Joe Gentry

“Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.” — Dr. Seuss

When I worked in personnel at Besser, my mentor, Feeney Krueger, instilled in me a habit that has been with me since — check the daily obituaries. On the surface that seems a bit morbid, but it served a very useful purpose. It was important for us to know when employees were impacted by life’s concerns and for company employee benefit administration and retiree benefit administration to have timely and accurate information that affected coverage. In a technology-impaired time, the obituaries in the newspaper provided needed information.

My mentor and boss, Feeney Krueger, recently passed away and memories from all my Besser moments flooded my contemplations. Little things like checking the obituaries, folding the flag, Friday pumphouse lunches, daily payroll exception reports, handing out employee turkeys at Thanksgiving, remembering employee clock numbers, weekend guard clock station tapes, (Dr. Burkholder’s) Besser black salve for steel sliver removal, are fond memories. Of course there are bigger moments like the employee lockout and eventual labor strike (that taught me how to run the wheelabrator and paint line), the beautiful new atrium office construction, grievance meetings and safety meetings and, most important, the people I worked closely with — Feeney, Jere, Marilyn, Joe, Danny, Terry, and our student weekend guards. Union officers Herb, Joe, Lew, Ralph, Deke, Gordy, Ray, Bill, and Verna earned my respect and created lots of moments and valuable memories.

Old habits are hard to break, and to this day, I still scan the obituaries and that is how I found out about Feeney’s passing. Now the purpose has changed. I am overcome with how many obits include friends, their families, former colleagues, and past people I worked with. As I read each obit, I am flooded with memories shared by the deceased’s family and get a much deeper understanding of the person memorialized and even my own memories are provoked from those I’ve known. After Feeney passed, it got me thinking, what would my own obit include? Perhaps that is a bit morbid, but the process strengthens and impacts what you do today. It forces you to rise to the challenge of today. Live your own life. Success is not something that can be measured or worn on a watch or hung on a wall. It is not the esteem of colleagues, or the admiration of the community or the appreciation of people you serve. Success is the certain knowledge that you have become yourself, the person you were meant to be from all time.

That should be reward enough. But best of all is the fun while you are doing it. And, at the very least, you will heal yourself.

“Memory is more than a looking back to a time that is no longer; it is a looking out into another kind of time altogether where everything that ever was continues not just to be, but to grow and change with the life that is in it still. The people we loved, the people who loved us. The people who for good or ill, taught us things. Dead and gone they may be, as we come to understand them in new ways, it’s as they come to understand us — and through them we come to understand ourselves — in new ways too.” — Frederick Buechner

Joe Gentry is the executive director of the United Way of Northeast Michigan. Reach him at 989-354-2221 or jgentry@unitedwaynemi.org.