It Is A Wonderful Life

After a rainy night in Huntington W.Va, Lance rose at dawn, unable to stop the stream of scenes from the trip flooding his dreams. Something was different in his head, like a dam breaking, spilling repressed and forgotten ideas, fears, hopes, and regrets without anything to stop them. Free now from the filter of his traditional work related To Do lists, thoughts that would have been routinely filed away under Later, Someday, Not Important and Delete were now taking center stage. The blinders of daily life are also a blessing, Lance almost said out loud. It was enough to launch him to his feet and toward the shower while dawn was still breaking over the Ohio River below.

Soon, heading south on Rte 52, deep into the hillbilly mountains of West Virginia vaguely headed for Blacksburg VA, Lance found himself on a roller coaster of a two lane road, bordered by the river on one side and steep wooded hills all around. Not a place to drift either way. Passing a sign saying "Beginning of Hatfield and McCoy Trail" Lance felt a chill on his neck as he plunged further into a land of no cellphones, no NPR, no Starbucks and no AAA. When stuck behind a garbage truck for miles on end, and with at least three hours of monotomy ahead, this seemed like the perfect time to take another mental trip he'd been avoding for days. Who is Lance Stiehl and what different life choices could he have made that would have made his life different?? The twisting, hilly terrain of Rte 52 S mirrored the convoluted thoughts that rushed forth the minute he posed the question what could he have chosen differently? Lance assumed one doesn't get to choose much until after high school. The choice of college seemed the appropriate place to begin revising his life story. No more George Washington University in DC.

Ah, let's try this, he thought.

Fresh out of high school, Lance was accepted at Boston University conveniently located the heart of East Coast academia, Boston. Like most urban areas north of the Mason-Dixon line, from 1968-1972 many students majored in the street protests 101, angered by US bombings in Cambodia and the continuing presence of US troops in Viet Nam. Not given to political activism or violent street theatrics, Lance stayed in the background of that era, more a watcher than a player (although later he proudly boasted to his children about the time he got tear-gassed going to class.) He pledged a fraternity, fell in and out of love, messed around with college shows and clung to the bottom rung of a B average. It was enough to get by, but not enough upon which to build a life mission.

Frankly, the rest of his college years were less than memorable. BU is a big place and it was easy to get lost in the crowd. At the end of his Sophomore year, instead of majoring in Psychology, he fell in love with Marketing and Public Relations, no doubt a product of the ever-gentle but compelling influence of his father's highly successful career. His Dad fervently believed that selling people on new ideas and public projects was an honorable enterprise, as long as whatever he was selling was for the common good, not soap or cigarettes. His father's causes included the rebirth of the Washington Star newspaper, the re-born United Way Charities, and the building of Washington's first 96 mile Metro system. If telling and selling had to be done for any of these projects, he was the guy to do it. He won a Washingtonian of the Year award for it.

Endless nights spent in town hall meetings, hundreds of living room Q & A's, speaking to anyone who would listen, that was Lance's memory of his father growing up. The few times Lance tagged along as a boy, he marveled at how his dad would step to the front of the room, take off his coat, roll up his sleeves, loosen his tie and launch into a conversational style that made everyone feel he was their best friend. Years later, total strangers would stop him on the street and recall how he came to their house, their office, their community and talked just to them. Along with his wife, they were a civic minded couple always the head of the PTA, the Democratic Precinct Chair or emceeing the testimonial banquet.

So that was what Lance wanted to be, but upon graduation from college, he was snatched up in the draft having drawn #44 in the national lottery - lowest in his dorm. Sent to basic training and then for a two-year tour in Viet Nam, Lance came home with only injuries of the spirit, a bit angrier, more mistrustful and fiercely independent. He had to start at the bottom and climb his way up in the world of marketing, starting out at a firm in Boston and then joining two of his college buddies in a small PR shop of their own. It was the 80's, and business was good. Traveling almost weekly to LA, NY, Chicago and Atlanta, there was little time or energy left to start a family or think about kids. But his life was good and his is future seemed secure.

He did have an abiding love of Maine, another artifact of his parent's DNA, having spent many care-free summers in Bar Harbor on Mt. Desert Island. Remembering his father and mother's long unfulfilled dream of building a Kennedy-like compound where the whole family could gather, he purchased a few acres overlooking Sommes Sound and brought the entire family there every August. Looking back on it now, Lance thought that was one of his best investments he ever made, both financially and for his family. Perhaps it was, in part, a substitute for not pausing long enough to build his own family. Late in life, he met and married a college professor who summered in Bangor, Maine and taught at a Boston based institution. By then it was too late to have kids.

As he progressed in his career, and younger associates ripened into seasoned professional behind him, he hungered for a legacy beyond his business. But there came a point in his life when he felt that too was too late. He was trapped in his success and handcuffed to his status. He knew nothing he had done would ever live beyond the memory of a customer and nothing he had ever written spoke to the ages. No children carried his name and as the last one of his line, the family name would soon be gone with his demise. He mused about taking a sabbatical to seek answers to his dilemma, but that too, seemed impractical.

At this very moment, Lance clearly heard the voice of Clarence, the reluctant Angel, whispering in his ear.

"Lance, just think. Because you weren't there, Maryland Leadership Workshops went out of business for lack of someone to incorporate it 30 years ago. Because you weren't there, the County never bought Strathmore Hall so there is no Concert Hall with 150 shows a year. Because you weren't there, Round House Theatre, Blackrock Center for the Arts and the Arts and Humanities Council never existed. And because you never had them, your four children never fell in love with Maine, music and mirth, much less continuing the family name through your ten grandchildren."

Lance swore he heard a bell ring and his daughter's voice sing out..."Daddy, every time a bell rings, a person, even an old person like you, gets their wings."

Right there and then, Lance decided that whatever person he had become, was as good as any he could possibly have been.

And that made him smile. "Ding!"