Wayne's Weekend

Wayne popped into my mind as the weekend approaches. Get prepared this may be a long blog - but was an important lesson to me.

In a very emotional time of my life, Wayne asked if I wanted to regularly golf on Sunday mornings at the Neumann public course on the west side. So we started the tradition. One of the Sunday mornings I was lamenting about my work schedule and started telling Wayne that I may need to eliminate Sunday golf so that I could work. Wayne responded: "Garen, you dumb ass! there are only 52 available weekends in the year and look what you've been doing for the last 10 years with those weekends."

Wayne had a way of simplifying things. He was right and like a bolt of lighting hitting the golfer - my light bulb was now fully illuminated. I resolved at that point in time (1987) that I would re-allocate my work time. I would work 24 hours (if necessary) during the week - but I made a covenant to never work on the weekend again. If my career was going to require that - then it was a career I didn't value. It was time to draw a line in the sand.

Fast forward 9 years later- 1996. Wayne had just arrived in Cincinnati from Las Vegas (his new residence) for his brother's wedding. I was knee deep in a high pressure job at Southern New England Telephone (SNET) in Connecticut - but back in Cincinnati for the weekend. Wayne stopped by for a visit at the Brill house and had dinner with Susan, Jenna and I, on Sunday evening - I'm sure I was lamenting again about the "deadline" I was facing for the project.

After a wonderful visit with Wayne, I was back on the plane to Connecticut - Monday morning. It was a tough week - the client was nervous, we were struggling to hit the deadline, and the politics were ugly - it was clear we were not going to make the date. The only alternative was to work the weekend - the first time in 9 years I would break the covenant. I would need to call Susan to let her know the bad news.

I got on the phone to tell Susan and as I was telling her my news she interrupted saying that Wayne had died - a heart attack on the plane as he was returning to Las Vegas.

I didn't work that weekend - I was in Las Vegas at Wayne's funeral on Saturday April 27, 1996.