#121: My Dad Walked Slowly (1/3)
I am so excited we get to share Pip’s three-piece series about the influence that his dad had on his life with the CFC. This first piece sets the scene for the next two: the story of a good man who was dealt a difficult set of cards towards the end of his life. I was struck by the small details Pip remembers about his father and how they come together to tell such a vivid story. Pip, thank you for sharing these memories with us – it has certainly made me try to more diligently grab onto and remember the little mannerisms of the people I love – and perhaps the deeper meaning behind them.
- Lauren
Pip Coburn pcoburn@coburnventures.com
My Dad Walked Slowly
In high school, I would occasionally drive to pick my dad up at the train station.
It seemed like he loved commuting.
He could read books both ways. He read crazy fast like our son, Eamon, does today. It seemed to be his time to do something he loved. When he got off the train, he always slowly walked to the car - so unlike the other Long Islanders, as I realized today, who would zip by him.
He didn’t rush much.
He didn’t hurry much.
He would get in the car with a kind smile. He always seemed glad to see me. I wore my baseball cap backward and was always ready for the next thing and the next thing. I had plenty of energy for all of us to go around.
I never really thought much about his pace until today…what was it all about???
In the final 15 years of his life, I don't think I ever heard him say something exciting about his work. As most of you could probably guess, I have been lucky enough in the past 20 years to have something exciting to shout after almost every workday.
My dad was a civil engineer. As I understand it, the business in which he was a partner went from seemingly thriving in 1967 to destroyed and bankrupt in 1968 after it discovered that a key partner had been committing fraud.
So for his last ten years of working, he reviewed the work others had done. He worked (I think) for a consultancy that banks would hire to do a double check before loaning money...I think.
In the1970s after we moved to Rochester, NY, there were early highs and then huge lows as my dad was forced to seek work from all sorts of companies in different locations -- I remember he worked in Carlisle, Pennsylvania and would commute four to five hours. My mom would meet him halfway and leave one car in a parking lot in Grant’s – an old-time, less-successful version of K-Mart.
For three or four years during that time, I more so than not lived with my mom. My dad would come back and forth be on weekends. But I wasn’t close with either of them at the time.
I don’t recall him ever talking about something he found exciting or cool in his work. (He definitely was not devoid of passion though – I just don’t recall this sparking too much and it was never about work. I DO remember his passion for building a key stage prop when my sister, Diane, choreographed The Scarlett Letter. I ALSO remember his passion for creating a styrofoam Parthenon with me when I was in sixth grade. He got an A+).
In fact, I don’t recall my dad ever mentioning another person at his job for those last ten years.
What runs through my mind is that maybe my dad was tired. That’s why he walked slowly. Not just tired in the way that age might tire us… in some ways, I sense he was beaten down by the “system." Many systems, I suppose. Today, I look back and wish he hadn’t walked to slowly.
Pip's first-person bio:
More than anything I suspect I am driven by “community”. Across the past 15in years, I have grown to realize that most any success or fortune I have had in the work I do I have re-invested back into my activities such that I spend more and more of my life with people I adore and admire and just loving being around and working on a whole bunch of things that I am incredibly excited about. I like to study monumental change at the levels of society, marketplaces, organizations and most significantly… people. I like to study culture deeply. I like to attempt to create culture. I like processes and helping others advances their processes and being trusted deeply. My wife Kelly is both supportive and probably confused by what I do for a living which makes two of us. My greatest joy in my work is when I have the chance to draw from two decades of intense work in order to perhaps help someone have a break through.