Today, I met Professor Vernon Stauble who is a marketing professor at the University of Redlands. I had only a brief encounter with him, leaving campus promptly at 5 p.m. to retrieve my middle-school age daughter from her school 18 miles away before her afterschool sitters closed down at 6 p.m. I arrived at the middle school at one minute to six.
I found myself completely conflicted, eager to start my evening with my family yet ridiculously disappointed about not being able to stay and listen to the words and wisdom this man was willing to share. Dr. Stauble has taught at the U of R for 25 years, he said, following his retirement as chair of the International Business and Marketing (IBM) Department at California Poly, Pomona. We found that we had in common an acquaintance with Drs. Ed Klewer and Gail Waters from Cal Poly, but of course Dr. Stauble worked with them for years as a peer while I only met them socially when I served as a volunteer judge for the school’s student marketing competition for three consecutive years in the late 1990s. He said that Ed Klewer had had a stroke, and I was sad to hear that. We both agreed that our experience of Gale Waters was that he was “good people.”
Dr. Stauble was a student of Peter Drucker’s, and said he kept a voice recording on the answering machine that he had captured only a week or so before Peter died. Stauble had known the management visionary well, and said that the man was “very compassionate.” He told a story about how Drucker had served on his dissertation committee while Stauble, at age 29, was a Ph.D. candidate at Claremont Graduate University. “Don’t wait until December to take the comps,” Drucker had urged the young mentee. “You take them in September!”
Stauble said that he believed Drucker said this because he knew he would not be available to remain as Stauble’s dissertation advisor any later in the year, and that by taking the exam earlier, he would have a better exam experience and outcome. “He wanted to protect me, I think,” Stauble said.
He told me about other memories, and I shared that I had met Peter Drucker’s widow Doris Drucker only two weeks ago while attending the president’s inauguration at Claremont Graduate University with my boss. I related how she had nudged me while sitting next to me during a panel presentation, asking me to write down what I heard the speaker say since she admittedly was hard of hearing. At 100 years old, she could see and get around fine, but just couldn’t hear well in the chapel building where the event was being held. When I asked her how old she was, she had said, “I’m as old as IBM! Do you know what year that was?” And I retorted, “No, you’re going to have to tell me how old you are!” She had replied, “I’m ’100′!” When I exclaimed how amazing I thought that was, she snorted and said, “What, you think it’s a big deal just because I am still alive?! When people ask me the secret to my long life, I just tell them: ‘keep on breathing!’” What a firecracker!
I promised Dr. Stauble I would return for more stories. I asked him if I could record his memories on audiotape. He wanted to share about the importance of relationship marketing, and other precepts that Peter Drucker urged him to study and pursue in his later years.
I was wondering as I drove home why I have been so blessed to meet in these past few months these wonderful, “old” people whose life stories and personas have captivated me: Dorothy Inghram, Doris Drucker, John H. Townsend, Vernon Stauble. Divine appointments? I will share more of these stories in the days to come.