My best friend's dad told me something profound and my dad's wood box helped me understand it.
It was 1993 and I was as troubled, broke, lost and lonely as a young man ever aught to be. I had spent the Spring and Summer living with my parents nursing a broken heart and took my father's advice to pick a place to live that would make me happy. I moved to Aspen, Colorado because it was as far away from everyone and everything I could get and I thought if I could spend some time alone I would finally be able to find myself. What I found was that wherever you go, there you are (guess I was hoping to find someone else). I was having fun, but was broker and lonelier than ever and that's when I got a call from my best friend from high school and he scolded me for moving to Aspen without telling him. He said his father lives there and he visits twice a year and that he was coming for Christmas and looked forward to seeing me. I never liked his father and didn't think he cared too much for me either, but looked forward to seeing Gil and his wife Chris.
About a week later my roommate and landlord handed me a thick envelope with gold lettering and asked, "How the hell do you know Lee Lovett?" It was an invitation to their Christmas party at their house on Red Mountain, the "Peak House" and I remember thinking I wasn't going to go until Herb went on and on about it being the nicest house in Aspen. The instructions were to park at the Hotel Jerome and a limousine would chauffeur me to the house.
The house and the party were special, but all I really remember was being pulled aside late in the night by Gil's dad Lee and he told me how much he always liked and respected my father. He told me it took guts to move to Aspen as a young man and asked what I was doing for work. I told him I got a operations job with Ski Co in Snowmass and was looking to get a waiters job in Aspen to pay-off some debts and maybe stay year round. He said, "Where do you want to work?" I said I had applied to the Ritz, the Nell and the Hotel Jerome. He looked me in the eye and said, "Where do you want to work?" I said I had a good feeling about the Jerome and was thinking that it was the place for me. He said, "I don't do this often, but I will make a call." The next day I was on duty at the top of the Big Burn lift in Snowmass when I got an off-mountain phone call. The call was from the general manager of the Hotel Jerome and he said he had just one question for me. He asked, "How the hell do you know Lee Lovett?"
Little did I know that a waiters job would be the break of a lifetime, but it was. Six years later I would hire a girl named Suzy to be a waitress and seven years later we would get married at the Aspen Chapel and have our reception in the Grand Ballroom of the Hotel Jerome.
Later in the Spring of that first year in Aspen I called the Peak House and asked to speak to Lee and the house manager chuckled and told me Lee Lovett doesn't take phone calls, but that he would pass on a message. I told him I would like to buy Lee lunch to say thank you for helping me get a job. With attitude the manager said Lee is a very busy man and would most likely not be available for lunch, but he would pass on the message. A half hour later he called back and said Lee accepts and wondered if I would like to go skiing and have lunch on the mountain. If so meet at 9:00 am at the Little Nell and he would have a surprise for me. He showed up with his personal ski instructor who was an Olympic Gold Medalist and this was only part of the surprise. He had us registered in an elite ski school speed camp that was run by another Gold Medalist and we were video tapped and at the end of the morning during the video analysis the instructor asked me who I'd skied for and I told him I just ski for fun. He seemed genuinely surprised and said in a thick Austrian accent, "You ski like champion!" We went for lunch at Bonnie's for lunch, a mid mountain fine dinning restaurant and as we were waiting to be seated Lee said to me, "I'll let you buy me lunch, but I'm buying the wine!" And he gave me a very big smile. Because the wine was so good and we had so much of it I don't remember everything. I do remember three things. After the wine started to kick, I could see his house across the valley and he told me all about building it and I started to chuckle. He asked me what I thought was so funny and I said I was just wondering what kind of mortgage payment I'd have on a house like that? He laughed so hard and for so long he had to apologize and said it's not the kind of house you can do with a mortgage.
He told me how he sees most people in America getting wealthy and I am still working on that piece of advice. What he said that has really stuck with me because it has had me in such a quandary for nearly twenty years was, "To be successful you have to ask yourself this question. There is no right or wrong answer, but it will show you what direction to go in to find success. Do you like to be told what to do? Or do you enjoy telling other people what to do?" My quandary is that I hate being told what to do, but I like being taught how to do things better. And I don't love telling people what to do, but I like showing them how to do things better. Pretty wishy-washy answer to Lee's direct question I should ask myself to find success.
It took nineteen years and scrap of wood box wisdom from my father to come to terms with my answer and my chances for success in this world. To amount to something a man must be willing to do both. I need to be able to do what I'm told, but also willing not to and I must be willing to tell others what to do and accept when they don't.
The following year I was surprised to find myself on the Lovett's Christmas card. The picture was taken the year before and I have kept it because it reminds me of a time when I was so alone and my best friend reminded me how big my family really is and how special my friends really are.
