Blowing in the Wind

Archie Davis was driving me to a meeting at St. Joseph/Candler Hospital. We were putting together the collaborative that started the J. C. Lewis Health System and Memorial Health was already a partner contributing a quarter of a million dollars. Archie was convinced that St. Joe/Candler would do the same.

Archie was my Board Chair and was the founding President of the Savannah Bank. My Mom had worked for him years ago so we connected at many levels. I remember before every Board meeting that he chaired he’d ask if I was ready. I’d nod then he’d lean over and say, “Good. Don’t f*ck it up.”

Rebekah on the other side of me would always start giggling when Archie did this which was the beginning of every Board meeting that he ever chaired.

It is very hard not to love Archie!

So as he was driving I was asking him questions. He’d started the Savannah Bank from scratch and it had become the city’s most successful local bank, on the cutting edge of the growth movement of local banks. Archie’s office was close to the Teller’s stations so that anybody could stick their head in and say hello, complain or start a conversation.

He was the opposite of those asses who ran the local National Banks. Archie is down-to-earth, a southern boy, and a very smart business man.

“What makes you successful Archie?” I ask.

He ponders for just a second while driving along before saying, “The people around me.”

I don’t remember what I thought his answer would be but I wasn’t expecting that. Most Bank Presidents are all about themselves. Archie was saying it was the people he chosen to work with who made him successful.

“Sure,” I replied, “but sometimes those people let you down. What do you do then?”

Taking half-a-second before he answered he shot, “Micheal you take care of the people who take care of you.”

And I internalized that lesson immediately. It became one of my mantras.

Take care of the people who take care of you.

“Shower the people you love with love,” is how James Taylor puts it.

The truth of the matter is that things don’t always work out that way. Sometimes it all gets out of whack. You’re doing all the giving and they’re doing the taking. Or you screw up and are never allowed to forget it. Faults, which are just part being human, are exaggerated and used as emotional currency to blackmail.

I don’t know about you but this just makes me try harder. And the funny thing about that is the harder you try the more it gets out of whack.

“Try not to try too hard,” James Taylor was quoted in a wedding I was once in.

But I did and the promises of that wedding blew away in the wind.

Archie is staring at me now. He’s taken aback by my questions.

“So Archie,” I asked contemplatively, “how did you get started with all of this?”

He laughs out loud.

“Oh I got fired.”

“What?” I ask in disbelief. He’d been an icon at the C&S Bank, now Bank of America when my Mother worked for him.

“Yeah,” he continues still laughing, “I took a year off and then they asked me to start the Savannah Bank. It’s all been good since.”

I remember being stunned.

An hour later, Archie delivered St. Joe/Candler as an equal funding partner with Memorial Health in the creation of the J. C. Lewis Health Center. Two competing hospital systems immediately drew the attention of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation who matched both hospitals contributions with half-a-million dollars.

There’s big money in homelessness!

That’s not true. There’s big money in creativity!

And the secret to meaningful relationships, which is not the same as longevity, is always creating and re-creating yourself. Stay the same and die is a new mantra of mine.

Archie had his year. I’m finishing mine.

It’s time to create.

I’ll try not to try too hard.