December 7, 2013
©Copyright 2013: Richard von
Sternberg, All Rights Reserved
A PIECE OF LIVING HISTORY
My uncle, Howard Fields, will no longer be attending. His wife of almost 70 years, Dorothy, my mother’s sister, will no longer be cheering for him at any reunions, no longer volunteering with him at local schools wherever he has lived to make his scratch in the world, making sure the consciousness America gained by being surprised that fateful day never dissipates, never gets relegated to non-anecdotal history and dries up like the tomes it is printed in. No longer there to talk to America’s children about what happened at Pearl Harbor.
This is so because both of them just passed on. They were so intertwined after their amazingly rich scores of years together, that one of them could not be alone on the planet very long before joining the other. I understand that well as my own father died about a year after my mother. When he got the news of her death, he went limp and blanched. Uncle Howard and Aunt Dorothy were closer even, for, unlike my parents, they were together until the end.
I HAVE BEEN TO BOTH PEARL HARBOR AND HIROSHIMA
I was born the year World War 2 ended with the surrender of the governments that held our destruction as their highest priority, and, as a result, was born too late to be part of the generation that actually pushed the atomic button – twice – unleashing wild, unbridled power from the air against a people that existed on the other side of the line drawn between good and evil. I was born too late to use epithets such as the one that appeared ubiquitously in newspaper headlines that read: JAPS SURRENDER.
My generation did not perceive the Japanese as any kind of enemy except in movies or stories, because they have not made any military moves against us in our lifetime. Enemy status? My passport has been honored in Japan and I have traveled freely there. I eat sushi, have owned Japanese cars and trucks. I was involved in an international diamond cutting venture with a Japanese firm that went on for many years. I have flown Japan Air Lines and have traveled all over Japan by Shinkansen, the famous Bullet Train, whizzing past miles of bamboo forest, rice farms, tea farms with astonishing views made slightly fuzzy by mist rising, made passionate by majestic temples rising up into the view. On one such trip I went to the Hiroshima museum next to the last remaining ruin from our bombing and, even there, did not feel in the presence of an enemy nor treated as if I were one.
CONVENTIONAL WISDOM OF THE DAY
When my uncle was the age I was when I began to travel the world, it would have been far too much of a psychological barrier to penetrate for him to reverse inside himself the sentiments shared by a generation about Japan and Germany. When I got my first foreign car, Uncle Howard lectured me sternly (putting it mildly) about supporting people that were once out to cut our throats. His point of view was easy enough to understand. If you looked out your window and saw a group of people throwing lit torches at your house, clearly attempting to make ashes of your home and burn you out of it, how much time would have to pass before you could sit across a desk from any of those firebugs to purchase an automobile?
Uncle Howard was a vessel so filled with patriotism and love for his country, that his exuberance would spill over into his words, of which he was unlikely to mince even one. In other words, there was never any doubt how he felt about any topic he, or anybody else, brought up.
SHAPED BY OUR VICTORY
This very outspoken, ardent patriot from Colton, California, politically conservative, ended up in Orange County, California because in 1945, the year that I was born, Howard married Dorothy, a girl from Orange County. Dorothy’s mother, my grandmother, married an attorney who was romantically and passionately drawn to the miles and miles of perfumed air you passed through when the thousands of acres of orange groves were in full bloom. Grandmother and Grandfather felt at home in the conservative environment, so much so, that Grandmother joined the Daughters of the American Revolution.
The war was over; America was full of hope and promise. Five short years after we emerged victorious from the war, the 50’s unfurled. Jobs became plentiful, most of them were held by men, designated income earners for most families at the time. Men were supposed to work, drive the one car to the job and back to the home that was so affordable compared to today’s real estate reality that a family with a single income, even a modest one, and two kids could thrive in the supportive local economy of the time and experience home ownership.
A year after my mother and father had me, my aunt and uncle had a boy, Douglas, whom I spent Christmas and summers with as 50’s kids, first round of baby-boom population exploders. Shortly thereafter was born Howard and Dorothy’s only girl, Laura Ellen, like Doug, a vital part of my very early childhood formative years. Two more boys, Edward and “Jimmy”, rounded out the offspring package of Howard and Dorothy quite a bit later than their brother and sister born early in the marriage. These four children are the direct descendants of two extraordinary human beings.
THEY GREW FROM THEIR LOVE FOR EACH OTHER
Because of all the time I spent at Howard and Dorothy’s home as a little boy, my entire life has been shaped by the blustery, edgy character that was my uncle then, as well as by the soberingly grounded, kind person that was my aunt. I remember wondering as a child how my sweet peach of an aunt could have ended up with somebody who scared me with his deep, penetrating voice, his way of expressing his opinions in such a way that he could opine somebody right into an argument about any of his many pet peeves. I turned to his mother in law, my grandmother, for an explanation.
Grandmother told me Howard was rough and blustery on the outside, with a heart of gold on the inside. Over the years I came to see what she meant and how right she was. Howard would have done anything at all for his family any time. The only difference, then, between the two hearts of gold was that one was lodged in an insecure nature while the other, imbued with well balanced self-confidence, had a more natural approach to connecting with the world.
Inside the inner sanctum of Howard and Dorothy’s deeply connected spirits the two hearts of gold fused. They faced the world as one solid unit and managed to change with times as they changed, reluctantly, perhaps, but carefully, wisely, after much personal research and human interaction.
THE DYNAMIC
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Dorothy had a heart of gold, as I said before, but, to be properly descriptive of the real she, mention must be made of the size of that beating organ. There was so much heart in Dorothy that it seems impossible there was room for the rest of her. She cared about her immediate family deeply. About her extended family deeply as well. And her friends and neighbors. She was there to help when help was needed, “there” in a way that I, as well as most people I have met in life, are not.
Her nature being what it was, Dorothy became a foster parent. Howard traveled almost perpetually so was a foster parent to a lesser extent time-wise, but Howard’s presence was felt by people so profoundly that an experience with him would continue to reverberate in them endlessly. Dorothy had the world’s largest heart of gold while Howard had the most highly concentrated one.
Dorothy kept herself busy with projects that required concentration on the small details of life such as needlepoint and wallpapering. She cooked and baked so automatically, that you could think of it as the same as what you DON’T think about while riding a bicycle that makes it possible for you to ride one. She didn’t have to think about cooking. She was a food factory that also cranked out cookies. Years after I finally came to appreciate my aunt for the saintly person she was I understood why, on one summer day with nothing particular to do, she laughed when I told her I was bored. She never had time to be bored because she was busy raising her children and her many foster children almost by herself.
HOWARD MADE IT TO THE TOP OF HIS PROFESSION
It wasn’t always that way. In the beginning Howard and Dorothy tried operating businesses together. Very early childhood memories of mine include spending time in a market they owned as well as a restaurant somewhere in Orange County called The Snack Shack. Possibly due to what he learned about business from being immersed in it or possibly because they were not able to tame their businesses to their satisfaction, Howard switched careers and approached larger companies asking to be a “road warrior”. Once any of those companies said yes, aunt Dorothy’s days as a co-parent were numbered.
Howard kept his pencil sharp and had an uncannily clear big-picture view of the business world and how to move around in it. He was smarter than most of the people doing what he wanted to do. The fact that they were succeeding while remaining far south of Howard’s consciousness, however, demonstrated it was not just business acumen that was responsible for lifting him higher and higher into the matrix of the sales divisions of powerful companies. No, it was, instead, his charisma.
Howard’s voice carried, as did his infectious laughter. Ensconced within his voice, his laughter and his grounded way of standing and carrying himself was a confident air, the aura of a born leader, an inspirational soul engendering trust at the outset of a first conversation one had with him. He was a story-teller who was able to recite long works of poetry, such as The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, and with a kind of flare about accenting the stressed syllables of the poem underscoring the uniqueness of his absorbing personality.
Sales divisions of companies everywhere dream about recruiting people with captivating personalities and many vied for the attention of my uncle over the years he spent on the corporate up-escalator of America’s big cigar companies and distributors. In the beginning he was a “road warrior” schlepping product, calling on retailers to compete for market share, shelf space. Howard remembered things about people, listened to what they told him and asked about events and people the next time he met up with them. Whereas it may have seemed an exercise in the toleration of pest behavior to have many salespeople call on the retailers he saw, a visit with Howard Fields was an experience to look forward to.
GOLDEN TOUCH IN THE BUSINESS WORLD
Howard surprised many boards of directors with the bandwidth of his ability to increase a company’s business. He was a paragon of salesmanship, a walking example of every important tenet of the generic concept of marketing, and, as such, naturally gravitated toward managing sales divisions. He was not “kicked upstairs”, not taken off the road to be rewarded with a salary and a desk job. Instead, companies he worked for wanted him to make Xerox copies of himself and send an army of Howards out to multiply their market share. After creating the sales army, he was expected to train new recruits, manage existing ones, and, at the same time, make sure the existing accounts were properly stroked and made to keep purring, to keep selling product and replacing it, increasing it.
At one company lucky enough to have Howard, he was told in a casual conversation by a close contact in the accountancy division that he was responsible for about 8 million dollars in NET profit that year. People often wondered what Howard did or said to develop such a loyal and respectful following, but I knew. By the end of my teen age I had completely assimilated Grandmother’s truth about my uncle’s heart of gold. When I went into business and had to learn to sell, I turned to Howard for education and was quite edified by all I learned from him. Without ever mentioning it specifically, by example he taught me the importance of wowing a client with respect and generosity. I know what he did and how he did it was worth at least 8 million dollars a year.
While on the road myself selling gemstones I imported to jewelers, I often stayed with Howard and Dorothy at their home in Orange County. One night Howard wanted to show me how he could make a person feel special as his dinner guest at a fine restaurant. Off we went to an elegant restaurant in Newport Beach known far and wide at the time. We were seated, all propriety was addressed with water, bread, table décor and appropriate machinations to raise to its peak the quality of the dining experience. As the menus arrived and were about to be distributed, Howard raised his arm to signal to the maître d’ to desist his superfluous gesture and told him to bring us plenty of whatever he considered to be the finest examples of eating his restaurant could provide. What unfolded after that moment may have been the apex of all of my dining experiences because, even though I can no longer remember exactly what they served, I remember being repeatedly dazed by richness of every taste of everything and that temporary glow we all get to feel a little from time to time when all the elements that make up what is in front of us at the moment are in heart-quieting harmony.
CRISIS IN THE COMPANY
Howard’s company promised to provide him all the tools necessary to allow him to do what he ended up doing. It became apparent at some point that they had not understood his gourmet methodology of doing business and that they were reviewing his fringe benefit package which included airline cards for all the business class airlines that flew to and from places in his territory (from the Rockies to Hawaii and Alaska), car rental cards from all car rental companies and all the major credit cards, all with no limitations. They paid him handsomely and gave him a new company car every year or so.
One day they called him into their inner offices to confront him about the very large bills he was running up every month and, unfortunately for them, they did not include in their plan to clip his wings any thought about Howard Fields as the engine keeping the company afloat. They hit him with figures, percentages, totals, budgets, accountancy jargon from the left, then from the right. In his defense he revealed that he knew that he had made the company millions of dollars in net profit and asked them if they were considering that or not. Their response was to appeal to Howard’s sense of reason to agree to some arbitrary line they wanted to draw on their spreadsheet that showed him their only concern was moving the money around the table from his side to theirs.
It was a naïve stance to take with a man who was courted by every competitor of theirs, whose absence could radically transform their company. Howard did the obvious thing, calmly, resolutely, and with no fanfare: He said: “I quit.”
“NOOOOOOOOOO. Howard……….NOOOOOOOOOO, Please. Don’t quit,” was the vehement response engendered by Howard’s simple act. The company responded as if they had gone through a near-death experience and never confronted him again.
THE LONG ARM OF THE LAW
In a parallel universe Howard had a kind of second career, albeit it was not necessary for income reasons, a career nonetheless: he was a deputy for the Orange County Sheriff. One can only speculate about the double-helix
It was clearly a high, life-long priority of his to help keep America orderly. In the military and the criminal system Howard had both might and wit in his arsenal. Inside his brain there seemed to be a kind of mental zoom lens continually focusing and refocusing to study the big picture, the little picture, the microscopic detail and what to do about all of them simultaneously.
He kept his head, made sound decisions and set about to enforce them, but never wandered far from his sense of humor. One evening Uncle Howard told me about a robbery-in-progress call he and a partner got in which the criminals were armed. Clearly a “Code-3”. When they arrived, they entered the building with guns drawn, ready for the worst. Out jumped two criminals brandishing fairly large knives, also, in their minds, ready for the worst. Howard said he burst into almost uncontrollable laughter while he and his partner held the delinquents in the sights of their guns exclaiming: “Is this an example of how you prepare for your criminal acts, to show up to a gun fight armed with a knife?”
MISCELLANEOUS ATTRIBUTES
There are too many important details that make up the mosaic and Gestalt that were Howard Fields that they could possibly be contained in such a short and humble tribute to him as this one. Among them was his joy in triggering a response in people, responses to his often picaresque and roguish acts designed to startle people into a personal epiphany. An example of this would be some flight attendant he would come across from time to time who was “not really all there”, as he would put it, who treated people in less than human ways. For them, when they arrived to his spot on the plane to take his order, their surprise would be him vociferously asking: “What do you think? That I’m just another ass on a seat, just another face in the window?”
He carried cards with messages printed on them for certain occasions. When somebody would overindulge Howard with an outbreak of trivial complaints, he would be handed a card that said: “Pardon me, I believe you are confusing me with somebody who gives a sh*t.”
If you were a congressperson who was off course by Howard’s assessment, you would need to be prepared for a spate of letters and phone calls that nearly burned the envelopes they were mailed in and singed the phone lines.
RETIREMENT
Howard and Dorothy had fun and enjoyed life. By the time Howard was ready to retire, the kids had left Orange County and moved to places like Utah and New Mexico. Their first “act” of retirement was the purchase of a large motor home they could drive all over the country making America their personal Exploratorium. They went here to visit one relative, there to visit another, yet another place to see an old friend and off to many other places, Gypsy like, making a stop at my house on most of their longer outings. When they came to see somebody, they were interested in the people they were visiting and interesting to them as well.
They lived, then, peripatetically, for a time and, as they got older, wanted to be close to their children, wanted to continue to make a difference around them and, as I mentioned earlier, volunteered in schools and got fired up over and over about the lessons of Pearl Harbor. They lived an amazing life, squeezed more from it than most of us and left such a deep impression that it was hard not to think of them as special and eternal as I did when I was a child.
Once, in a history of jazz class I took in college, an instructor was demonstrating how the blues was structured, how it had a pattern based on iambic pentameter and that famous poems written in that style could be dropped into any blues song. To exemplify the point, he gave an example that speaks to the matter of mortality that none of us can ever escape, the reality that nobody can rise above that somehow seems fitting here. John Dryden’s famous poem set to the blues: “All human things are subject to decay. And when fate summons even monarchs must obey.” (Dryden did not put the word “even” in his poem, but the instructor was singing the words as a blues song and took a liberty.)
Two very important lights have gone out on the switchboard of life.
Richard von Sternberg
