There’s nothing like a memorial service to put a crazy week in perspective. Markets may quake and institutions may tremble. But as you contemplate the difficulty of making a positive difference with your life, these gyrations rather recede.
Yesterday, I attended the memorial service for Charles O. Meiburg, a member of the Darden faculty for 35 years, who passed away last weekend. He taught economics, banking, and finance at Darden and served as Associate Dean for Faculty. He helped to hire me into the Darden faculty and at numerous points along the way coached my development. He was soft-spoken, affable, humble, unflappable, encouraging, and never once, in my memory, lost his temper or expressed exasperation about anything. But he was nobody’s fool: he had views and in his quiet way helped to steer the school on an upward path. He was a good companion in a storm. I guess he preferred to be called “Charles,” but following the example of other senior faculty, I often called him “Charlie.” At the reception after the memorial service, the phrase I heard most often expressed about him was that “he was a decent man.”
What does it mean to be “decent”? A dictionary defines it as “okay; significant; substantial; being a person of integrity”. As I encounter the word, “decent,” implies something good, solid, and trustworthy.” A quick Google search of obituaries shows that the term has been applied to Tim Russert, Gregory Peck, Gary Cooper, Senator Paul Simon, Governor Lawton Chiles, and President Gerald Ford. Not bad company. Ordinary, calm, happy, people. Reliable. That was Charlie Meiburg. I sense that such qualities reflect an inner confidence derived from deep convictions about the things that matter and the way things ought to be. I know that such was true of Charlie.
My previous posting at the start of this turbulent week noted that a feature of market panics is that “the best lack all conviction.” You can be smart, shrewd, rich, have a sterling pedigree, and so on. But with little or no convictions, you are liable to steer by opportunities rather than intentions, bet the ranch, over-leverage the enterprise, gull the unsuspecting, and generally worry about “me” rather than “us”—all the behaviors that we now know contributed to the present crisis. I sense that this economic storm is fanning a great deal of anger. Regulators and the Congress will, no doubt, hunt for the miscreants. I suspect that all they will find are not crimes, but defects of conviction. Against this background, an epitaph that simply says that you were a “decent person” sounds rather appealing.
I remember Charlie and thank him for his personal example and collegiality. In the midst of this storm, let us find such people and thank them directly while we can.
Posted by Robert Bruner at 09/20/2008 11:28:30 AM