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To My Good Friends/Newsletter Readers: I have just returned from a holiday break, spending four wonderful days each with our two East Coast children and their families. And we are blessed to have at least one of our children and his growing family a short drive away on the West Coast where we live. Greatly renewed, I want to reflect briefly on why I write this newsletter and, if I am correct, why you take the time to read it. You have no lack of information sources at your keyboard finger tips, indeed you have an unruly mob who would like you to pay attention to them! At 78 years old, I’m happily retired from academia, no longer trying to publish so as not to perish, nor to seek another leadership job. I take time to write these thoughts because I have been blessed by extraordinary experiences inside and outside of academia and believe I have an obligation to share what I have learned. With the recent death of President Carter, I remember two wonderful dinner conversations with him about ethics in American life while I was in my role as a board member of the Skoll Foundation and as the head of the Markkula Center at Santa Clara University. Carter embodied the vocation all of us have in the new extended phase of our lives made possible by medical advancements and better health practices. At retirement, we have so much knowledge and wisdom, accumulated over our lives and careers. A needy world desperately calls out to each of us to make that learning available beyond our retirement. A college roommate who is a federal judge took senior status but voluntarily presides over exceedingly complex business litigation which has been his specialty. One of my elite academic mentors spent the last 10 years of his life teaching at a rural community college. My wife, a high level tech executive, started an educational nonprofit serving low-income youth. A brother-in-law retired from his medical practice volunteers in a rural Native American clinic. Others are strengthening local food banks, homeless programs, religious institutions and social services by their retirement volunteer commitments. Besides this newsletter, I am writing the history of the responsible business movement with a British colleague because we believe we have an obligation to capture the lessons of the past 50 years for our successors. With voluntarism and community service declining among the 20- to 60-year-olds, our extended post-retirement lives are a partial answer to the neglected needs of the world. I hope this newsletter and the books I will write after retirement will contribute both to the accomplishments and success of my successors in the ethics trenches, but also serve my contemporaries who are still active in their retirement years. I even hope it will serve as a goad to others to find ways to put their wisdom and experience to work for a needy world during their retirement years. Oh yes, and there is accumulating evidence that such service and engagement make you happier and healthier!
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