The Meaningfulness of Mentors

Posted on May 11, 2015 by Blake Leath

This past December, a precious friend of many retired after a quarter-century with the USDA Forest Service.  A few weeks prior, a former co-worker of his (himself a recent retiree) contacted several of us inquiring whether we'd be willing to submit a few photographs or modest remembrances of said gentleman during his storied career with the Agency.

When I received the email and began internalizing the news, the wave of emotions that swept over me was really quite surprising.

On the one hand, gosh, I was so very happy for him.  On the other, it signified the end of an era; one of many I’ve experienced in the course of my own career.  Of the gentleman, whom many affectionately called “Guido,” I wrote in part:

Guido—part emcee, part film historian, part entertainer, part A/V wonk, part moralist, part servant, part cheerleader, part storyteller, part prankster, part waiter, part confidant, part consigliere, all friend and all heart and all encourager and all leader—would rally us each morning, mic us every hour, guide us every step of the way, make connections we’d never seen before, and encourage us as we concluded every exhausting evening.  He was then, and is now (even more so, in light of his retirement), a National Treasure.

I have never known a human being with a more effortless combination of humility, authenticity, wisdom, wit and flat-out joy.  In a world of disappointment and ne’er do wells, Guido is the person who serves as North Star, reminding us that we are, indeed, here for a reason; we are, indeed, going someplace; how we live our lives does, indeed, matter.  And perhaps equally important, there is a story to be told in there somewhere, and told well.

Eventually, I was to learn that more than 52 pages of content was received: paragraphs, anecdotes, mischievous recollections, full-blown stories…tributes, one and all…compiled into a document that was lovingly curated, laid-out, bound and presented at his retirement ceremony, which I was so terribly disappointed to have missed for reasons I can only attribute to inexcusable travel woes.  I would have given my eyeteeth to have seen this beautiful human being receive his document, take it in his hands, weigh its meaning, rotate it this way and that and then—perhaps over the course of two or three nights thereafter—slip on his reading glasses and comb through the pages as his wife, Sue, sat by his side and elbowed him the ribs as if to say, “See, I told you so.”

Guido, like my own father and Oliver Warin, Dick Reynolds, Terry Millard, Ed Wingard, Lou Romero, Dalton Jantzen, Steve Buchholz or the dozen other gentlemen who entered my life at precisely the right time and made a particularly necessary impact on me for myriad reasons will be forever etched in my brain and branded on my heart.

I wish that each of them, and every deserving mentor, could receive a document as meticulously crafted as Guido’s.  I pray that each of them hears me when I say, “Thank you.”

I can think of few greater satisfactions than to arrive at the end of one’s career or life and feel like, “Yeah, I was here.  I made a difference.  I accepted and gave love, lived a life of faith and faithfulness, and will be forgiven my failures and remembered for my efforts.”

Eventually, these bodies return to dust and, some years hence, our existence from this place will be all but expunged.  There will come that day when the last person who knew us or was impacted by us will speak our name for the final time and, poof, whatever we were or thought we were or hoped to be is a story for another realm.

But until then, for the generation now and those that immediately follow, either through our blood or our behavior, may we do good works, remain steadfast, and positively impact as many as possible.

My personal hope is that I will die entirely empty.  Dried up, having left everything on this field.  Perhaps preceded by my phenomenal parents, a cousin or two, succeeded or not by a precious sister and remembered foremost in the minds of a beautiful bride and daughter and a few friends who overlooked my sizeable flaws and eccentricities and movie shenanigans.  Folks whom I pray will be able to truthfully say as they lower me into the cool clay on a hot Dallas day, “Yeah, he was here.  He made a difference.  He accepted and gave and persevered in faith and shall be forgiven, remembered and redeemed.”

May we be so fortunate, right?  Abundantly so.

As for Guido, you exemplar, may the balance of your years be the best yet and regaled as earnestly as those in Volume One.

It has been a privilege, my friend, and I wish you a restorative retirement.