Taking Stock

On the morning of June 14, 2007, I sent the following e-mail to my boss, Marci, two time zones away in San Francisco.  The subject line read, "September 14, 2007": 

Good morning, Marci, 

September 14, 2017 is: 

- Three months from today. 

- Exactly twenty-four years and two days from my hire date. 

- The day I'm going to hang it up. 

John  

Up until that moment, the only Wells Fargo colleague ("teammate" in corporate speak) who knew of my retirement plans was my secretary ("administrative assistant," if you will) of fifteen years, Pam, whom I'd told the day before.  To the extent I may have "looked good" in my job performance during those years, Pam was a big factor and I felt she deserved the heads-up.

Things went more or less as planned during those final three months.  I turned down the offer of a fancy schmantzie Windows On The World retirement party in the IDS tower during my final week and instead opted for a beer bash at Glueks.  Good decision!  The party was on the company dime, and was well attended at least in part because it was also on company time.

The reason I wrote "or less" above is that, on my last day, I ended up working until 6:10 p.m.  (The traditional last day exit time is roughly 10:30 a.m.)  I was trying to iron out the last minute details on an ag lending deal for one of my Des Moines banker-clients.  The lawyer who was scheduled to take over my office started moving his stuff in about 4:00 p.m.  We were tripping over each other's boxes.  What a circus!  It wasn't until a gathering at Bunny's later that Friday evening with family and friends that I felt truly relieved and retired.

So, if you've connected the dots to this point you now know that today is the ten year anniversary of my retirement.  If I were more eloquent, poetic or contemplative, I would be able to craft a post which would do justice to the thoughts swimming around in my little noggin.  But, as the saying goes, you've got to play the hand you're dealt, so I am going to keep my epistle limited to two general thoughts which have occupied my consciousness lately.

Believe it or not, the first has to do with a hockey coach, a peculiar notion given the fact that I have never played the sport -- unless you count broom hockey.  I think of retirement as having a lot in common with graduation.  Starting a new chapter, turning the page, and so on.  As a former student, parent and veteran teacher, I have attended many graduation ceremonies.  I could count on a couple of fingers the number of times I have thought about any one commencement speech more than twenty-four hours after its delivery.  The big exception was a speech given at a Benilde-St. Margaret's High School commencement exercise, circa 1996, the year of Gina's graduation.  Varsity boys' hockey coach Ken Pauly was chosen to speak.  A lot of what he said was standard, something like "the world is your oyster," "go forth and do great things," "you can accomplish almost anything if you set your mind to it," etc.

But here is where Ken's talk rose above the usual message.  He said that when a kid graduates from high school, she tends to envision her future in a known world with her then-present family and circle of friends.  He said he felt the same way when he was eighteen.  What opened his eyes is that two of the most important people in his life, his future wife and his best friend, he did not even meet until he was in his twenties or thirties.  His message was something like this: Cherish the people you currently know, but be open to meeting, befriending and possibly caring deeply for new people who just might become key players in your adult life.

His words certainly ring true for me.  As of the date of my retirement I was fifty-nine years old.  Although I had known Luke ever since he and Michael became classmates and buddies in sixth grade, I never would have guessed that he would marry Jill eight years after I left Wells.  Also as of September 2007, I had never met either Gina's future husband, John, or Michael's future bride, Lindsey.  In many ways my three kids are like Mary, but in at least one important category they followed their father's lead by marrying a wonderful person.

The icing on the cake are our four beautiful granddaughters, Rosie, Winnie, Lulu and June.  When June was born two months ago I sent a boastful e-mail to three of my Domer friends.  Referring to the little girls I wrote, "They are always on my mind. It's hard for me NOT to think about them -- a good problem to have."   Ken Pauly's prognostication is proven correct.  I am gaga over those four little peanuts who obviously were not around in 2007.

The second general thought can probably be reduced to one word: luck.  There is an old bromide that one makes his own luck.  I'm not sure I buy into that, at least not totally.  Sure, it starts with Mary.  If it were not for the Viet Nam war I would have never found her; different topic for, maybe, a different future post.  Suffice it to say that we have been married for forty-one years, and I know I am a very lucky man.

Connecting the concept of luck to my retirement goes beyond what I wrote above.  There were five or six Wells Fargo lawyers who were a couple of years older than I and who retired during the two year period immediately preceding my exit.  When they'd return to the office for a visit, their evaluation of retirement was unanimous: "I'm so busy I don't know how I managed to perform a full time job."  They were clearly loving it.

But there was another Wells lawyer, Margaret, who was several years younger and retired in the spring of '07.  (She and I both started working for Norwest in 1983, when there were only six attorneys in the Law Department.)  She was single, the only child of New England college professors who owned a quaint cottage on a small lake in New Hampshire.  Carlton College had drawn her to Minnesota for her undergraduate studies, and she remained here for her career.  Peg kept a picture of that cottage, her next home, on her desk, and was known to say many times to people who entered her office, "If you're looking for me in the future, this is where I'll be."  No one talked about and anticipated life in retirement more than she.  Yet, less than a year into her retirement, she was stricken with cancer and passed away shortly thereafter.

Although Peg was not a close friend of mine, her passing was shocking to me.  Why was she denied that for which she had worked so hard to achieve?  Why have I been lucky enough to still be around a decade later?  Not only that, but Mary and I have enjoyed relatively good health, all of our kids live close by, and to coin a phrase, life is good.  As I wrote above, this is one of the things I have been thinking about lately.  I especially think about it when I go to church.  I don't go for the music -- there is none -- the scripture readings, the homilies or any of the folderol.  I go there to pray.  I have a lot to be thankful for. 

Marquette Hotel Bar, 10:30 a.m.

One week ago today came the sad news that Target Corporation was terminating the employment of hundreds of people.  There was no advance warning.  The local television news showed fired employees carting boxes of their personal belongings out of the headquarters building, into the street.  The Star Tribune's glaring front page headline the next day read, "1700 Target Jobs Lost In Day Of Pain, Drama."  Another day later, Target released a statement saying that "this would be the first [wave of] several thousand" job cuts.

From its inception this constituted more than a business news item, but a human interest story as well.  My first reaction was genuine heartfelt sympathy for the people who lost their jobs.  For some, it might turn out to be a blessing, if they manage to attain a more rewarding job somewhere else.  But even for those lucky few, and for all the others, especially those with families, it is a major upheaval to their lives.

My second reaction, to coin a phrase, was this: There, but for the grace of God, go I.  Memories of another, distant bleak Monday morning came back to me.

Although it happened seventeen years ago, the morning of June 8, 1998 is one I will never forget.  When I got my usual case of the Monday Morning Blues on the preceding Sunday evening, June 7, I had no inkling of what was about to transpire the next day.  My customary morning routine before leaving for work would be to fetch the paper from the front porch, unfold it to check the front page headlines, and then swig down a cup of coffee before racing out the door.  That routine was cast asunder when I saw the headline, "Norwest To Merge With Wells Fargo."  The coffee would have to wait; I had to sit down.  This was my life's future I was about to read.

In my capacity as an in-house commercial attorney with Norwest, I was quite familiar with how bank mergers and acquisitions worked.  I had been on several "due diligence" missions in which Norwest, as a potential buyer, would descend upon the "target" bank holding company to examine its books and records.  With the exception of a handful of people, the employees of the target company were unaware of our presence or that their employer was likely on the verge of being sold.  This clandestine approach was necessary not only to keep our competitors from catching wind of our interest -- with a bidding war a possible undesired outcome -- but also to comply with SEC regulations against stock price manipulations.  There was also the concern of the target's employees jumping ship before Norwest could consummate the deal.

Notwithstanding this personal experience and familiarity with corporate deals seemingly coming out of nowhere, the June 8th merger news really blind-sided me and my colleagues.  Now we were the ones taken by surprise, and it was not a good feeling, to say the least.  Did the merger with Wells mean we'd be out of a job?  If we didn't lose our jobs immediately, would we have to move to San Francisco, Wells Fargo's corporate headquarters, to keep them?  If so, that might mean having to study for, not to mention pass, the infamous California Bar Exam.  Who would run the Commercial Section of the Law Department if, in fact, the Commercial Section survived?  (Some banks "farm out" most of their commercial work to outside counsel.  Was this how Wells operated?)  How would our daily responsibilities change?  These were just some of the questions going through our collective minds.  What made our predicament worse was that the impending shakeup was out of our control.  It is futile to attempt to control the things you can't control, and we all knew it.

Attempts to work that Monday morning were pointless.  Who could concentrate?  Meetings were postponed, calls were left unanswered and deadlines were missed.  Why pretend to be productive when our days on the job might be numbered?  Then, one of my colleagues had a brilliant idea.  What we really needed was a drink!  So what if it was only 10:30 in the morning?

About twenty of us traipsed across Seventh Street to the Marquette Hotel Bar, the most proximate watering hole to our office.  This wasn't a Bloody Mary party.  Bourbon, scotch and vodka were the most popular drinks of choice.  I opted for J & B on the rocks, the only time I've ever had the hard stuff that early in the day.  We carried on a round table discussion of sorts, with predictions on how the merger would shake out, and what we knew about Wells Fargo.  We were all in the dark regarding our futures, although a couple of the lawyers from the Corporate Section of our Law Department had more insight on Wells than the rest of us.  One of the disquieting things about Wells Fargo was that when they merged with First Interstate in 1996, Wells allegedly totally botched the transition, and many First Interstate customers bailed out in a huff.  That did not portend well for the future of Norwest.  Between that session at the hotel bar and the consummation of the merger several months later, dozens of rumors -- some which turned out to be accurate, some ludicrous -- flew around our department.

This story had a happy ending for me and almost all of the other Norwest lawyers.  The merger was structured with Norwest being the acquiring company, and Wells Fargo being the target/acquired company.  Thus, Wells was merged into Norwest, which then changed its name to "Wells Fargo."  (The marketing people could hardly wait to get the Wells stagecoach logo onto its billboards, print advertisements, media commercials, etc.)  The big question for us remained:  Who was going to be the General Counsel (aka top dog) of the merged Law Department?  Would it be Guy Rounsaville, the GC from pre-merger Wells, or Stanley Stroup, the GC from pre-merger Norwest.  (You might recall my writing about Stan in my May 23, 2014 post, Daniel Martin Thwarts A Score Of Lawyers.  I called him "the most brilliant lawyer I have ever known.")   After weeks of suspense, the Board Of Directors of the merged company, much to the relief and delight of the Norwest lawyers, chose Stan.  You probably couldn't get Stan to admit it, but the consensus of the Minneapolis lawyers was that Stan watched out for his people, just as we anticipated he would on that Monday morning in the hotel bar.

In June 1998 I was fifty years old.  Momma Cuan and I still had one kid in college, one in high school and one in junior high.  Mary's whole family and my mother lived in the Twin Cities.  We had already decided back in 1983 that we did not want to leave Minnesota.  The prospects of uprooting our family fifteen years later was something we did not even want to think about.  But what if the Board Of Directors had chosen Rounsaville, a man I'd never met, for General Counsel?  My personal career story might not have had as happy an ending.  Those are the things that have crossed my mind over the past week when I've read about the dismissals at Target.  As I wrote above, there, but for the grace of God, go I.