinded him as Adlai Stevenson appeared out of the darkness, and said, “Excuse me, young man,” and entered the elevator followed by a swarm of colleagues and reporters. Stevenson was running for the Presidency of the United States, and was to speak that night in the Palmer House Ball Room.

Later that same year, now a Hospital Corpsman striker on the USS Salem CA-139, a heavy cruiser with a complement of 1,400 men, and the flagship of the United States Navy’s Sixth Fleet operating in the Mediterranean, he had another watershed moment.

On that occasion, he found himself part of a US Marine contingent set to invade Port Said, Egypt. He had no combat training, and was well out of his element, but not the US Marines. They were chumping at the bit to land and do their bidding while he was terrified.

It was the fall of 1956. The US Sixth Fleet was on military alert as the British and French bombers were obliterating the Suez Canal over an international political dispute with Egypt.

President Eisenhower in the eleventh hour told US Naval Sixth Fleet Commander, Admiral “Cat” Brown, to stand down.

He remembers that incident to this day. The Marines were gung-ho and not a man afraid while he was shaking in his boots. The president chose not to fight. This proved an historic moment for the former Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe in WWII. Prudence won over pride.

This military fiasco would mark the end of the British Empire in the Middle East.

* * *

In February 1957, the US Sixth Fleet arranged a military audience in Rome with Pope Pius XII in his private quarters. A Salem photographer caught him reaching out to touch the pontiff as the pope was carried by, a picture he cherishes to this day.

Irish Roman Catholicism was his primary anchor in those days as he precariously moved from innocence into adulthood.

Later in 1957, on another Salem tour, he met Bishop Fulton J. Sheen at the Shrine of Fatima in Lisbon, Portugal. He kissed the bishop’s ring, had his picture taken with him, and said, “Your excellency, I am a big reader of your books.”

The Bishop, who was a prolific author in philosophy and theology, looked askance at the young sailor, as if to say, “Really!” Instead, the bishop said, “What books might they be?” The sailor then rattled off a number of the bishop’s books, causing the bishop to smile broadly. “You do read me!”

Condescending? Yes, but he took no offense. After all, he was a white hat, an enlisted man, not a naval officer, and young, but older than he looked, as he was already a college graduate. No doubt the good bishop would have been incredulous had he confessed that he first started to read the bishop when he was in eighth grade.

* * *

By a combination of serendipity and compassion, Admiral “Cat” Brown, Commander of the Sixth Fleet, invited him to share his helicopter off the Salem when he was granted emergency leave late in 1957. His da was dying of multiple myeloma.

It became quite an adventure. The helicopter took him to Corsica, a pontoon plane then took him to Sardinia, and from there he was to take off to the United States in a military transport. It always amazed him, reflecting over the years, how well an ordinary US sailor was treated by his navy.

The return to the Salem after his emergency leave and to the Mediterranean was equally venturesome. A commercial flight took him to US Naval Base, Port Lyautey, Africa (Morocco). There he boarded a navy jet fighter that landed him on the aircraft carrier, USS Benjamin Franklin, and was high lined from that gigantic ship to the Salem during the Six Fleet's Mediterranean maneuvers, but unceremoniously dumped into the Med as the line sagged during the transition, but he was not injured.

* * *

Spending nearly two years in the Mediterranean, taking every tour available, books he had previously read came to life by visiting such places as Baalbek and Beirut (Lebanon), Istanbul (Turkey), Rhodes, Cyprus, Piraeus and Athens (Greece), Portofino, Genoa, Venice and Naples (Italy), Barcelona and Gibraltar (Spain), Lisbon (Portugal), Palermo (Sicily), and Cannes, Antibes, Nice, Villefranche and Monaco on the French Riviera (France) and Malta (a British Protectorate).

While once on liberty in Piraeus, someone yelled, “Look! There is Alan Ladd and Sophia Loren!” Coming towards us was a tall beautiful lady, and a taller man, holding up a short blond man between them, who was Alan Ladd, all apparently drunk, smiling and singing. They didn’t break stride as they passed us. Later, we learned they were making a film called, “Boy and a Dolphin.”

* * *

The Mediterranean is like a giant bathtub with the Sixth Fleet patrolling it like the coastguard. This allowed this sailor to tour such places he had only read about in novels with Villefranche his ship’s home port.

During his tour, the Salem was forced to go into dry dock at Malta for six weeks to repair the Salem ship’s screws, which were larger than a three-story building. This meant nearly constant liberty. He met British sailors and learned that while the Six Fleet was constantly at sea; British ships were at sea only a few days a month because of the necessity to conserve fuel, which was another indication that the "Emperor of the Seas" had changed.

* * *

Active duty completed, he returned home to his da’s bedside, and a hospital bed supplied by the American Red Cross. One of his duties was to administered morphine to his dying father in the shadow of the courthouse where he had spent his youth. They watched his da’s favorite television show, “Wagon Train,” on a nine-inch black and white TV screen, a drama starring Ward Bond with young Clint Eastwood.

Dr. Joseph O’Donnell, who was a constant presence in the Fisher home, signed his bill, “paid in full,” when he was never paid a dime. In many ways, the doctor and my da were polar opposites in Irish temperament but had great respect for each other.

My da was not yet fifty. He never complained about the hand he had been dealt although in obvious pain, pain apparent in his bloodshot eyes, and the ugly bedsores on his back.

It was a defining moment for his son.

The man had pushed the rock of Sisyphus up the hill, only to be buried by it again and again as it tumbled down over him. The man had monumental physical courage, which held fast to the end, but was emasculated by institutional authority and cowered to it all of his days.

The son resolved as he watched the man who was his father expire to live the life denied that man, to take on institutional authority in all its forms with courage letting the chips fall where they may, and doing so without rancor or retribution, but unapologetically in a way that had escaped this dying man.

Education was his sword and his mind its own place.

* * *

In 1958, he left Clinton for good, joined Nalco Chemical Company as a chemical sales engineer relocating to Indianapolis, Indiana. He became a field manager in 1964, active in politics and community affairs in Marion County (Indianapolis), in the process getting to know Mayor Morris Settles, Governor Matthew E. Welsh and US Congressman Lee Hamilton, becoming President of the Young Republicans of Marion County.

Hamilton would go on to be a ranking member of the 9/11 Commission after the terror attack on the Twin Towers in New York City on September 11, 2001.

* * *

While living in Indianapolis, he joined the Great Books Club of the Broadripple Library (1962), which was chaired by William Ruckleshaus, a man captive to destiny.

In April 1973, Ruckleshaus was appointed acting directed of the FBI. Subsequent to that on October 20, 1973, he, along with his boss, Attorney General Eliot Richardson, would resign from the US Justice Department, after refusing to fire Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox at President Nixon’s request. Cox had been investigating the Watergate scandal. These twin resignations would become known as the “Saturday Night Massacre.”

* * *

In the late 1960s, Nalco elevated him to international corporate executive status, working South America and Europe, eventually assigning him to South Africa to facilitate the formation of a new chemical company.

South Africa since 1948 had replaced British rule with the Afrikaner government. Shortly thereafter, a Policy of Apartheid was established, which represented the "Separate Development of the Races," dividing the nation into Europeans (whites) and non-Europeans (Bantus and Coloreds). The indentured workers in Natal, originally from India, were also included in the non-European population, while the Japanese, who were trading partners with the government were considered European.  The Afrikaner government represented less than 20 percent of the population while controlling the other 80 percent, a population with few rights and no vote.

For this American, the experience of apartheid, its duplicity and injustice, combined with the insouciance of corporate imperialism proved too wrenching. He would resign once his assignment had been completed.

Although only in his mid-30s with a wife and four young children to support, he chose to retire at the peak of his career. That act would define his existence but not as others might assume.

Life would become his research laboratory which was not to be confined to a place or space as that of a chemist but would be open to explore and embrace the desultory world of human beings.

* * *

Corporate executive status introduced him to a new lifestyle and to deferential treatment. This was light years away from his humble beginnings, and a style with which he was never comfortable. His family traveled first class, occupied suites at five-star hotels, and was blessed with company sponsored tour guides in major cities across Europe.

In Rome, they stayed at the Hilton. Franco de Paqualis, a driver for Nalco, was their guide. He had once been the driver for Pope Paul VI. This connection gave him cart blanche access to the private confines of the pope, allowing him to take the Fisher family on a rare visit within the sacrosanct walls of Vatican City.

Moreover, Franco saw that the Fishers were given delegate status as the pope celebrated the “Mass of the Pilgrims.” Reserved seating was near the main altar while some 30,000 worshipers stood in the atrium of St. Peter’s Basilica during the three-hour ceremony.

Sitting next to the Fishers was president Mobuto of Zaire (The Democratic Republic of the Congo), his family and entourage.

* * *

A two-year (1969 – 1971) sabbatical followed in which he was given to reading and the writing of one book, a book that became a national bestseller and remained in print for twenty years.

This was followed by a stint at the university for the next six years (1971 – 1977) to earn a master’s and Ph.D. terminal degree in social, industrial and organizational psychology.

Consulting followed along with teaching as an adjunct professor for several universities. In 1980, he joined a client, Honeywell, Inc., as an organizational development (OD) psychologist where he operated as an internal consultant. Over the next five years he would write a spate of monographs, journal articles and give an occasional keynote speech for Honeywell, a client or for some event.

Serendipity elevated his profile months later when Tom Brokaw of NBCTV narrated a program, “Japan Can Why Can’t We?” (1980). At the time, he was directing Honeywell Avionics’ Quality Circle Program, then the largest in the United States for this 4,000 employee facility. Quality Circles became the rage of the nation thanks to the Brokaw television narrative.

National hysteria followed with seemingly every company in America wanting to jump on board the Quality Circle bandwagon. Companies failed to note the differences in culture, climate and the workforce between Japan and the United States: Japan was a group culture with a rigid hierarchy and much larger blue-collar workforce, while the United States was an individualistic culture with a self-indulgent largely white-collar workforce.

It was a lesson learned that the media, although making a seemingly relevant challenge to the nation, a challenge with insufficient critical data, were more powerful than any elected politician. He would never forget this lesson.

* * *

The 1980s was irrational to the extreme, and he was in the middle of it, with “Participative Management,” “Lifetime Employment,” “Employee Involvement," "Employee Empowerment,” and “Management Style” as the constant roll of the drum.

This medicine proved a poison, or “iatrogenic,” which is to say, the cure advocated turned out to be worse than the disease.

Nearly forty years later, this imbecilic and puerile behavior still prevails. You only have to turn on the network or cable nightly news to find verification.

He said as much in a 1984 keynote speech to an assembly of corporate defense contractors and military leaders who were customers of his employer, Honeywell at the time. They bought into the hysteria, which he didn't, giving a keynote speech titled "Participative Management: An Adversary Point of View."

The speech nearly got him fired. But ironically, two years later (1986) he was instead promoted, once again to corporate executive status, moving to a directorship at the headquarters of Honeywell Europe SA.

* * *

As Director of Human Resources Planning & Development for Honeywell Europe, he would discover Europe was more regressive in its work, worker, and workplace policies than the United States.

Ideas would ferment in this European laboratory. He would retire for the second time in 1990, and write several books and scores of articles on the anachronistic organization, atavistic management, and the emerging but lost professional class of workers. He would also write one novel with a South Africa setting.

* * *

It is now 2010 and he sees Western man still a knower more than a learner; still driven exclusively by vertical thinking; still solving problems with the thinking that causes the problems; still fixated on crisis management failing to see its folly; and still falling into the same muck again and again.

A mind is, indeed, its own place and space and can be the subconscious enemy until the optimistic dreamer wakes up.

* * *