People

Parents do the best they can with what they are given. At least that’s what I’ve been told, and I believe it’s true for most parents (not all). Given this benchmark, my dad has done remarkably well. It doesn’t seem to me that he had any sort of role model for what it means to be a dad.

My grandfather was an abusive alcoholic. Dad once pulled me aside and confided to me about his dad. He said, “Do you see that quiet old drunk sitting in his chair all day? I just want you to know that person is not the person I grew up with.”

As a child, Dad’s older brother would tease him about his stutter. According to Dad, this is why he retained his stutter throughout his life. He blames his stutter for never getting promoted to plant manager at his job.

I don’t mean to give the impression that my dad blames others for his problems. He doesn’t. I merely want to give a few examples of how my dad had a tough life.

He doesn’t talk about it much, because talking about it opens up emotions that he would rather not re-experience. My own experiences as a child taught me that I could shield myself from negative emotions too. Like father, like son. Dad recently had two strokes, and I notice that he seems to express more emotion these days.

In my family, positive emotions were OK, and negative emotions were not OK. The main negative emotions I was aware of growing up were shame and anger. Mom would stand me in a corner; Dad would spank me. Before you judge my dad, remember that times were different back then. For instance, my junior high school gym teacher would paddle students. Could you imagine that happening today? Dad always made sure he calmed down before administering a spanking. I believe he didn’t want to be like his dad, who I’m sure would act out of his anger.

I always wondered why I was so angry as a teen. After all, I had a good family who provided for me. There was no addiction, abuse, or any other reason to believe that my family was anything but normal. Yet my anger bubbled up and I lost control on more than one occasion. I kicked a hole in my bedroom wall. I put the heel of my hand through a window. I acted out and got arrested.

My dad would scold me repeatedly for leaving toys out and otherwise not keeping the house neat and clean. I would feel ashamed, but it wouldn’t affect my behavior. My dad couldn’t understand why I left a mess all the time and neither could I. Today I think it was my way of rebelling. If this was my motivation, then I was completely unaware of it as a child.

When I was a pre-teen, my parents took me to see a psychologist. It may have been because I wasn’t socializing at school, but that’s just a guess. They stopped taking me after that first appointment. I found out years later that my parents couldn’t afford to have me continue counseling. I don’t blame them. Best I could tell we were lower-middle class, and they were doing the best they could.

Our house was too small for a family of five, so he tore he off a portion of the roof and created a large dormer upstairs. That gave us an extra bedroom and bathroom. He got help from family for the main structural stuff, but he finished all the interior himself. It took him years.

Dad tried to teach me what he knew. He would make me watch as he designed a new sunroom or worked on the car. I would get bored, and eventually he gave up. He had better success with my brother, and Dad continued to help him with home remodel projects until his recent strokes.

Dad worked his way up the ladder. His first job was packing light bulbs at the nearby General Electric plant. He worked his way up to draftsman, and finally was recognized for his skill diagnosing and fixing problems with machinery. He was made a Quality Control Engineer despite the fact that he didn’t have a college degree.

Years later when he left GE, he applied at a local plant for an opening for Quality Control Engineer. They were barred by policy from considering his resume because he didn’t have a degree. He found a job at a local truck radiator manufacturer. They were having terrible problems with quality control, and he was able to get a handle on it. After he retired, the company retained him for a time as a consultant for much higher pay.

I only found out much later some of the other things Dad sacrificed for me and my family. I remember him taking night classes toward a college degree. Recently Mom told me he gave that up because it took away too much family time.

My parents moved us from Ohio to Mississippi just before my senior year. Part of the reason is because our schools were tough and I would get bullied. My lack of socialization meant that there was nobody to say “good-bye” when I left the only home I had ever known. As desolate as it felt, things did get better during my time in Mississippi.

Dad was always a family man, and he loved to take us traveling on vacation. Even as small infants he took us all on vacation. At first we tent camped and later Dad purchased a travel trailer. He was a purist—no TV in the camper. It was a treat when we camped at a KOA because they had a pool and utility hookups. I would look longingly at places Dad called “tourist traps.”  (I never did get to “See Rock City.”) We traveled across the U.S. and back. By the time I was a young adult I had been to 46 states.

Dad became assistant scoutmaster at my boy scout troop. Every summer we spent a week at Beaumont scout camp. We also took week-long trips to high adventure camps, such as Tinnerman canoe base in Canada and Philmont backpacking camp in New Mexico.

Dad recently told me, “There’s nothing more important than family.” It’s one of the very few times I’ve ever seen him tear up.

After I graduated college, this frugal man suddenly became generous, simply giving me money when he got the opportunity. He’s still giving away his retirement savings. I wondered, what happened to the man I grew up with? I concluded that he wanted to be generous all along, but waited until I was responsible.

Responsibility was a major value to him, something that he passed along to all his children.

So it’s like I said at the beginning: Dad, you have done remarkably well with what you were given. You may not have known everything I needed as a child, but what you did know you gave. For my part, I was pretty ungrateful. From the age of 16 I couldn’t wait to get out of the house. Yet I chose a local college and was home almost every weekend.

You’ve told me repeatedly that you’re proud of me. It’s taken me a long time to say this, but know that I’m proud of you too.

To be completely honest, if my dad wasn’t my dad, I don’t think I’d take the time to really get to know him. We’re so different. If that sounds harsh, I’m don’t mean to be. If anything, it simply means that Dad knew that his children didn’t have to be his best friends, and that made him a better parent.

I think my parents still wonder if I still hold a grudge against them for my childhood. I don’t. Because I have my own issues opening up and expressing my emotions, I don’t think they can read me very well. I hope this letter is a start to me doing things differently.

I was given a gift after Dad had his strokes. For months it appeared his mind would never come back. He doesn’t remember almost a year of his life. But his mind did come back. What he lost was mostly physical: the ability to see and walk well. He retains his sense of humor. He tells me every time I see him that he really enjoys my company and wants to see more of me. If he hadn’t come back, I wouldn’t be able to read this letter to him. How many people get a second chance?

Common wisdom says to never get into business with or loan money to your friends because you’ll lose your friends. I got into business with two friends—Randy and Jim. The common wisdom is wrong. You’ll lose only half your friends.

Jim was one of a special group of friends I made at Mississippi College. This group of friends made a huge difference in my life. You can read more about this group here.

Jim lived directly across the hall from my dorm room. Other than my roommate Randy, I may have spent the most time with Jim. (Remember Randy; he comes up later in this letter.) I think it’s because he was always friendly and approachable. I was deathly afraid of being seen as foolish or an outsider in our group. I was rarely treated this way, but that’s the way I saw myself. Jim had a way of getting me out of my absorbed self and into relationship.

I remember bringing Jim a just-released Peter Gabriel album, an actual vinyl record we played on a turntable. He really liked one of the songs on the album and started dancing around the room, hopping first on one foot and then the other. It’s this kind of spirit and serendipity that attracted me to Jim’s personality. He did things I was too self-conscious to do.

He had a bird in his room, a cockatiel. We could teach it to speak. It learned to mimic the sound and timing of the telephone well enough to fool us into thinking the phone was ringing.

Once I was on a date with my future wife Jamie. It was late and I hadn’t come back to the dorm. So he called me to make sure we weren’t doing anything we might later regret. He didn’t need to worry, but he was thoughtful to check up on me.

One of my college courses was in microprocessors. This was programming at the lowest level. My “computer” was a circuit board that included a central processor, a row of LEDs, a speaker, a memory chip, a rudimentary device to load binary numbers into memory, and not much else. We had to write a program, convert it to binary, and enter it by hand into the memory chip.

We wanted to play a song on the speaker. We could write a program to buzz the speaker at a certain frequency to play a note. We knew what frequencies corresponded to certain notes. But what song would we play? We settled on the Pac Man “intermission” ditty. If you’ve played Pac Man, you might remember it.

Jim was a music major, and I had heard that he had perfect pitch. So we asked him to write the notes of the Pac Man song. This he was able to do, and he helped us load the song into memory and play the song.

I don’t know if this was the motivation for him to switch majors. I only know that shortly thereafter he started taking computer science courses.

Jim transferred to a different college to finish his degree, and I moved up to Virginia to work as a civilian for the Navy. Randy was already there, and he recruited me. Jim joined us in 1986.

Over the next few years we all got married. Jim married Robin, and I married Jamie. Randy and his wife Cindy moved to San Antonio.

In 1986 I started a business writing a computer program for income tax preparers. Within a few years I could afford to hire a few people. I hired Jim as a programmer. Later we hired Robin’s sister.

In 1989 I recruited two major partners. I wanted Randy to become Chief Operating Officer, and a guy named Al was to be our V.P. of Marketing. With Jim and I in Virginia, Randy in San Antonio, and Al in Orlando, we had to find a common city in which to locate our business. So our little seven-person company went on the road in search of our new headquarters. We chose Rome, Georgia.

Business boomed, and we quickly outgrew two offices. In time we had a few hundred employees. Things stopped being so much about our friendships and became more about business. Al, Randy, and I were the three partners, the “three amigos.” I hardly noticed when Jim started to feel disaffected and unappreciated.

By the mid-1990s, I was burned out. Jim was ready to leave the company. A few others were ready to join him.

I found out later that this happens from time-to-time with mid-sized businesses. But it had never happened to us before. Randy and I in particular saw it as mutiny, insubordination, and a betrayal of our friendship. Never mind that we had taken his friendship for granted for a decade.

So when we suspected that Jim was planning to interview with a competitor without letting us know, we lawyered up. Jim had signed a non-compete agreement, and we told ourselves we had a right to protect ourselves. It was complete emotional over-reaction.

We could have just let him and the others go.

Instead, I’m ashamed to say that we hired a private investigator to follow Jim to his interview in Washington state. I’m pretty sure the investigator illegally recorded Jim, but he the PI didn’t admit it so it didn’t bother us.

When Jim got home, we summoned him to our attorney’s office, grilled him for hours, fired him, and confiscated his work computer. Is it any wonder he made it as difficult as possible for us after that?

Our resulting lawsuit to attempt to enforce our non-compete agreement was fueled by our anger and wanting to win at any cost. By any cost, I mean to say that we spent over a half-million dollars in attorney’s fees on our suit and a counter-suit that Jim and the other former employees filed seeking overtime pay.

I want to pass on a valuable lesson in the event you, dear reader, ever want to sue somebody. Don’t ever file a lawsuit because you’re angry. For every document you file pointing out the other guy’s outrageous behavior, he gets to file a document claiming that your behavior is even more outrageous. Yes, you get to drag him into a deposition and have your attorney grill him. Then he gets to do the same to you… and to your family, your friends, and your coworkers. Then the other guy’s attorney starts acting outrageously and you start to hate on him too. Lawsuits keep your emotions alive for years until it’s time for the trial and the anxiety overtakes you.

Near my home was a billboard rented out by a personal injury lawyer. The billboard said, “Injured or angry?” Having to pass this billboard every day was my penance for filing the lawsuit in the first place.

It was two weeks before trial. None of us wanted a trial, and yet we were entrenched in our positions. Somehow, some way, Jim and I realized that we’d have to get the attorneys out of the way and try to settle this ourselves, one-on-one.

Jim called me and we hashed out an agreement. I still remember it as one of the most difficult and stressful moments of my life. There were so many things either of us could have said, wanted to say, that would have blown up the conversation. Every word was deliberately prepared and carefully delivered. But somewhere, underneath all the animosity, a fragment of our underlying friendship still existed. It had to be Jim and me in that conversation.

In the end, only the attorneys won. We gave the former employees enough money to pay off their lawyers and Jim gave us his stock in the company. We figured that Jim would still find a way to work for our competitor, but we were done.

In the divorce, Randy and I got the mutual friends. Or at least summer visitation rights. Five families from our college group had been meeting every summer for years. Jim and Robin stopped coming. Perhaps they were willing to step aside for the good of the group, and to continue to step aside every year thereafter. For Randy and my part, we resolved not to force our mutual friends into the middle of our conflict with Jim. This letter is the first time our mutual friends will know most of these details from me.

About 11 years ago Jim’s father died. So when Randy lost his father under similar circumstances, Jim attended Randy’s father’s funeral. The two of them re-bonded over their respective losses. When our mutual friend Greg told me about this, I expressed that I was open to seeing Jim as well. But I didn’t know when the opportunity would present itself. Then Jamie recently reached out to Robin. When I started this project, I knew I couldn’t continue to put it off. I’m sorry it took a kick in the pants to seek out reconciliation.

Jim, for all of the above, I am truly sorry. I acknowledge that I treated you unfairly. I don’t want it to remain between us. I don’t deserve your forgiveness. Whether you forgive me anyway is up to you. Know that I’ve valued your friendship over the years, and I hope we can move forward as friends.

It’s interesting. The first two people I decided to write about are strong, hard-working, successful women who have been business partners and friends. It wasn’t my intention; I’ve simply started with people I know locally. Of course I’m aware they’re women, but it’s never affected my relationship with them or the way I’ve treated them as partners and equals.

I say this only because Janet’s experience growing up—and probably for most of her life, was not like this. She was not encouraged to go to college, not encouraged to be independent. Her forceful rejection of the role given to her as a young woman has become her life’s passion and driving force.

For example, she recently completed a book titled I Don’t Wanna Wear a Crown. It’s a women’s empowerment book for pre-schoolers. It’s a timely concept and a great message to give girls who are so often directed toward princesses as their heroes. You should buy it. Then purchase it as gifts for all of the preschool girls in your life. Click on the image of the book.

I met Janet when my children started attending St. Mary’s Catholic School here in Rome. She was a staff member. For a year or two she was the principal. She wasn’t called the principal because she wasn’t Catholic, but she was. (Shh… don’t tell.)

The roof over the oldest part of the school was leaky and needed to be replaced. This was around the year 2000. But we thought bigger than that, because it was time to completely replace the old part of the school. We put together a proposal and a $4 million budget to be funded through a capital campaign and a loan from the Catholic archdiocese of Atlanta. We had our appointment with the archbishop, and we were prepared!

The big day came and Janet, as usual, was on time. But I was lost. The building was on Peachtree Street. There are DOZENS of Peachtree streets in Atlanta, and to make things worse, there was no “Archdiocese” sign on the building due to security concerns.

The archbishop was on time, and you don’t keep an archbishop waiting, especially if you’re asking for something. But I was the one who had the outline and was prepared to present it. So Janet had to bluff, improvise, and BS her way through nearly a half-hour of presentation before I arrived. She explains this with a lot more “color” than my explanation. Let’s just say it bound us together forever. Happy ending: We got our new school.

Janet tells people, “Whatever Steve Safigan tells me to do, I do.” (She uses complete names like “Steve Safigan.” She even refers to her husband by his full name.) I don’t think I want the responsibility of telling Janet what to do. But what it really means is that she respects me tremendously. The feeling is mutual.

When I first became a personal coach, she was one of my “practice” clients. She still calls me “Coach.” It has allowed me to have many meaningful conversations with her. We continue to have coach conversations every once in a while.

Anyone who has met Janet knows that she is a demon of productivity. She seems driven to do as much as three mere mortals. She is a force of nature, and if you say ‘no’ to her, she’ll find a way to get it done without you, or even despite you. I think she’s learned to relax and enjoy life a little recently, which is to say that she now does the work of two mere mortals.

She once went to a personal growth workshop. (It was one of the things I “told” her to do.) At the workshop, the leader told the group to stop wasting even 10 seconds of your day. She’s taken it to heart.

She’s been involved in law, education and politics, rising to the level of senior leadership in multiple roles. She has authored multiple books. She’s involved in many local charities and was bestowed with the exclusive Heart of the Community award. I won’t try to list every activity and honor associated with her life. I think you get the idea. She is a community treasure.

We worked together for about a year. Although it didn’t turn into what we intended, it was fun working with her. In most of my roles, I’m the mentor. While it’s an honor to be someone’s mentor, it’s a little lonely. The refreshing part about my work with Janet is we worked as equals. We both tried to feel our way through together. We each had our strengths and weaknesses. There was a lot neither of us knew. We found a path that sparked both of our interests and passions.

She’s a good friend to the rest of my family as well. She’s always ready to lend a hand and get involved.

I’m honored and privileged to have seen some of her vulnerability, fear, and uncertainty. But she acts in the face of those feelings. That’s the definition of courage.

My friendship with Janet will last to the end of our lives. Her “tell it like I see it” approach is refreshing in its candor and honesty, and I always appreciate it. We have fun; she brings a sense of excitement to whatever she does, and it’s contagious. She checks in on me. We have long conversations. I wish I had more friends like her locally. I wouldn’t feel as isolated.

She’s exactly the kind of friend you would love. And I do.

 

Annette and I are in the unique position of having worked for each other. First I worked for her, then she worked for me. She’s been my teacher, my customer, my friend.

I created my first computer program in 1973 using punch cards. But we didn’t actually punch holes in the cards. Instead we marked the cards with pencil, like one of those standardized tests we all used to take. From that moment, I knew I wanted to be a computer programmer.

I went to Mississippi College. They didn’t have a Computer Science degree, but they did have a Hewlett Packard mini-computer with several teletype terminals the students could use. So I majored in Math and lived in the computer room. The school added a Computer Science major my junior year, so I got a double degree in Math and Computer Science.

I knew I wanted to start a computer software development company. I told this to my wife Jamie on our first date. To this day, she denies this conversation ever took place.

After I graduated, I bought a pocket-sized spiral notebook (we actually used paper back then) and listed all of the types of businesses who might use PCs. This was 1984 and the IBM PC had just been introduced.  I remember listing restaurants, doctors’ offices, and videotape rental stores. (I really dodged a bullet on that last one.)

At the top of my list was tax preparation. Tax prep was still done by hand in most offices. Problem for me was, I didn’t know how to prepare taxes.

I figured the best way to know how to create a tax prep program was to actually be a tax preparer for a season. So I signed up for a tax prep course offered by the local H&R Block. It was taught by Annette.

Annette owned an H&R Block franchise and she ran seven tax offices in the area. She also personally prepared more tax returns than anyone on her staff, and reviewed every tax return that was prepared in her office. I would learn that hard work was one of Annette’s trademarks. She had a preprinted sign on the wall that said, “Women have to work twice as hard as men in order to get half the credit. Fortunately, this is not difficult.”

I took her tax course in the evenings. Anyone who graduated was offered a job during tax season. This was H&R Block’s way of getting temporary staffing during tax season. So I worked five hours per week during the following tax season.

After the season was over, I approached Annette with an offer. I would develop a tax prep program for her offices, and she would help me design the program so it would be more efficient than preparing tax returns by hand. She agreed to run a pilot with three of her tax preparers, including herself. Annette became my first customer.

This was a big risk for Annette because she had a big workload, and she was pretty darned efficient cranking out returns by hand. Fortunately, it worked out that first year, and she installed a PC at every desk the second year. That was 1988.

Annette and I developed a friendship during the evenings after the office was closed. I remember standing at the door of her office and talking, not just about business, but about personal things. This would become a ritual, and I would be standing at Annette’s office door for years, even as her office changed. We talked about her family. She also had taken in a young woman and appeared to be raising her like family. They even fought like family.

I was designing and programming the tax forms for the computer myself. I needed help, someone who knew taxes. Annette was thinking about selling her franchise already, and so that’s what she did. She became my first employee.

I feel funny calling Annette “my employee” because she was more than that. As the company grew, she helped shape the culture, became an elder of our company “family,” and became our model for honesty, ethics, and hard work. She continued to be the lead forms programmer her entire career with the company, and then trained her son to take over from her.

Annette was blunt and always said what was on her mind. Once you understood this about Annette, you learned to really appreciate this about her. There were no games, no manipulation. You could relax, because you always knew where you stood with her and what she thought. I wish everyone could be like that.

You knew when she had a cold or the flu because she had her jug of orange juice at her desk. This was her remedy because taking a sick day wasn’t an option. She was famously frugal, and would run her car until the wheels fell off.

I never saw the surface of her desk. It was always piled several inches deep with papers and books. Yet when she needed something, she could reach into the pile and—almost with looking—pluck out the exact thing she needed.

By 2000 I was completely burned out and retired from active involvement in the company. I was so thoroughly cooked that I stopped coming by the office. I lost track of almost all of the people I saw day-to-day in the company. I regret this deeply, and the person I regret losing track of the most is Annette. She continued to work for the company for several more years, ran a tax office again for a while, and continued to prepare taxes well into “retirement.”

Despite not seeing her for years, I still hold a fondness for Annette in my heart. I’ve never met anyone quite like her, and I don’t think I ever will.

 

Update: Annette still runs a tax office, still prepares several hundred tax returns per year, and even continues to do work for the company I founded. I met with her in her office, just like I always did.