A friend
and I drove out to Vashon Island to visit Don Munro a couple of weeks ago, a mutual
friend who was, it turns out, in his last days of life and would soon die, last
Friday morning, of prostate cancer.
Don Munro in 2005 Seattle PI |
Ultimately,
we got around to the subject of death. To paraphrase Don, he felt no
particular fear about it. To him, death was merely the absence of life, a problem he could no longer make right, a state of being that would remove him from fixing other things
that needed fixing, friends and colleagues who needed nurturing, keeping in
touch with the business he founded, loving his wife, Carolyn, in the warm, simple and happy house on Quartermaster Harbor.
Many
prostate cancers are so slow growing that doctors decide not to treat them,
like Warren Buffet’s recent diagnosis and treatment plan. But doctors told Don he was soon going to die
more than seven years ago when they found a particularly aggressive strain. Then, other doctors at the University of
Washington said he’d be an ideal candidate for this new, experimental drug that
had not been tested yet on humans and Don was one of the first to try it. He got seven years of a very good life from
the experiment and suffered few side effects. He was able to smoke the cigars he liked,
consume the red wine he loved as the barbecue crackled on the back deck of his
Vashon home, one he built, with his son, from lumber they salvaged at a torn
down warehouse on the Seattle waterfront. The accomplishment of building that
house together repaired a strained relationship and created a friendship to accompany the bond of father and son.
Don grew up
in the political culture of end-of-the-sixties Seattle. We talked about that time when we were
last together. At the University of Washington, Don became friends with
Bob Gogerty, a young man who yearned to be at the center of political and
business life in Seattle and they would talk about what they wanted to achieve
over beers and cigarettes at the old Red Robin, just east of the University
Bridge along the ship canal. Don would
become an engineer and work for a highway design firm. He was busy there and designed an I-5
overpass that ‘is still standing.’ Don needed much more out of his work than freeway overpasses and Gogerty brought him to it.
He hired him to work on Mayor Wes Uhlman’s staff right after the new mayor
was elected in 1969. It was a terrific
time for Don. The political culture in 1969
grew from a powerful optimism and sense of purpose with roots in the middle
50s when the region leveraged its technical dominance in commercial aerospace,
demonstrated it could hustle the world at Century 21 and understood the need to
address what were called in that day ‘metropolitan problems’ -- those problems
that did not respect traditional political boundaries – water and air
pollution, sprawl, transportation, recreation, open space. King County voters approved a regional
government, Metro, in 1958, similar to what citizens did in Toronto, Canada and
later Vancouver, BC. Metro began with a
limited mission, the clean-up of Lake Washington, and its success, so obvious
and complete, helped lead to a burst of civic energy 10 years later, Forward Thrust,
that took the regional thinking into parks, recreation, open space and the
building of a regional multi-purpose stadium, the Kingdome. The only thing they didn’t get, though it had
a slight majority, was a light rail system.
Three years after that, the legislature entrusted Metro with the
authority to create a county-wide bus system.
This was
Don’s time, the time when he was truly maturing as a person and a professional. It offered tremendous opportunity to him and young
people like him who would join government and have remarkable responsibility
for their years. Many of these new people were thrown together in the savannah between City Hall on the hill and Pioneer Square below. Metro’s offices were in the Pioneer Building, forming one side of the square, and many of its young workers would head out after work for the dark and smoky Central Tavern for beers or the J & M Caf矇, three doors up the street, if a martini was necessary. At the same time, five blocks up the hill, Wes Uhlman’s staff and those from a younger city council would leave city hall, obeying the gravity that pulled them to the same places. Model Cities, the Johnson era urban renewal program, also contributed new young practitioners, many who had been denied opportunity in the past but who would seize it now.
Once gathered
in the Pioneer Square, the work day proceeded by other means. “We’ve got to go
to work tomorrow” they would say, after an evening of work -- gossiping, boasting,
positioning, proselytizing.
Sometimes
the same people would find themselves together during the noon hour in the
basement of the Pioneer Building, the home of Brasserie Pittsbourg, once
Pittsburgh Lunch, now turned into a French buffet by a real Frenchman named
Francois. Of the many cool things at
Brasserie Pittsbourg was the butcher paper that covered each table for each
setting. Our young, eager bureaucrats
would make notes during their certainly important conversations, tear off the
piece of paper where this now vital information, partly obscured by the
blotting of spilled water or a shimmer of butter from Francois’ Geoduck steaks
with garlic, and head upstairs or up the hill to an afternoon meeting where
millions were on the table and, quite theatrically, pull out the creased butcher
paper and make the killer points they had honed so cleverly at lunch.
Soon, Don
was Deputy Policy Director and doing what he was really good at, creating and developing
interesting ideas for the Mayor, who, by the way, really needed them. Uhlman’s first term had been rough, a
constant war with public employees, their unions and the council, and he was heading into a re-election campaign where it was clear he could easily lose.
King County Metro |
Don had an
idea that there should be free bus service in the downtown and the Mayor jumped
at it. The Boeing recession was still
biting sharply and retailers downtown were looking for anything that might
help. It was an instant success. It was also a timely success. Service began nine days before the 1973
primary election and clearly had an effect on that election, improving a dismal performance in which Uhlman finished
a poor second, but also enhancing the general election where the mayor won handily. It was Don’s idea. The timing was Wes Uhlman’s.
Don moved
on to Metro after the election to work on the bus system and was in charge of
the planning for the bus tunnel in downtown Seattle. Later he handled
the acquisition of the hybrid electric buses that would run in the tunnel, the
first diesel/hybrid electrics to be deployed in scale anywhere. Think about it – a fleet of hybrid electric
buses in the late eighties when we are struggling to bring on a few thousand
cars with the same technology today.
He was very
pleased to have thought up the idea to renumber the Metro buses the way it is
done in the Paris bus system, an operation he admired. Don would think of stuff like that but not
always talk about it. Sometimes, however, after dinner in a hotel bar, a cognac in hand, he’d reach over the
table, grab a colleague’s arm and whisper:
“You know, I re-numbered Metro’s buses just like they do in Paris,” his eyes gleaming. There was an important purpose for it, but I never
quite understood it, though you had to be happy for Don.
He left
Metro for a while, consulting, and created the Ben Franklin Transit system in
Tri-Cities. He did everything and was
proud that he not only ran the election that approved the bonds but hired and trained
the drivers.
His
real talent was business and he was successful because his greatest skill was recognizing
talent in people and nurturing it. Don was no magician, but even if you lacked talent, Don could
conjure up a bit of it in you. With
Don, you always felt like the most important person in the room. In fact, you were, because Don told you to your face that
you were the most important person in the room.
This sentiment was quietly shared with many others, often on the same
day and sometimes in the same room.
Coastal Environmental Systems |
Don’s
company was a regular on the Deloitte Touche Northwest 50 Fastest Growing
Companies for many years and he was once runner up for the 2004 Ernst and Young
National Entrepreneur of the Year. The
winner got a $100,000 prize. Trying to look like he didn’t care, he would say: “I
never got a damned penny!”
Coastal Environmental Systems |
Inside,
software designers in flip flops clack away at their several computers while in
another room someone is bending metal into a container to hold their software
and maintain it at just the right temperature.
There is an international look to the people in the building and a
consultative culture. On my second day
at work, Munro called a meeting of all employees and asked me to tell them what
my job was going to be and how I hoped to do it.
During
baseball and football seasons, Don allowed a group of his employees to make some extra money by bringing a
food cart to the parking lot and sell food to passing fans. Some of his employees were new to the country
and had limited language skills in English.
But over the year, Don would corner each of them in the shop where they assembled the systems and say to them in ways that pushed through any comprehension
problems that he or she was the most important person working here.
Don was
deliberate in most things and moved very slowly around the shop, but his slow
movement disguised a lot of energy he needed to work out. He adopted the management-by-walking-around
style and would come into one of the small offices, few of which had doors, and
plop down in the extra chair, if there was one, or simply lean against the door
sill, staring silently across the desk and its computer to its operator. Sometimes I tried to wait him out. But I always talked first.
He had an
unusual sense of humor and it gave him great pleasure. Once I walked into his office, really a wide
spot off a hallway, and saw him working along at his computer, I supposed he was working on an
Excel spreadsheet at which he was highly skilled.
“Get a load
of this, Royer,” he said, turning the screen my way.
It was a letter
from Charles T. Firbolg, an alter ego of Don’s that emerged more than 30 years
ago and who complained, on Don's behalf, to the Vashon Beachcomber and other
publications or customer service departments of large companies, about pomposity, failed communications, ignorance or whatever else got under Firbolg’s skin. He had other alter egos, but Firbolg was
writing the letter I saw on the screen, a note to the late Kim Jong Il of North
Korea. Firbolg had heard that the
dictator’s favorite song was “Song of Comradeship” and was hoping that
Mr. Kim could send along the words and music to Don, the entrepreneur, in America.
Don also
had a striking resemblance to the actor Donald Sutherland, particularly when he was clean shaven and on one of his diets.
Once, on a business trip together, we were ordering breakfast and I
could see the light of a potential celebrity sighting in the waiter’s
eyes. After Don had ordered and the
waiter turned his attention to me, I confirmed what the waiter was
thinking:
“I’m having
what Mr. Sutherland is having.”
Actually,
Don didn’t think it was funny. He did
not approve of deception even though he tolerated Firbolg’s misrepresentations.
When Don
retired from Coastal, a year ago, the employees in the shop fashioned a plaque
and presented it to him. It contains
these words:
Coastal
Farewell
Coastal has brought us together from all over the world with
various aspirations and hopes of fulfilling the "American Dream."
Your fairness and generosity
regardless of faith, color or nationality, were invaluable tools in our quest
for meeting personal goals and also becoming a professional team.
In a final tribute and expression of gratitude you
shall be remembered as the guy who meant a lot to us and give practical meaning
to the words:
"He's
not heavy, he's my brother."
ABC News |
Don loved
to say, as part of his introduction of the company, that Coastal 'landed the space shuttle' because his company had weather systems at the Kennedy Space Center and Edwards Air Force Base. During the George W. Bush administration, he didn't say much about Coastal's systems at Andrews Air Force Base that also provided weather for Air Force One. He did, however, thoroughly enjoy the idea that he was making life a little safer for Barack Obama.
King County, the successor to Metro, decided to scrap the free
bus zone this year after 40 years. The
story was in the paper his last day of work at Coastal. On the day he died, the shuttle Enterprise was flying low over New York on its last flight and I was reading that story online when I heard that Don had died.
"I know the guy who who helps bring that sucker back to earth," I thought.
He was a wonderful citizen of Cascadia.
He was a wonderful citizen of Cascadia.