What is one of the most expensive things that you've ever bought for yourself?

There really are not all that many things that I would consider expensive that I’ve bought solely for myself; most of those I’ve either shared with someone or bought for someone else.  But I think the purchase that best answers the question was my 1997 Pontiac Firebird.  It was just the base model with a 200 horsepower V-6 engine, 5-speed manual transmission and silver paint job.  I bought it from the now-closed Rodgers Pontiac on South Main Street in Dayton, Ohio, and the test drive was memorable, at least for the salesman.  We took it out and I headed over to I-75 to feel how it handled on the highway.  But instead of gunning the engine as the salesman expected, I just smoothly merged and went a few miles at the speed limit.  I really just wanted to test the car for comfort, but I guess most forty-year-old men looking at buying a sports car are having a midlife crisis and want to feel the power.  That wasn’t me.  I found the Firebird’s seats to be extremely comfortable and that sold me.  

The best feature of the car was its t-top roof.  You released a latch on each side, removed each half and stored them in the trunk.  It made the car look and feel like a convertible and I got quite a few “cool car” comments.  One of my favorite Friday summertime habits was cutting a cigar at work around 3:00 pm.  After gnawing on it for a couple hours, I’d leave work, light up as soon as I left the building and walked to the Firebird.  I’d put the t-tops in the trunk and enjoy a nice ride in the country, puffing all the way home.  

While most cars I bought were shared in one fashion or another, only I drove the Firebird.  Not because I was selfish, but no one else knew how to drive a stick.  That made it exclusively mine, and it remains the favorite car I’ve ever had.  

Thinking back, what do you admire most about your mother?

My mother grew up in a family with three sisters, two older and one younger, and a brother four years her senior.  She lost her Mom when she was just twenty-four years old, still three years away from marrying my Dad.  They would have four boys and one girl over a ten-year period, which included two miscarriages.  She was an accountant and an aspiring actress and gave up both to raise her family.  Being way more familiar with being around girls, I imagine raising four boys was so very different and I’m glad she had at least my sister as a female companion.  She passed away a few months after my two youngest brothers graduated college and Dad retired from General Motors.  We had Christmas in 1985 together, never imagining it would be our last, and she slipped into a coma before New Year's Eve.  We stayed with her in the hospital and she never woke up.  Late on Sunday, January 5th we left, needing to get ready for work on Monday.  It was so like Mom not to want to be a bother to anyone.  She waited until she was alone to pass away.  People told me that she had an express lane to heaven, that’s how nice and sweet she was.  I couldn’t agree more.  I lost my Dad on July 25, 1989, just three and a half years later.  Not many people lose both of their parents by the time they’re thirty-three years old, and I envy those children that have their parents to talk to way later in life. 

Later, as I became a father and like many others look to their parent's voices, living or deceased, for guidance, I reflected on what my parents taught me.  It’s almost impossible to recall specific events over three decades, but after I pondered for a while, I boiled all their parenting into two themes.  My father taught me to be responsible, to keep promises, respect others and understand the consequences of my actions.  My mother, and to answer the question posed, taught me to be happy.  Not specifically the how’s or what’s, but that I had to consider that my choices could not always be selfless, that some of the things I did had to be what I wanted and that I had to find the right balance in life that would make me both happy and responsible.  My parents never specifically said it this way, but that’s what they did and why I admire them so much.  Their own sense of values and morality was worth far more than any expert’s book.

Being responsible is the collection of actions that guide your choices when it comes to dealing with others.  Being happy is the collection of actions that guide your choices when it comes to dealing with yourself.  Taken together they form the twin goalposts for my life.  So while their time on earth was relatively short, and I miss them dearly, I was so very fortunate that they were my parents.

Tell me about your college graduation. Did you attend? What do you remember about the setting, the people, and the experience?

I graduated from college, Summa Cum Laude, at the end of the Summer quarter of 1980, or six years after my start in September of 1974.  I did not attend the graduation ceremony for a number of reasons.  

First, I really don’t like graduations or other similar celebrations.  I had to attend my high school graduation for the sake of my parents but skipped the party afterward in favor of going to the “Bus” campsite.  School was not where most of my social interaction occurred and I never developed an affinity to high school.  It was simply, for the most part, a place to get an education.  Running track was the only sport I played and even as people may view it as a team sport, it’s really a group of unrelated events, except a few relays, so if a couple of other teammates also ran my event, the two-mile, we only saw each other at the beginning and end of the race.  

High school was also complicated by the 1973 merger of my all-male Chaminade and the all-female Julienne, replacing the laid-back culture of Chaminade with the confusing and frustrating regiment brought by the nuns of Julienne.  While they might, or might not, have a good understanding of teaching girls, they failed miserably at relating to boys and our more aggressive nature.  To say my senior year at Chaminade-Julienne was rough is an understatement and I couldn’t wait to get out of there.  Giving the nuns the satisfaction of my presence at the post-party was not going to happen.

Second, attending a college commencement after six-plus years meant that I would know absolutely no one, as the class that started alongside me in 1974 had either graduated or quit long before 1980.  Large graduations always occur after the Spring quarter, and a Fall ceremony would have far fewer graduates.  Getting a diploma in front of a small and unfamiliar group made no sense.  I was happy to just receive it in the mail.

Finally, by the time I graduated I had been working full-time for over three years, first at Wright State University and then Hobart Corporation.  I had been married for over a year, had a wonderful, brand-new darling daughter, and was fighting a court battle to get my wife’s son from her parents.  Yes, that’s as weird as it sounds.  So graduation for most is an ending of school and a beginning of a job search and it’s a good time to reflect on the past and imagine the future.  Since I was already well past all that, what was the point of spending some money for a cap and gown, pretending to be excited about an event that held no real meaning for me?

What's a small decision you made that ended up having a big impact on your life?

I joined The Mead Corporation in 1981 as they expanded their Technical Services group.  My role for the first year-plus was mainly being a backup as all the major areas had senior people already in place.  That made me more easily available for other assignments and perhaps that helped as this story unfolds.  

John Langenbahn had just become CIO and in 1982 he and the executive management decided to merge the Cincinnati data center, which housed three board-focused divisions, into the Dayton data center, instead of buying them a new million-dollar mainframe.  The project was announced on a Friday in Dayton with a follow-up meeting scheduled for the following Friday in Cincinnati.

After the first meeting I mentioned to somebody that it would be cool to lead the project, so my small decision was to speak up.  But being the new kid, and all of 27 years old, I never thought anything would actually come of it.  The following week as we converged in Cincinnati, one of the managers congratulated me as they had heard I was going to be leading the project.  I told them that I hadn't heard that, but I was gung-ho to do it.  During the first part of the meeting, I was announced as the leader.  I have no idea why my boss or his boss didn’t tell me, or even ask me, prior to the meeting.  Over the next three months and working crazy numbers of hours, we successfully moved the three divisions, one per weekend, to Dayton with minimal issues.  

A few weeks after the project was finished I and my right-hand guy on the project were called up to the CIO’s office.  We were sweating bullets as we rode the elevator to the 25th floor along with our boss and his boss, wondering why the CIO wanted to see us.  Had we screwed up something and were going to get our asses chewed off?  We were relieved to find out that he just wanted to thank us and give us a spot bonus of a couple of thousand dollars, a big deal back then.  I think we were happier that we just weren’t in trouble. 

I believe that leading such an important project was the initial catapult to the rest of my career.  Shortly after I was promoted to Section Manager, later to Network Services Manager, then ERP Director and Chief Technology Officer when Mead and Westvaco merged.  Without this opportunity, I might have just stayed a happy technologist, never entering the ranks of leadership. 

Maybe because I just decided to open my mouth, not realizing that the right person took me seriously, did my career take off.  

Tell me about your introduction to golf - what inspired you to try it, when and where did you learn, and who taught you?

I started playing golf when I was about thirteen years old. I bought myself a few golf clubs and one of my Dayton Daily newspaper route customers took me to Kitty Hawk Golf Course to get me started.  I really liked playing sports of all types, so in some ways, this was just another one to try, but it was watching Jack Nicklaus playing on TV that provided the real spark. Jack was the longest hitter on tour, but his ability to hit long irons was especially exciting.  Probably because I wanted to “be like Jack”, I’m pretty good at hitting a 3-iron, unlike most men my age that have four or five woods in their bag to avoid the longer irons.  Two of my original clubs were Jack Nicklaus signatures, including the wedge I still use, having had it re-shafted and regripped numerous times.  Not many people have a fifty-three-year-old club in their bag.

Most of what I learned about golf came from those TV broadcasts and the rest by playing lots of rounds over the years.  There are a lot of rules to golf from who hits first to where you can and can’t ground your club to different types of hazards.  You also learn that searching for your ball next to a pond in Florida can lead to an unexpected encounter with an alligator.  Fortunately, the gator was not looking to eat at that moment.

I taught myself the mechanics of the swing from where I wanted to place the ball in my stance based on the club I was using and how I wanted to hit a shot.  Being the analytical type, I figured out that the golf ball doesn’t know that I want to hit a low ball or that it knows I’m keeping my elbow tucked in.  The golf ball only responds to the clubhead and as it’s striking the ball it has a direction, velocity, and acceleration along all three axes, and a spot on the clubface where it contacts the ball.  Knowing how to manipulate those ten variables teaches you what you need to hit a high fade or low ball into a wind, not that actually doing those things is easy, but it’s better trying to convince your golf ball verbally.  Learning to hit shots from a sand trap took a while, mainly because Kitty Hawk had bunkers filled with heavy and packed brown sand, and the only way to hit the ball was chipping it.  When I started playing courses with light and fluffy sand, chipping failed miserably. I learned on TV that the proper sand shot did not involve hitting the ball, instead, you hit the sand and the sand propels the ball up and forward.  You enter the sand two inches behind the ball and make a full golf swing, adjusting how hard you swing to get the distance you need.  I now refer to green-side bunkers as “my happy place”, I’m that confident that I’ll put the ball somewhere near the hole.

I’ve been fortunate to play a number of gorgeous golf courses including Pinehurst, the Ocean Course at Kiawah Island, Wailea in Maui, Firestone in Akron, Bay Hill, TPC Sawgrass, and Innisbrook in Florida, and Valhalla in Kentucky.  But playing Pebble Beach stands out as my favorite with its epic views of the Pacific Ocean trying to distract you from focusing on your next shot.  I get to relive that experience yearly when the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am is broadcast, remembering the good shots, the ones that ended up over a cliff, and the birdie I made at the par-5 fifteenth. 

When, and how, did you get your first car?

As best as I can recall, I bought my first car during my freshmen year at Wright State University, so that’s most likely early in 1975.  I had used my mother’s big yellow Chevrolet station wagon, but really needed my own car so Mom didn’t have to go without as much.  I had a modest amount of cash saved, less than one thousand dollars, so I searched for something no more than that and found a light blue Opel Kadett with a manual transmission offered by a guy on Greenmount Boulevard in Oakwood that looked like a good fit.  

While not that many young men at the time could drive a stick shift, I had taught myself that art on my older brother Greg’s Chevy Vega, not that it was a very smooth process.  I remember grinding the gears, drifting backward a bit when starting up a hill, and the many times I stalled the car and listened to the car horns of unappreciative drivers.  I knew the drill.  Rev the engine a bit, let out the clutch until it starts to grab, and work that balance to slowly get going.  But I was getting nowhere.  Out of desperation for a solution, I had Greg explain what was really going on and learned about the operation of the clutch plates, how the clutch pulled apart when pushed and how the gears in the transmission had to line up at matching speeds to smoothly transition from one gear to the next.  That’s all it took.  Now that I knew what I was trying to accomplish, the rest was easy.  Almost like magic, the grinding and drifting and stalling disappeared.  I have a similar story about skiing, but that’s really off-topic.

Dad drove me to Oakwood to help me with my first car purchase.  What I learned that day was my Dad really liked to negotiate, unafraid to get up and walk out if needed.  It would have been a really good idea if he had let me know that beforehand as I wanted to strangle him when I thought I was going to miss out on my “dream car” because he couldn’t get another few bucks knocked off the price.  All ended well and I drove home with the car I would drive through most of my college days, lasting until I bought a Volvo 164E after I started working full-time at Wright State.

 

If you could go back in time and give your teenage self some advice, what would you tell him?

I asked myself this very question two and a half years ago and wrote my younger self the following letter and published it on my Life Experiences blog on my sixty-third birthday.  I don’t think I can say it any better now.

------

October 8, 2018

To: Paul Moorman @ 18

From: Paul Moorman @ 63

Dear Self,

Happy birthday!

If the theories we’ve learned about time travel are true, you will never be able to read this letter, but in case this does somehow fall into your hands, I’ll try not to give too much of our future away. But hey, now that you know you’ve made it to our sixty-third birthday, maybe I’ve given too much away already, but I’ll try to be careful. You’ve already figured out that the co-ed Chaminade-Julienne is really different than our all-male Chaminade. You’ll get through it and have stories to tell the rest of our life. College will be much better. We’ll really hit our stride.

The simple message of this letter is “don’t change a thing”. Not that life won’t throw us curve balls along the way and there are things I wish we could have avoided, but any deviation might derail the life we have now. We have a wonderful wife who is truly the love of our life, our friend, our travel companion and our soulmate. We have two awesome children that we’re immensely proud of. So does our wife. I guess that gave away a little history. Worth the gamble.

We’re in pretty good shape at 18-years old and we are about to have the best suntan of our life. Our senior picture will be our best photo ever. Our passion for running, albeit interrupted at times, will be lifelong. It’s not really exercise to us, just a way to relax, think and enjoy the landscape. We’ll run some long ones, we’ll run some pretty fast ones, but mainly we’ll just run for fun. Certainly don’t change that.

Most of the plans we’ve made over the years did not work out. That’s good, because things worked out even better. Our expected career choice did not pan out, but what we end up pursuing is so much better. That cute girl in class doesn’t work out either, the first of a few like that. But don’t change a thing, because we’re waking up every morning with the best one.

Back in your day we’re pretty much a mountain vacation guy. Our career will change that as we travel, more at times than others, and we explore a decent chunk of the world. We’ll play some scenic golf courses, stand at the top of majestic ski slopes and watch sunsets settle over beautiful beaches. So while life will be challenging, and at times stressful beyond belief, it’s not without its share of really fun experiences.

We retired a month and a half ago because we wanted to and could afford to do so. We’re healthy and looking forward to the freedom and adventures. Our career morphed over the years and we can continue to play with, oops almost gave that away, into retirement.

I’m going out to check the mailbox for a letter from our 85-year-old self. But if there isn’t one there, I’ll just assume time travel really wasn’t solved or we’re just too busy to write.

Hang in there. Don’t change a thing. Everything works out the way it’s supposed to. And it’s pretty great.

Happily ours,

Paul @ 63