My good friend, mentor and adviser, Andy passed away last week. He fought a long and courageous battle with an illness that many a lesser person would have surrendered to years ago. But it is not for his intrepid steadfastness that I will remember him. Or for his storied background as a combat pilot or competitive triathlete. Rather it is for an even rarer commodity in the modern world, his towering integrity.
I met Andy as my executive coach some ten years ago. Little did I know then that he was introducing me to a future vocation that would provide me with deep and abiding satisfaction. For that I am eternally grateful.
But more, he embedded in me an appreciation for the liberating power of integrity. Not in the “think about it 30 seconds” way most people devote to the subject. Instead he discussed it as a scientific truth, an inalienable law of the universe that can not be countermanded by anyone for any reason. He liked to say that the only reason that a wheel can spin on its axle freely is that it is in “perfect integrity.” To lose such integrity is to spin apart in a disintegrating disaster. The type of disaster that takes down companies such as Enron, Lehman, and people like Tiger and Roethlisberger.
He led his life as a model of integrity. He was the consummate truth-teller, who would gently (or not), advise those of us fortunate enough to know him when we may be straying off course. He always spun true.
Thank you, Andy, for your enduring legacy and inspiring integrity. I will miss you.