Not Just Another Knucklehead

Today I attended a memorial breakfast for someone I worked with thirty-five years ago. We worked together for about nine years in a dirty, old, red pigments plant in Easton. Pfizer’s Rust and Dust Division. Our careers went in different directions and I neither saw him nor heard about him for decades. A few months ago, he reached out to me. We met for breakfast at an Allentown diner. Bob Keller was the same kind, funny, optimistic man that I knew so long ago. Sadly, though, a few weeks later he was dead.

I was shocked by this death. He had just been telling me about his hopes for the future and all the things he wanted to accomplish and experience. He recently wrote a book. He, also recently, graduated from Muhlenberg. He loved life. He loved his family. He loved people. Even though I only saw him once in thirty-five years, I miss him.

A few weeks after that I saw his obituary. I learned another adjective to describe him. Humble. Working at Pfizer, we were all a bunch of knuckleheads. Doing our jobs but having fun. Most of us were in our late twenties and early thirties. We were learning about life and about being parents. We were learning how to get red iron oxide pigment out of the pores of our skin. I told you it was a dirty place! We were young, full of life, and tinted red. Knuckleheads!

I was completely surprised to find that Bob had an operatic singing voice and was a nationally recognized soloist. Bob performed for the Queen’s Jubilee. He was also an inventor and has patents for several mechanical/chemical processes. Humble. He didn’t share any of that with anyone but his family. Everyone at the breakfast today expressed their shock about this information. He was humble…and surely not a knucklehead.

From all of this I learned a few things. First, treat every day of your life as an opportunity. It goes by way too fast. Bob died at the young age of 69. Second, all of us have our secret lives. I’m pretty open about mine in this blog, but there are some things you will never know about me. The lesson is, don’t be judgmental. You never have all the information. The third thing I learned is that I hope I am living the kind of life that will be honored and remembered, like Bob’s was this morning. More succinctly, don’t live your life as a knucklehead. RIP Bob Keller.