Speaking for the Dead.

I found out this morning that my boss at Time Warner, and a man I called a friend, passed away Friday night. I don’t know what the cause was, but I fear it might have had something to do with a motorcycle. He rather loved motorcycles, and had been rather risky with said machines.

Of course, that is my own opinion of motorcycles. And, as this is my blog, I get to make my feelings about the beasts part of my statement.

Orson Scott Card wrote a series of books called “The Ender Saga” of which I admire quite a bit, but his second book in the series, “Speaker for the Dead” is one of my all-time favorite books. It is a fascinating story and involves a great alien race. But in this case, I’d like to bring to light the main character of the story:

Ender Wiggin, the main character from the first story, had become a “Speaker for the Dead”, a “Priest” in a world where specified religion was decentralized and obscure. As a Speaker, his job was to visit the family just after a loved one passed away, and learn everything he could about the individual, good and bad, and assemble a speech to say over the persons’ grave. Unlike the speeches usually given by loved ones, the Speaker’s speech would be dispassionate, and balanced. It would bring, ultimately, the loved one into perspective, and fight off the strange human tendency to only remember the good and not the bad, to mystify and deify the person and not remember that he or she was once a human, just like us.

I wish I could Speak for Brian Morris, but alas, I am not a dispassionate Speaker, and as I am now noticing, I can only barely remember the things that were bad about him. Alas, I too have fallen for the same tendency.

It should be noted, though, that I did admire Brian. Good and Bad.

And so, as much as I can, I’ll try to Speak for Brian Morris.

This is more for Nick, Rose and Dimitris, whom (I’m hoping at least sporadically) read my blog, however, it is not for them alone. I invite everyone to read what I have to say about Brian, as he was an interesting man. I invite you to join me for a moment as I try to Speak for those whom did not know him. And tell a little about this interesting man.

For the bad: He liked President Bush. Well, okay, so that may not have been bad by many standards, but he was convinced I was a liberal, and that sparked many oddly one-sided arguments with me and others about the current presidency. Also for the bad: He liked motorcycles. Not that this is a bad thing in and of itself, but I don’t like motorcycles, and this is my Speaking, and I’m finding it difficult to find bad things to say, so this is the best that I can do.

Now, for the good: Brian was a man whom was always by the book. If there was a rule against it, you could not do it. This stymied me in more ways than I could count, but there was a flip-side: Brian was always by the book, and if someone else, even in his own chain of command, wanted to come down on one of his employees unfairly, he would not let it happen. More than once Brian went to bat for me. Against his boss, against even vice presidents, when he knew I was right.
Brian hired me on from a temporary employee to full time and let me do anything and everything I could to make the reporting process faster. He tolerated the time it took for me to learn Access so I could make effective reporting programs, and he even put up with the lengthy delays that sometimes occurred during this process (Provided he hadn’t stipulated a time hack…). He even created a whole new position for me (Reports Analyst).

But that was Brian my boss.

Brian also would spend a great deal of time researching political or scientific arguments that I would make, and he would often send me emails stating new aspects of the same argument. He was a stubborn man when it came to these arguments, but he was never harsh with his statements, he knew I was wrong, but he never thought I was stupid.

I recall one time he came back from a trip, and he had a present for me; a “Gore-Tex” hat, which he handed over to me with a deadpan expression on his face saying: “I thought you’d like this; it has “Gore” on it.”

He was really into deadpan delivery, and rarely cracked a smile during a joke. Something that could be construed as a little disconcerting. But I thought it was rather entertaining.

When I left Time Warner in late 2000 (Just before the elections), he was the last person I visited to say goodbye to. He motioned about his office, saying “I don’t have anything to give you as a going away present.” Then he paused, “Wait.” He said, and he found a bottle of water with “Bush 2000” on it. He handed it to me and said: “Just like the man, this water is good, and doesn’t have any bullshit in it.”

As a reports analyst, my job was to report the performance of the employees in our group to Brian, and ultimately to the entire cadre of management. Of course, as with many of Brian’s work policies, it was rather draconian. Too many times on my report and it went against your personal performance. That really rather bothered me, so I took to warning people that they were on my report, urging them to repair the mistakes and promising that I would rerun the report in a few minutes. This kept them off the reports and also kept their performance clean. It was a win-win situation.

Except that I was doing it behind Brian’s back. This always worried me because I didn’t want to underestimate Brian’s intelligence, indeed, he had proven many a time that he was very quick and I knew I was playing a rather slick game.

Many years later, in a conversation with him, he smiled and gave just a subtle hint that he knew what I had been doing.

But it was just a hint. As what I was doing was not by the book.

I always wanted to go back to him and ask him flat out if he knew, but now I’ll just have to be content with that little hint.

It’s better that way, I guess. Perhaps telling me would have broken the mystique and maybe, just maybe, cracked the deity a little.

Maybe, just this once, I’ll keep the good.

Goodbye Brian Morris. You made an impression on my life and I’m glad to have known you.

---Guy, Reports Analyst