The first quintessential leader I ever knew and the one I knew best was my father. A man of integrity, intelligence, and wisdom, my dad was also one of the most humble, caring, and generous people who ever walked the earth.
Daddy was a family man. Although he worked hard – “whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might – his devotion to God and to his family always came first.
Daddy was a deep man, a thinker. I suppose all those years growing up on a large family farm in Burlington, NC, spending hours alone, with just a mule and a plow, working the fields from February or March to October or November (after school during the school year and then 12-14 hours a day during the summer) gave Daddy a lot of time to think. And because he was a reader, he always had plenty to think about.
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If my dad were still alive, he’d turn 90 next month. That sounds really old to me, but I am reminded that he and my mom came to parenthood later in life, after he’d almost finished his veterinary degree and after several years of heartbreaking miscarriages, the last of which almost killed my mom.
The Quintessential Leader 