Once you’ve loved someone, the love is always there, even after they’re gone. Love is the only thing that endures. Mountains are torn down, built up, torn down again over millions and millions of years. Seas dry up. Deserts give way to new seas. Time crumbles every building man erects. Great ideas are proven wrong and collapse as surely as castles and temples. But love is a force, an energy, a power. At the risk of sounding like a Hallmark card, I think love is like a ray of sunlight, traveling for all eternity through space, deeper and deeper into infinity; like that ray of light, it never ceases to exist.
Love endures. It’s a binding force in the universe, like the energy within a molecule is a binding force, as surely as gravity is a binding force. Without the cohesive energy in a molecule, without gravity, without love—chaos. We exist to love and be loved, because love seems to me to be the only thing that brings order and meaning and light to existence. It must be true. Because if it isn’t true, what purpose do we serve? Because if it isn’t true—God help us.
—Dean Koontz, From the book Darkfall, 1984
At the time of his death, my father was survived by his wife of fifty-seven years, her mother, his daughter, a sister in Winston-Salem, three grandchildren, one great-grandson, and me. One of those grandchildren was my son Trip, twenty-six at the time, who left this message on my answering machine the day after he learned his grandfather died: After hearing eleven beeps, I guess that must mean you already have plenty of messages. I just wanted to check in and add one more to it and see if you guys are OK, and to let you know what our flight plans are. Anyway, give me a call tonight. I know you are probably tired of the phone ringing, so I will wait for you to call back.
I love you, Dad, and I hope you are OK and take care. I will either see you tomorrow or the next day, and am trying to get there as soon as I can. I love you very much, and I hope you guys are doing all right. I mean it, Dad, I love you. Talk to you later. Bye.
Two days later, on October 27, Trip delivered the following letter, one I treasure because this is what families should be all about. It started: Dear Dad: Now it’s just Roy Park, Jr. and III.
Funny how generations meld together. Specifically, look at what Grandpops perfected, then at the areas in which you excelled…then there’s me.
See what I mean? He had a tremendous business mind with a particular sense of timing and making swift, corporate decisions. You had a struggle between a skill for art and a desire for corporate accomplishment, while at the same time, your timing was still good. The two of you differ mainly in the “Friends” category. I don’t think anybody who has met Roy Park, Jr. can say they weren’t treated with compassion, respect, and honesty.
This I noticed from the early days of visiting you in the dungeon of a workplace called Park Outdoor. With pipes running over your head and dehumidifiers running to keep the papers from sticking together, an environment like that would have driven anybody mad (and I know you came close), but you always treated everyone around you like a United States Senator. You still do. This accounts for secretaries, contractors, colleagues, and college-buddies, to name a few.
Even Ted, your yardman, from Pine Knoll Shores. Laura thought you two were old friends by the time we came down. I merely told her, “That’s Dad, he can make anybody feel wanted, needed, and respected, all within minutes of meeting him. He does not even need connections, he’s just incredible with people.”
So, what I gathered is that there was more of a personable side that you acquired from God knows where. That I liked. That I learned.
Then there’s me. My timing often sucks. My business philosophy… well, when I develop one I’ll write you later. But, I guess it all got overloaded in the creative side. Sometimes I feel helpless in this family since about all I contribute is an annual Christmas card.
But you’ve asked me what I’ve learned from you two.
You’ve already found out I do like my independence. With total disregard to your clear-cut advice, I stormed down to an advertising agency in North Carolina, for a change of pace. That decision almost drove me to requiring a pacemaker. But a gamble on my career once in a while never seemed to bother me.
Because I believe my “autopilot” has been good all along, nothing seems to have scared me. I never was afraid of fitting in. Ithaca High School taught me that.
I never feared making new friends. Dumping everything and getting my education in Chapel Hill, then a job in Chicago, not to mention back and forth again, only made me stronger.
Still, I had learned that people will trust you after you trust them first. They will only respect you after you give them respect. Finally, they will love you, only after you show love. You were never afraid of any of this; neither was Grandpops, and neither was I.
Perhaps it is here, in this esoteric limbo, that I have learned the most. I had to find parts from both of you since we are all uniquely different.
From Grandpops, it is to never, and that is never, give up on your goals. When you feel they are getting closer, build confidence from your efforts, and throw new goals way out ahead again. For me, I never want to feel like I’ve accomplished everything. My best work is still ahead of me, whether it be the creation of my own animation house or simply a house full of kids (had to see if you were still awake). Unfortunately, this was never advice that came from him directly, but something I observed over twenty-six years of time. I’m sure he had a list of things he still wanted to get done in his last thoughts, and I don’t want my list to end, either.
From you, compassion. I know I won’t get anywhere in this world without treating others around me with as much respect as I feel I deserve back. This undoubtedly pays off on a daily basis. The neat thing I’ve noticed here, is that whether it’s college, work, or just an outside collective friend, compassion is the true litmus test. It’s how you can find others that are “mutually respectful and understanding” (to quote from “Pops”).
These come to mind for me as invaluable lessons…not the only two, but probably the most inspiring. If you haven’t noticed, I sometimes feel I don’t, and never will, have the level head with which the two of you have been gifted. It all kind of sways to the right side. Perhaps if it weren’t for you two, things would be a lot worse for me. I believe I needed to see both of your lifelong philosophies carried out, and witness what you have accomplished first.
I am terribly saddened that it has come down to just you and me. But the fact that I am the Third should offer you some comfort. I know I’ll be making plenty more mistakes in the future, but that can’t be helped. The funny thing is that I wanted to write this letter on my Bayer Bess stationary since there’s no telling what it will be one, two, or twenty-six years from now.
But at least we both had the chance to learn from Grandpops, for now that’s what we can be thankful for. From now on, we have each other. I think that’s a hell of a lot.
Love, Trip After my father died, one of his television stations put together a videotape biography on him, which did a good job of tracking his life. It is a short tape, maybe fifteen minutes long, but it gave a good overview of how he developed his many careers during his life. We have shown this on occasion to incoming or graduating Johnson School Park Leadership Fellows, after which I point out that my father was an entrepreneur, a pioneer who constantly sought and took advantage of opportunities, as well as a civic leader in his community who continuously strove to do the same for others, and that these are also the ideals on which the Park Leadership Fellows Program at the Johnson School are modeled.
I tell them, “You carry the responsibility to continue to emulate these ideals. A responsibility to lead a productive and successful life in whatever endeavor you choose, as well as a responsibility to serve your communities, your families, and those who will follow you as future business leaders. This is a high standard to bear, but it is also a model of leadership our country desperately needs in the new millennium.”
As I said, the Johnson School at Cornell is named after Sam Johnson, and I never had to ask the question he asked in his memorable and moving movie tribute to his father: “Did he love his business more than he loved me?” My father might have loved me the last couple of years of his life, but I loved him all his life, and still do. The Forbes 400 list of richest Americans that came out one week before his death ranked my father 139th. Knowing what I know now, I wish I could bring him back. I’m sure he would remind all of our family members where the money for the foundation he founded came from, how it was earned, and having run his smaller Park Foundation for thirty years, what he had in mind for its use.