When I encourage my staff to come in and ask for help prioritizing projects, I am emulating Rich White. When I ask staff to take time for their families and their lives outside of work, I am honoring Rich White. When I see a dreamcatcher and smile with remembrance, I am thinking of the joy that Rich White found in the southwest.

Rich hired me in August of 1999, soon after two organizations had merged. I was a new Director of Communications, and I came in full of confidence and certain I had all the answers. Rich built up that belief in me, while gently transforming how I worked. I’m still not sure how he managed to be so strongly encouraging and completely reforming at the same time.

We went to the beach later that day, and relished the sun.

One day, a year or so into our working together, we went to San Diego for a meeting. His (then brand new!) wife Nancy joined us later in the trip (and we went to the San Diego Zoo together!), but at first it was just us. This was one of my first work trips, and I was desperate to both impress Rich and the AAIA board/communications team, and also to see San Diego.

We carefully laid out our schedule so we accomplished work, tasted excellent Mexican food, and saw the ocean. Rich and I edited the magazine together late one night because I told him that I really wanted to see the ocean the next morning. He begged off, so I woke up at 5 a.m. myself and drove the rental (a red Monte Carlo SS, I will never forget) to the ocean.

The sun, just to clarify, is SETTING here, which is does in the west.

I stood there at the water’s edge, thinking about:

• how lucky I was to work for Rich, and be able to travel the U.S. in ways I never had before.
• how amazing the trip was going, and how glad I was about the new magazine
• why on earth wasn’t the sun coming up? It was getting lighter and lighter, and yet the ocean was still just a stunning, unchanging, mild blue color.

With sudden insight, I turned around. The sun rises, for those of you paying attention at home, in the east. While I had always previously been to beaches in Texas and the East Coast that featured a sunrise, I had somehow come to believe that ocean = sunrise.

Looking at the sun rising over the mountains behind me took my breath away. What a basic assumption I’d made, and how wrong I had been! When I sheepishly made my way back to the hotel and confessed to Rich, he didn’t even laugh. He is such a kind man, so gentle, that he just said he hoped it was still a good morning.

Hard at work, editing together.

We traveled together a lot those three years we worked together, and saw a lot of amazing parts of the country. That trip, with Nancy and Rich, meeting people who would be in my life for decades to come, was a highlight. And Rich’s kind, gentle ways are a lesson to me still today. Nancy and I still work together occasionally, and I always ask her to tell Rich what a beacon he has always been to me — and here I am telling him myself.

Thanks, Rich. Your priorities were always right on.