DAY 17 - Bill Slawski
Of Mentors, and of Listening
The van pulled up in front of our house, and a delivery guy started wheeling a handtruck towards our house, loaded with the biggest box I had ever seen. It was bigger than I was, by a lot. It was a week before Christmas, and I couldn’t help but imagine that it was filled with toys. It was.
I was probably given a bigger gift earlier that
inducted into the Hall of Fame for his industry’s
summer from my father and the people
trade group.
who had shipped that box, in a lesson about
listening. We had moved from New Jersey
We sat inside the car, in the client’s parking lot
to Cincinnati, Ohio, a couple of years earlier,
while my father went inside. He was in there
but most of our extended family still lived in
for a while, and we were getting antsy about
Jersey. So we started taking summer vacations
finishing the drive to New Jersey. He came
where we would drive to Jersey, and visit
out smiling after a while, and as we resumed
family. This particular year, my father stopped
our trip, he told us about how he suggested
at a potential client’s factory at a halfway point
that they make their bicycle completely out
in Pennsylvania.
of plastic, and that they had listened. They
bought machines from him to do that with.
They were interested in buying a machine my
father’s company made, so that they could
make bicycles with plastic tires. My dad sold
industrial plastics machinery back then, and
would go on to design some machines, run
a few plants of his own, and eventually be