Saturday, July 31, 2010

Memories...

by Hugh Eaton

Next Friday, August 6th, will be my 78Th birthday. The typical line you hear from senior citizens is "where did all those years go to", and I'm afraid I'm one of them. You blink your eyes a few times and all of a sudden you are looking in the mirror and asking, "Where did that young fellow go who used to look back at me when I was shaving?"

But there are many blessings which come with aging. First, you've had a long time to deepen your appreciation of all the blessings and gifts the Lord has showered upon us despite our unworthiness. "What is man that He is mindful of him?" So every morning when you wake up, see a beautiful Colorado sunrise, smell the coffee and gaze at that wonderful soul mate lying beside you, you are thankful and humble for the Lord's blessings. You ask yourself, "What did I do to deserve this?" and no answer comes except He chose my steps before the world even began. You truly believe it when you say, "This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it."

God has enabled us to spend many years, twenty-four in our case, with your soul mate - someone, which time has taught you is the other half of you and actually the best half of you. In Atlanta in the 1980s God led me to a young lady named Diana Lynn (Dee Dee) Bennett. I met her teaching a singles Sunday school class, although she tells everyone we met in a bar. My first marriage was broken and the last thing I was looking for was a serious relationship. God had other plans, as He often does. They say, "If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans for tomorrow".

I am twenty-four years older than Dee Dee, so I couldn't quite grasp God's plans for us until we took some long walks by the Chattahoochee River in Atlanta. It became pretty clear to me her deepest desire was to become a Christian, but she hadn't grown up in a Christian home. She had a brief marriage which ended in divorce, and she had turned to the church for some answers.

One Saturday she had invited me to have lunch with her at her condo. It was one of those beautiful spring days Atlanta is famous for and she had set up lunch on her deck. After we were seated she picked up her fork and then noticed I was looking at her quizzically. I said, "Aren't we going to say a blessing?" Talk about a "deer in the headlights look". I quickly realized she was not used to praying out loud, so I gave thanks. Looking back now, I think that was the moment God revealed His plans to me. He wanted me to be her Paraclete, that is, to come alongside her and be an encourager as she progressed on her Christian walk. I also think that was the moment I realized I was in love with her.

It was an interesting courtship for a number of reasons, one being the age difference. She had been dating a couple of fellows in the Sunday school class who were her age, and, of course, they couldn't understand at all why she was attracted to me. (If I hadn't had some insight from God, it would have been hard for me to understand also.) As we shopped in the mall, we held hands and we got some of the meanest looks from older women. I surmised maybe they were afraid their husbands were going to "trade them in" for a younger model.

Dee Dee was friends with a married couple named Bill and Jennifer. She had gone to Georgia Tech with them and remained close after graduation. When Dee Dee began to realize our relationship might be more than a little serious, she insisted we should go to dinner with Bill and Jennifer. We had a pleasant dinner and later as I thought about the conversation it dawned on me I had been up for inspection. I'm pretty sure if Bill and Jennifer had done a "thumbs down" that would have been the end of the relationship. But I suppose the innate "Virginia Gentleman" charm won them over, and we became friends.

Our courtship progressed, and I am sure we both wrestled individually with issues like "do I really want to combine my checking and savings account with hers?" and for her "Do I want to keep my name or change it to Eaton?" - things like that. I thought the name change was going to be a real bump in the road, but one night as we were stopped at a red light on the way home from a movie, out of the blue, she said "I'll change my name". I told her I really appreciated her decision and didn't think she would regret it.

Time went on and finally one night at the Cinnabar Restaurant at the Galleria Mall in northwest Atlanta I proposed. We had eaten there several times and had a favorite table up front next to the window. She grinned and blushed and I slipped a sapphire engagement ring on her finger which is still there today.

Later I told her I would like to get married in two weeks and she gasped and looked at me like I was crazy. She said no way could we get everything done in two weeks, and I told her we both had done the drill before so it wasn't much of a learning curve. We went back and forth and I finally realized this could be a "deal buster", so I backed off.

Two months later, November 8, 1986, we were married in the chapel of the Sandy Springs United Methodist Church in Atlanta by Rev. Al Clark. Jennifer was Dee Dee's matron of honor and Col. E. Howard (Ham) Hammersley, Jr., a old friend from my Roanoke newspaper days and Chief Photographer of the paper, was my best man. I was pleased more than I can tell you that my daughter, Lee Ann, and my two sons, Mitch and Steve, were in the wedding.

We had planned on a honeymoon in the California wine country, but Dee Dee's dad got the shingles and her parents couldn't make the trip from Colorado Springs to the wedding. So we flew to the Springs, visited with her parents for a day and then spent a week at the Valhalla near the entrance of Rocky Mountain National Park. We were the only ones renting a cabin at the Valhalla since, even though it was just November, the snow was up to hour knees. The owner had put out some salt licks for the deer who were our only company.

It was a memorable week, but different as honeymoons go. With gaiters on we hike in deep snow to Bear Lake on the first day and had a great time, then Dee Dee came down with altitude sickness plus recouping from all the stress of preparing and going through with the wedding. So I sat on the couch in the cabin while she lay beside me the rest of the week. We couldn't even build a fire in the fireplace because the chimney was plugged. We both were grateful to leave the altitude and get back to Atlanta. So much for the storybook honeymoon, but we made up for it with vacations to the panhandle beaches of Florida - pretty close to heaven.

There's more to ponder, but we'll save that for "Memories #2".

Copyright 2010 Hugh Eaton

Career Advice (maybe even wisdom)

During my years with Landmark Communications, I was fortunate enough to work with some of the best people in the world - ethical, good moral compasses, high work standards and for the most part humble. But even the best of us arrive at points in our lives where we want to get someone else's perspective on something we are dealing with.

I had a number of different positions with Landmark - accounting, personnel and management - but, for some reason, no matter what my function some people used to seek my advice. This is not my ego talking, but I think God just gave me a sixth sense about people, and Frank Batten, the owner of Landmark must have thought so because he paid me a lot of money for a lot of years to help him play "checkers' with the careers of our managers.

It was, at the same time, a tremendous burden since you were "playing God" in the lives of your managers and their families, but it was some of the most rewarding work I did.

One fairly common situation a number of young managers wanted to discuss - they felt they were at a crossroads in their career or maybe they had a job which had become "stale". They felt as if they had done everything creative they could with the job and now they were just repeating and now growing. Often they would want to know what I thought about their changing career fields.

My advice was this (and it isn't brain surgery) - take a yellow pad and draw a line down the center of the page. On the left side write down all the things you like to do, starting with your job and then in your personal life. On the right side of the page write down all the things you think you are good at. Then you examine both sides to see if there is something you enjoy doing that matches what you are good at.

If you are lucky you will have a match. If the characteristics of that match agree with the characteristics of your current job, then chances are you will succeed in the career field your job is in. You may be stymied with no upward mobility in your department available, then it becomes a question of whether you want to continue on there or look for a job posting in your division or another Landmark division which matches your skills and interest. Individual situations and working conditions required different alternatives.

If you don't have a match, then things are a bit more complicated. I would explore what is their primary motivation (career, money, an ambitious spouse, job satisfaction, making an impact on society, etc.). Then you should examine carefully the things you like to do and select three of those and prioritize them.

Next look for something on the right side of the page which comes as close to providing what you the opportunity to do the top priority something you enjoy doing with something you are good at. Then if the job you are in doesn't mesh with this choice, you have to weigh the factors and make a decision. Is there another job in Landmark which matches this choice? If not, do I want to consider changing career fields with another company? Sometimes, in mid-career, interests change dramatically and you may have to consider returning to school for training in another career field.

After they did the yellow pad exercise, they would come back and we would spend usually an hour in which I listened and asked them questions. Even if they had asked themselves the same questions, it was helpful to me and to them to have them articulate their answer "out loud". I never gave them advice on what I thought should be their choice because it was their decision and they needed to have ownership of it. (I write about an exception to this below.)

I don't know how important these sessions were to the advice-seekers, but I do remember one in particular. Late one afternoon a young ad salesman at the Norfolk newspapers came to my office and he had pretty much decided his career was stymied at the paper and he was going to look for a job with another company. (A digression - annually Frank Batten and I would meet with the Landmark division managers and go over the situation of each individual whom the division manager felt had high management potential.) In the discussion with this young man's division manager, I knew he was well thought of and they were grooming him to advance if he was up to the challenge. (You couldn't tell an employee he/she was being groomed lest you raise false hopes and then find they can't deliver in the job they were in.)

Since I knew this young man was considered to have a high potential I spent about an hour "selling/recruiting" him on staying with Landmark, without promising a thing. I'm sure he spoke with others, so I don't take the credit for him staying. He did stay and about twenty years later he became president of Landmark's publishing division, one of the more important executive positions in the company.

Another situation which I was asked about a lot was "what next job should I set my sights on?" This is where I had no advice because in my career with Landmark I never had my eye on "the next job". The more ambitious managers thought I was nuts, but I told them I just try to do the best job I can in the job I have now, give 110%, and I have confidence Landmark will notice and my career will take care of itself. I began as Assistant Treasurer of Landmark's paper in Roanoke, then became the publisher's assistant until Landmark transferred me to their corporate headquarters in Norfolk. In eleven years on the Corporate Staff I was Director of Management Information, Corporate Treasurer (accounting function for over 40 divisions) and Corporate Vice President/Personnel (5,000 employees nation-wide), then left the staff and ended my career as Vice President of The Weather Channel (TWC). I never ever had my sights set on the next job, although I probably should not count TWC.

Landmark President Dick Barry came into my office one day in June of 1981 and said we want you to recruit a manager for us. He said they had just signed an agreement to start a cable television network in Atlanta and they needed a start up general manager. I asked what skills I should look for and he told me strength in business skills, finance and accounting and personnel.

As he spoke I grinned at him and said, "I think I know someone just like that". I went home that night, spoke with my wife, wrote a page and a half on why they should pick me for the job. The next day I presented my paper to my boss, Frank Batten, and two days later I had the job.

A few weeks later I took three file folders and $20 million dollars of Landmark's money and headed to Atlanta on a great new adventure we called The Weather Channel. The rest, as they say, is history.

2010 Copyright Hugh Eaton

My Recruiting Years

I had a very enjoyable twenty-nine year career with Landmark Communications, a media company owned by Frank Batten Sr and his family. A portion of my career involved accounting and finance, my major at Virginia Tech, but one fine summer day in the mid 1970s Mr. Batten asked me to take the Corporate VP/Personnel position. After thinking about it for a day, I went back to see him and told him I was favorably disposed but I wanted to ask him two questions before committing.

First I asked him if he really thought I could do the "people" part of the job, or was he just looking for a personnel bookkeeper. He assured me he had great confidence in my people skills and he needed someone in the job with the mix of people and accounting skills due to some onerous federal legislation just passed.

This was at a time when there was great pressure on companies to increase the number of women and minorities employed, especially in management positions. I had observed a number of companies nationally who's CEOs gave lip service to the new staffing requirements, but the CEOs did not in fact support the personnel department in its efforts to hire women and minorities. This brought much frustration to the personnel people.

So I asked Frank if he was, in his heart of hearts, really supportive of this new hiring approach? He assured me he was, and I could tell he was very sincere it as we discussed it. I accepted the position and thus began some of the greatest work experiences.

Frank told me one of his highest priorities was to re-establish Landmark's recruiting program at the MBA schools. As he surveyed Landmark's pool of young people who might develop into promising managers, he felt we were at a low ebb.

After a suitable transition time from my Corporate Treasurer's position to VP/Personnel, I began to plan my approach to recruiting. Remember I had zero experience in recruiting and not a clue on what to do next. So I took a page from some Chicago bank robber's book. When they asked him why he robbed banks, he said "That's where the money is". So if I'm looking for students, cleverly I decided to schedule my first recruiting trip to the Harvard Business School to interview MBAs.

It was the month of September and I was so green I wasn't aware the big recruiting companies (Ford, General Motors, IBM, etc) had had their interview dates scheduled for at least a year. The people at Harvard must have felt sorry for me because they found room for me to make an appearance in late October. I naively didn't understand most of the good graduates would have gone through at least twenty high pressure interviews by then and many had already accepted jobs.

I should make it clear I was interviewing first year MBA students for summer positions between their two years at HBS.

The HBS interviews are spaced thirty minutes apart with no break until lunch time. By lunch time I felt like, as Tennessee Ernie said, "I'd been rode hard and put away wet". To say these students had their way with me is an understatement. I had a whole list of questions I had prepared to glean information and after I asked the first question I got to close out the interview 25 minutes later without getting much more than a head nod in.

The afternoon session went pretty much the same, and on the plane home I analyzed what had happened. These students had interviewed so many times with the big corporations, many of which conducted high pressure interviews, they had their line of "snappy patter" down and it was like my first question pushed the start button on an audio recording. They had complete control of the interview, and I could have saved myself a trip if they had mailed me their resumes.

Since it was so late in the recruiting season I only went to the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, a favorite school of Frank's. The results were pretty much the same.

I did manage to get one Harvard student, a lady named Gretchen, to visit us in Norfolk. She was outstanding and ended up working the next summer for the Virginian-Pilot newspaper in Norfolk, Landmark's home base. I spent a fair amount of time that summer picking Gretchen's formidable brain, with emphasis on how Landmark could appeal to some of the students at Harvard who didn't want to work for a big national company. She was really helpful, and my one regret is we couldn't talk her into coming to work for Landmark. She was in love with the publisher of the LA Times who, of course, had offered her employment. At least, that's the story I got.

Before leaving Harvard on my first trip I scheduled a more prime recruiting visit time for the following year, and developed a strategy of how to gain and keep control of the interviews. When I sent the job posting to HBS prior to showing up, I made it clear Landmark was a medium size company with high standards, good values, and a chance to get exposed to several different departments of the business in a fairly rapid time interval.

At 8 sharp the first student shows up, a sheaf of papers in his hand, and no doubt he had been prepped by some of people I had interviewed the year before, who left notes,etc. We shook hands, and after introductions, I immediately asked him "Why did you come to Harvard?" He look sort of stunned and must of thought "how dumb is that question?", but after a minute he said he came because of their reputation and to study (marketing, finance, production, etc). I used the pregnant pause and after a moment I said "That's not why you came to Harvard". I smiled at him and let that sink in for a few seconds. By then the elephant in the room was the obvious unasked question he had - "Why did I come to Harvard then?"

I leaned forward in my seat and locked onto his eyes and said, "You came to learn how to manage people". I let that sink in and then quickly asked a question. "How many hours have you taken to learn how to do that?" I had researched that and knew the students were only required to take six hours of Organizational Behavior in two years of MBA school. He wasn't sure what courses I would consider so I told him the answer was six. I went on to tell him if you are any where near your salt in a few months you could be responsible for a work group of six or more employees, none of whom had been to HBS and most of whom were not working out of some high ideals of corporate success, but working just to feed their family. "How are you going to motivate them?"

By now I had complete control of the interview and got answers I needed to figure out whether I wanted to invite them for a trip to Norfolk for further interviews. The sheaf of papers disappeared into his pocket about half way into the interview and I didn't have to listen to a pre-recorded monologue of "How Great I Art". Instead, if I had made up my mind to invite them down I spent the rest of the interview extolling the advantages of working for a smaller company - broader exposure to all departments in the business, better chance for faster upward mobility, living in a great community like Norfolk/Virginia Beach, etc.

When the kid left, I 'bout broke my arm patting myself on the back. The country boy had come to the big ole Ivy league school and had a modicum of success. The rest of the day went well.

For several years I also recruited MBAs at Virginia, Stanford, University of North Carolina, Cornell and Virginia Tech. We succeeded in hiring students from all those schools except Stanford, and I am proud to say retained a very high percentage of them. Several of them attained high executive positions with various divisions.

My most memorable recruiting effort resulted in a continuing friendship with a young man name Lem Lewis. Lem was one of the first African-Americans to get an undergraduate degree from the University of Virginia, and later an MBA from Virginia's Darden school of business. He was working for Wachovia Bank in New York and wanted to change companies. One of his professors at the Darden School, Bob Vandel, was on Landmark's Board of Directors, and during a break in a board meeting Bob told me I should get in touch with Lem to see if he would be interested in working for Landmark.

Lem agreed to come to Norfolk for an interview and one Sunday night I met him at the airport. (I did this for all candidates flying in, despite some criticism about pampering untried candidates. I told the critics if I thought enough of a candidate to invite them to Norfolk, I would treat them just like a basketball coach would treat a seven foot recruit for his team. Besides that, I thought it was in keeping with the culture of Landmark to treat people well.)

This was in the 1970s when it wasn't as easy for African-Americans to be absorbed seamlessly in the workplace, and also I wanted Lem to know we just didn't invite him down because of the color of his skin. We sat down at dinner, and the first thing I said to him was, "Look - you are black and I am white and that makes no difference to me or anyone in Landmark. We invited you because of your excellent education and your work experience and to find out if we have a match between your skills and our needs".

I could sense the tension leaving our table and we had a great dinner together. We compared our backgrounds and they were so similar that about the only difference was our skin color. Both of us grew up in meager economic family situations, he in Lynchburg and I in Roanoke. Our high schools were arch-rivals. We both had leverage our unexpected educations (Virginia and Virginia Tech) to some reasonable success early in our careers. We both recognized what our dads had to do to raise a family with not much formal education. Lem's dad was a foundry worker and my dad was a mill worker, and I think we both felt we had a chance to make them proud of us.

Lem came to work for Landmark and after a while on the Corporate Staff he found his niche in television. Landmark owned KLAS-TV in Las Vegas and Lem had huge success in running the sales department. Later Landmark bought a TV station in Nashville which was the fifth station in the market, and Lem was sent there to bring the station intoa competitive mode. He did just that, bringing it to the #1 station in the market. Lew eventually ended up as the Chief Financial Officer for Corporate Landmark and has been retired a number of years.

We still stay in contact and although we have had some financial success, when we talk it' still the same two guys who haven't forgotten their humble roots. His friendship is a blessing to this day.

In a few years, the quality of students I selected for visits resulted in giving me some credibility, and the Corporate Executive Editor (CEE) approached me one day about doing some recruiting at undergraduate schools for beginning reporters. I readily agreed, knowing the pressure was on newsrooms to hire minorities and women. There were 1,750 daily papers in the country and about that many minority reporters, so to say they were scarce is an understatement.

I was a closet writer and had hung out in the newsrooms of our papers in Roanoke and Norfolk to develop some knowledge about how they operated. I asked the CEE what characteristics he looked for in successful beginning reporters, and his answer was brief and simple. "They should be friends with the English language and like to peer around corners."

The newsroom editors weren't all that excited about me recruiting reporters because historically they had done it all themselves with no help from Personnel. They started giving me instructions to go to certain schools with primarily black students. But having learned my lesson from my first trip to Harvard, I knew I had to develop my own plan.

When I told them I had scheduled trips to the "Little Three" - Wesleyan, Amherst and Williams - they left muttering to themselves. But I had good reasons. First, the students at these three schools, even though none had a journalism program, were getting one of the finest liberal arts education in the country. Each school also had its own daily paper and other writing opportunities.

Second, I had seen what had happened to some of the newsroom hires from the so-called "black schools". Not only did they lack the quality of education the students from the Little Three received, but they had another significant problem. Every new employee, whether white or black, reports to a new job with a significant learning curve. But in addition to that the black students had an significant additional challenge, that is, in school they were surrounded by students of their own color whereas in the newsroom they were surrounded by white employees. It was culture shock for many of them and some couldn't cope with it. I felt the black students I recruited at the Little Three would have already dealt with that problem due to the ethnic makeup of those schools. So the recruits would be one step ahead.

So how did I come out? We ended up hiring a minority male and a female, both from Wesleyan, as beginning reporters, and a minority male from Williams as a beginning reporter. They were good, so good in fact, the Phoenix, Arizona paper hired the Wesleyan grad and the Washington Post hired the Williams grad - both after they had been with us about a year. The female, who was a delightful person, stayed long enough to be named First Year Reporter of the Year before the Philadelphia Inquirer hired her away. Last I heard she is currently Editor of the Inquirer's editorial page. But that was the name of the game in those days. You got good people, developed them and knew one of the larger papers would hired them away, so you start all over. We felt at least we were helping our newspaper industry begin to right some ethnic wrongs by giving these young people an opportunity.

I can truly say I enjoyed recruiting and helping develop young people for Landmark as much as anything I did in my career. Some of them remain my friends to this day.

2010 Copyright Hugh Eaton

"...and then there was light..."
By Hugh Eaton

Sometimes, incidents which are provocative and perplexing find comfortable resting places in out-of-the-way places in our minds. They become memories and settle down to grow old gracefully with us.

Suddenly, they get a startling wake-up call, which sounds much like a drill sergeant waking his basic trainees at 4:45 a.m. Our memories, dimmed by their slumber, stagger to the front of our minds where we try to make sense of them once again.

This happened to me recently. I saw an ad on TV promoting a program on unidentified flying objects (UFOs). Memories slumbering in rooms 1952 and 1953 of my mind were made fresh again.

UFOs were in the news frequently during the 1950s. Sightings by experienced pilots seemed credible. Others, by less credible sources, made the UFOs seem a pulicity hoax. Not wanting to risk ridicule by the press, their coworkers and neighbors, many reliable sources did not report their sightings.

That's my situation. In 1952, during the Korean War, I was an air traffic controller at the Taegu, Korea, Matcon (military air traffic control center). One summer evening, about 100 of us airmen sat on a hillside, waiting for the sun to set so the movie would start. We only had one outdoor theater so the audience was made up of officers, mostly pilots, flight line personnel and many others experienced with the flight of airplanes.

"Look", somebody yelled! What we saw quieted the whole group instantly. Parallel to the western horizon, on a north to south course, a huge pale-orange ball of light, outlined in green, was streaking through the air. Its speed defied logic. We saw jet traffic constantly, but never anything this fast. In seconds it covered what seemed like a hundred or more miles. The weirdest part - it was completely silent.

We stood in disbelief. Our speculation ranged from a UFO to a new secret plane.

That's not the end of it. The next night a similar light returned on a south to north course. It was unsettling to say the least.

The news of the second sighting came about 9 p.m. as I was working the control board at Taegu Matcon. Just then I heard a plane, call sign "Watchman Zero", call Fukuoka Control in southern Japan, the adjacent control area to ours. The Watchman flights, Australian seaplanes, flew from Japan up the west coast of Korea on reconnaissance flights to places unknown. We surmised they flew to North Korea and perhaps Manchuria and China. Watchman Zero reported to Fukuoka Control he was over the Korea Strait with a strange unidentified light off his left wing. He described the same light we had seen at Taegu. Radio reception was good that night, and as I listened to Watchman Zero's position report cold chills crept up my back.

Fukuoka Control scrambled two F-94C fighter-interceptors which chased the light at their max speed, until the light leveled off at 33,000 feet. At that point the lead F-94 pilot said, "Fuk, the light left us like we were standing still".

The only traffic in my control area that night was a C-47 transport, just south of Taegu, on its nightly courier run. I informed the C-47 pilot about the light over the Korea Strait. He immediately said, "Taegu, the light is just off my left wing about fifty miles." If it was the same light, it had traveled about 175 miles in a matter of two minutes or so. The light stayed with the C-47 for a while, then disappeared.

My shift ended at 11 p.m., but I had agreed to work the overnight for the next team chief. The overnight was normally deadly dull with little traffic - a real opportunity to seek new and creative ways to stay awake. Sometimes the huge B-29 bombers from Guam and Japan, on their way home from their nightly bomb runs on North Korea, would call for weather or other information.

This night things were different. Several B-29 pilots, normally on a tactical control frequency which we didn't have, called on our frequency and told us strange lights were diving at their planes and harassing them. While creating anxiety, the lights seemed to be more of a nuisance than a threat. After that week we heard no more reports of lights.

In December 1952 I completed my one year tour in Korea and rotated to my new permanent change of station at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, headquarters of the Tactical Air Command. During my control tower orientation, our team chief described an interesting procedure.

As each team came on duty for its shift, the Team Chief was required to make an entry in the tower log that a camera, which took 3D pictures (remember this was 1953 - early for 3D) was in the tower, loaded with film and ready to take pictures. We were instructed to take pictures of any strange lights we saw. Things were getting "curiouser and curiouser".

Slack shifts were rare in Langley tower, but on one particular night there was only one plane flying locally, a T-33 two-place jet trainer. He was ready to land so we gave him landing instructions for runway 17.

We couldn't believe what happened on his final approach. From out of nowhere, the same color light I had seen in Korea dove straight down at the T-33, then climbed straight up in the fastest, steepest vertical climb any of us in the tower had ever seen. The chills came back again. It happened so fast we didn't get any pictures.

The T-33 wobbled a few times on final but landed safely. We watched in silence from the tower as the pilot taxied to his parking place on the ramp. Just before he shut down his power the pilot calmly asked, "Tower, did you see that light?" "Affirmative", we replied. That was all he said. All I could think of on the way back to the barracks that night was "the same light...the same damn light!"

A lot of years have passed, and I've only told these incidents to a few close friends. I find the memories, though aging comfortably and undisturbed for years, still a source of mystery.

Tonight, the sky over the Colorado Front Range is laden with stars and planets - twinkling, shimmering, breathtaking. As I try to absorb the masterpiece that is outer space, I wonder what to do with the memories of that light. I decide to share them with you and then put them away again, perhaps for good this time.

Still, I wonder who they are and what they want.


Copyright 2010 Hugh Eaton

The Weekend I Met Shand and God
by Hugh Eaton

Looking back at that weekend now, I wonder why I was so surprised at what happened. Thirty-five years have passed, and now it's pretty clear my faith left a lot to be desired. My parents were Christian, and our family attended church regularly. My sister and I enjoyed Sunday school even though we had to memorize the answers to catechism questions so we could get confirmed. We learned a lot about Jesus, and I suppose that is the point. We learned "about" Jesus, but we really didn't know him.

By 1975 my wife and I were living in Virginia Beach with our three teenagers, a daughter and two sons. We were active members of Baylake United Methodist Church. My wife sang in the choir and was active in women's ministry. Our three children enjoyed the youth group, and I had taught a fifth grade Sunday school class for five years. This gave me continuity with my students, the first of whom was now in the tenth grade.

One of the annual highlights for Methodist teenagers in Virginia came during a weekend in November when about three hundred high school students from Methodist churches all over Virginia gathered at the Methodist Assembly Center in Blackstone, VA, in what had formerly been a women's college. These weekends resulted in lasting friendships among the students, some I am confident are still close today. These weekends gave the students a chance to renew acquaintances in a Christian atmosphere. As soon as school started in September, students all over the state started planning for their "Blackstone weekend".

The fall of 1975 was no different, and five young people from our church, including my daughter, were excited about the prospects of the November weekend.

One October Sunday after church my wife and I were walking to our car, and I noticed these five young people standing around our car. At first I thought they were just socializing, but when I got closer they formed a sort of semi-circle around me and were silent for a moment.

After a few seconds I asked them how they were, and one young lady spoke up, somewhat reluctantly. "Mr. Eaton", she said, "we have our hearts set on going to Blackstone". I told them I thought that was great. She said, "There's just one problem. We have to have a chaperone take us, and nobody will agree to go." There was another pregnant pause, and it began to dawn on me what she was going to say next. All of a sudden I felt a bit queasy.

"Mr. Eaton, will you please be our chaperone? If you won't take us, then we won't get to go." (No pressure here I thought.) I'm not sure if she meant I was their last great hope or they were scraping the bottom of the barrel.

So here's the picture. Here I am, a big strapping fellow who's helped three of my own children get to their teens without serious problems, a former air traffic controller who has dealt with the stress that job brings, a man who served four years in the Air Force during the Korean War with one year in Korea, and a reasonably successful businessman. I'm standing in a church parking lot with five teenagers looking up at me with pleading eyes. And I loved all these kids, having been their teacher, friend and sometimes confidante for five years.

I could feel the sweat begin to trickle down my back, and it wasn't due to the Virginia Beach humidity. I've done a few brave things in my life, but never any foolish brave things. The thought of spending a weekend with three hundred teenagers - all with overabundant energy and bouncing hormones - terrified me. In my mind I could see images of kids standing on window ledges, toilet paper being rolled down the halls and perhaps some young girl getting her first or third or eighty-seventh kiss in some dark corner somewhere on campus. Bottom line - no way was I going!

As I tried to make them understand I had never been a chaperone at a Blackstone weekend, or any other place for that matter, I could see the disappointment begin to cloud their faces. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a tear roll down the cheek of one young girl who was looking forward to her first Blackstone weekend.

I stopped in mid-sentence, and I truly wish I could say I said a little silent prayer for God's guidance. I wishI could say He spoke to me loud and clear that I was supposed to do this for Him, but that isn't what happened. I caved in to five sad faces and agreed to be their chaperone. I think I was about to cry too, but for a different reason. I put on a stern face and tried to regain my compusure. I made them promise to be on their best behavior, and they readily agreed. They all hugged me like Christmas had come early, and then ran to tell the Youth Director they could go.

In the weeks before the Blackstone weekend, I spoke with other friends at church who had been chaperones. Their advice was to stop worrying. There might be one or two instances of misbehavior, but nothing dramatic. But I began to think I would need a buddy on the trip to share the joy or maybe the blame. My friend Leon was a few years younger than me and had never been a chaperone either. We were sort of pooling our ignorance. He took pity on me and agreed to go with our group. At least, I thought, if anything went wrong I could put half the blame on him.

So on a Friday afternoon in November the seven of us piled in my station wagon and drove two hours from Virginia Beach to Blackstone. Leon and I were comforted the parents of the kids seemed confident their most precious treasures were in good hands.

As I drove, Leon and I couldn't get a word in edgewise. If you've ever been in a car for two hours with five excited teenagers you know what I mean. I must admit their excitement was contagious. My anticipation began to build, although I had no idea why I was on this trip. It never came close to occurring to me God had His hand in this.

Upon our arrival, there were squeals of delight as kids, who hadn't seen each other for a year, hugged and greeted one another. After settling in our rooms and having dinner, we gathered in the gymnasium. Due to its age, the gym was poorly lit but perfectly suited for what was to come.

In the mid '70s the charismatic movement had become very noticeable in the Methodist church. The leaders of the weekend concluded, rightly so, not many of those present had any exposure to the charismatic Christians, so the leaders decided to explore that topic for the weekend.

Most conferences have an "ice breaker", an opportunity for folks to get a little more comfortable with each other. This weekend adults and kids alike would be assigned to small "John Wesley" groups. As our name was called, we would join our group and sit in a circle on the gym floor. Our circle would eventually include a couple of adults and about ten kids. I was the first called in my group, and I sat waiting for the others to join me.

Even now, 35 years later, I get cold chills on my neck as I write this. I looked to my right to see a blonde teenage girl sit down beside me. I smiled at her and said, "Hi. I'm Hugh". She smiled briefly and said, "I'm Shand", then looked down.

I had heard friends speak of moments when they absolutely knew they heard the Holy Spirit speak to them, but I had never had that experience. I wondered if I would ever hear from Him. Well, surprisingly, my turn had come because at the immediate moment Shand sat down, the Holy Spirit spoke to me, and I knew as surely as I knew my own name Shand was the reason I was at Blackstone.

I have no explanation for that moment. Call it mystical, a "God-thing", whatever. Nothing like that had ever happened to me.

We were supposed to wear our nametags around our necks all our waking hours or be fined five cents if we were caught without it. I noticed Shand was carrying hers in her hand.

Since we were to stay with the same Wesley group the entire weekend, we went around the circle introducing ourselves. When Shand's turn came, I watched and listened carefully, since I now knew we were together for a reason. She was fifteen, a cheerleader for the basketball team and the daughter of a career Army officer stationed in the Newport News area. Her remarks were very brief, and she looked down while she spoke. She sounded like a troubled young lady.

On Saturday we had classes in the morning and recreation in the afternoon. Shand continued to carry her nametag and had been fined thirty cents by lunchtime. On one of the breaks I made a point of engaging her in conversation, and by now I was not surprised we felt comfortable speaking with each other. I told her I thought she seemed troubled, and she seemed relieved to have someone interested in her problem. She explained she had just gotten elected cheerleader, was dating the captain of the basketball team, only to find out her dad had just received orders and the family was moving to Germany. Her world was crumbling, and she was heartbroken.

Later that day I sought out her chaperone, and he told me they were worried about her and the change in her normal bubbling personality to one of doom and gloom. He told me although she participated in the youth program she had never accepted Christ. I told him I had established a rapport with her, and he encouraged me to try to lift her spirits.

After dinner that night, we gathered in the dimly lighted gym and sat in our Wesley circles. A minister with a very soothing voice gave a talk on the ways a charismatic's worship might differ from ours. He described how some might use speaking in tongues in worship and actually paused to give permission for anyone in the group who had that gift to demonstrate it. No one responded.

He continued to speak and after we had been sitting quietly and very still on the floor for an hour, he suggested we stand up in our circle for the next portion of his talk. We stood as he said charismatics sometimes use what they call "love balls" to help one of their members who may be troubled in spirit. The troubled person goes into the middle of the circle and the rest of the circle closes in and they do a big "group hug" for the troubled person. He urged each of our circles to try this.

Immediately the Spirit told me this was Shand's chance to experience the love of those of us in our circle, but I knew she would never volunteer to go into the middle. So I quickly stepped into the middle of the circle and experienced a hug I will never forget. As they all began to step back, I grabbed Shand's hand and pulled her to me and asked her to let us hug her. By now most of those in our circle knew Shand was troubled, so they rushed in before she could say no.

The hug lasted a long time. It seemed nobody wanted it to end. Shand was in my arms, and I whispered to her, "God loves you and so do we". By now Shand's tears were warm against my cheek, and she said she wanted to accept Christ. We prayed together in one of those "once-in-a-lifetime" experiences, and the circle stepped back. Each member of our circle hugged Shand, who now had a look of tearful joy on her face. She looked like an angel compared to the Shand who had first come to Blackstone.

She went running off to find her chaperone, and everybody in our circle was crying and so overcome with emotion I walked out of the gym to try to figure out what had just happended.

I concluded I had just had my own epiphany with God. On this clear, cold November night, standing next to a hundred year old oak tree and under a million shimmering stars, I knew I had had a personal encounter with the living God. Through my tears of joy, I told God I wanted to do things His way from now on. I finally understood what all those ministers and Sunday school teachers had told me all those years about the way God wants us to live our lives. He wants us to know and experience His love to the fullest and in return wants our worship and recognition He is first in our lives. The kids were right. Blackstone is a mystical place.

Epilogue

On Sunday, as we packed the cars and said our goodbyes, I ran into Shand's chaperone and told him what had happened. He smiled and said when she came running up to him on Saturday night after the "hug", he knew something had changed her life.

Shand found me in the parking lot, and we hugged a long time. Although words weren't necessary, I told her it was nice to have another Christian daughter. It was a joyful goodbye.

When I got home I wrote Shand's mom and dad a long letter, describing in as much detail as I could remember what had happened. Parents should know the details of their child coming to Christ. Her mom wrote me a nice letter in return, saying she knew Shand had changed when she first got home.

I wish I could say Shand and I have stayed in touch all these years, especially now that the doc tells me I'm on the exit ramp of life, but that isn't the case. We corresponded for a few years, and I last heard from her when she was in college in South Carolina. I often wonder how her life has turned out so far. Who she married, does she have any children, where is she living? I still pray for her and hope the relationship we began with God and each other on that wonderful, mystical night in Blackstone, means just as much to her now as it did then. I know it does to me.

Copyright 2010 Hugh Eaton

March 9, 2010

Memorable lines

Every writer loves to "find" memorable lines, and I would like to share some which have struck my fancy over the years. Some are attributable (to sometimes surprising sources) and some are not.

"With every child the world is given another chance."

"Those who pursue mediocrity will never be disappointed."

"The word fate is used by people who have lost track of who they are." Clark Kent on the Superman tv series.

The DA on the Law and Order tv show to a young lawyer who had been assigned a judge who the young lawyer had heard was a liberal. "Judge Larkin, huh. I heard she had the right turn signal removed from her car."

"It's ok to think about what you want to do until it's time to start doing what you are meant to do."

"You've got to learn how to fall before you learn how to fly." Paul Simon

"Time is not a beauty treatment." old western movie

"Case studies so waterlogged with ambivalence they made your head ache." Author Brian Haig in Mortal Enemies.

"Pal mam qui meruit ferrat" - "none but himself could be his parallel".

"There are some people who, if they don't know, you can't tell 'em." Old south Georgia saying.

"If you fly with crows, you get shot at." Grandpa Eaton

"Sometimes the hardest decision is which bridge to cross and which bridge to burn."


MTC
Copyright Hugh Eaton March 2010

You can imagine the thoughts which come rushing to your mind when the doc looks you in the eye and tells you your illness is incurable. This happened to me in 2009 when I was diagnosed with ideopathic pulmonary fibrosis, or in layman's terms, scarring of the lung tissue which can't be reversed and is continuing to scar more tissue. Suddenly your own mortality is staring you in the face, and you see life through a different values filter.

That the Broncos are in a losing streak or the school district is in dire financial straits go rapidly into the file marked "Somebody else's problems". Your high priorities now include getting the ten year old will updated and preparing a "survivor's guide" for your wife. Where the heck did I put those life insurance policies? Does she know how to sign on to the bank accounts on the internet? (What's your mother's maiden name? Your favorite food? What street did you grow up on? etc.)

Preparation of a bucket list is inevitable, but with oxygen required 24/7 traveling seems a burden so the bucket list doesn't include much of that. Plus, with guys putting bombs in their underwear and standing in long security lines doesn't increase the travel desire at all.

One bucket list item which I can now happily cross off is re-establishing communications with a number of men and women I worked with during my twenty-nine years at Landmark Communications and a subsidiary called The Weather Channel.

My son, Shepherd, had taken a nice picture of Dee Dee and me at our place in Frisco, Colorado, last summer. We had that made into a Christmas card and I wrote a letter to send with it. The letter thanked the recipients for their friendship over the years, something I wanted to do while I was still lucid. Regrettably, I have missed a few opportunities to do this, and the regret never goes away.

I received nice notes from several Landmark and TWC people, including Dick Barry, Lem Lewis, Robin Saul, Larry Coffey, Peggy Patrick, Aliene Hodges, Dick Roberts, Gordon Herring, Nick Worth, Barney Oldfield, and a number of old Weather Channel friends - Becky Ruthven, Brenda Resneck Loughery, Kathy Lane, Charlene Carl, Mimi Stamper, Lisa Krechting, Leslie Crawford, Alan Galumback, Mike Lerner - I'm sure I'm not thinking of some other names here.

Hearing from these former co-workers after a long absence gladdened my heart more than I can say. Passage of time and thoughts about mortality had helped me to narrow the really important things in life down to three - my relationship with God, family and friends. When you get down to where the rubber meets the road, those relationships are really all that matter in life.

I concentrate on my working relationships because of a line in a movie called "The Pride of the Yankees" starring Gary Cooper as Lou Gherig, the Yankee first baseman who died of ALS, sometimes called Lou Gherig disease. In his last appearance at Yankee stadium, Lou made a brief talk to the fans over the stadium loudspeaker. He ended his remarks with this sentence: "I am the luckiest man on the face of the earth". I had seen the movie a number of times and heard the remark, but I never really understood or "got it" until I saw the movie last December.

I realized I was now, with my disease, paralelling Lou's situation. As I thought about the number of many blessings God has poured on me during my life, this time I "got" Lou's remark. For the first time I felt like I understood how it feels to be the luckiest man on the face of the earth. That is exactly the way I feel.

There are a number of spiritual and family blessings I could mention, but, for some reason, my career with Landmark Communications, owned by Frank Batten and his family, gives me a tremendous amount of satisfaction. Frank Batten insisted on his employees have high moral standards, a strong work ethic and good values which included treating customers and employeees with respect and dignity. Consequently, the type of people I got to work with - those mentoned above and many others not mentioned - during my twenty-nine years were of the highest caliber. We truly were proud of being associated with Landmark and enjoyed working with each other. I was lucky enough to get the job of startup general manager of The Weather Channel, and the ten years I spent there were truly the highlight of my career, mainly due to the people who's hard work and determination helped build something which has bettered society over the years since we turned on the signal in 1982. I thank God almost everyday for guiding me to Landmark and for my relationships developed there - especially when I see what corporate life is today.

I have much more to say about mortality, especially from a spiritual viewpoint, in another blog.

Blessings,
Hugh Eaton
Palmer Lake, CO
Copyright Hugh Eaton 2010

Medical update: In my Christmas letter I said I would keep my current medical condition posted on this blog, but I've procrastinated, so this is the first attempt to do that. My last bi-monthly visit to National Jewish Hospital in Denver was a week ago. I performed the recurring tests to check my lung capacity and did a six minute walk test. The results pretty well mirrored the results of my tests in November, so I guess I have somewhat stabilized. This is probably "prolonging the inevitable" but, at this point, we'll take anything positive we can get. Still on the meds and on oxygen 24/7. Getting good care from the best caregiver in the world, aka "the best SUV driver in the world". Will keep you posted here.

Blessings,
Hugh