BY TOM MATLACK
James and I hurry across the public garden in Boston with a box full of literature to yet another reading of the book about manhood that we co-edited. “Did you hear about Porter’s Dad?” James asks me, referring to his classmate and the guy who photographed my wedding eight years prior. “He dropped dead of a massive heart attack last week.” I’m still in shock as James goes on to tell me how the deceased had been on the Andre Doria in 1956 when it was sunk by a collision with the Stockholm, had been navigator on America’s Cup boat Constellation in 1964, and was one of the men who tackled Serhan Sirhan in the moments after he shot Bobby Kennedy’s at the Ambassador Hotel, among other adventures.
As we climb the steps in front of Hampshire House, the home of both the Cheers bar and our speaking event, James passes along Porter’s words of advice as he faced grieving for his father. “He said if you have issues with your dad just start dealing with them now. You may not finish, but at least you will have started.”
“Houghton!” I shouted above the din of the presses, relieved to be taken out of the mind-numbing routine and hoping for some shipping crisis that would keep me in the warehouse all night.
“James? This is John Reyman up in Corning.” John was a senior executive and a good friend of my father’s. He was also my unofficial mentor, tasked with making sure my career was moving in the right direction. “We think everything is going to be OK, but your dad has just been in an accident and he’s being taken to a hospital in Virginia. We’re sending your mom down on a plane, and we’re going to stop and pick you up in an hour. We just think it would be best if you were all together right now.”
My first reaction was relief: I was exhausted after six days on the midnight shift, and getting out a day early seemed like a gift.
James is at the podium reading into a microphone. An elderly lady in the crowd stops him to ask him to speak up. It’s not a huge crowd; 30 or so Beacon Hill lifers. I have already joked that I prefer to read at prisons because I am always guaranteed a big crowd. Besides, the prison audience is pretty interested in figuring out what it means to be a good man, the topic of our book of essays.
An hour later I was standing alone on the tarmac at the local airport, the glare of two street lamps overhead acting as a beacon for the slowly approaching Falcon jet. The engines screamed one final time as the plane rolled to a stop. Mom was silhouetted through one of the porthole windows, waving with false bravado. The door hissed open and the steps unfurled to the ground. Bob Simon, one of the pilots, made his way down the stairs and shook my hand grimly. I muttered my greetings and thanks and launched up the steps into the familiar, beige-and-leather confines of the tube. “Hi, Mom. Is everything going to be OK?”
I’m standing against a mahogany bookshelf watching James as he slumps over to read this turning point in his life. Then I gaze to the back of the room. A meticulously dressed woman sits attentively, and next to her is a man who can only be described as stately in appearance—silver hair, pinstriped suit, white shirt, tasteful tie, and cane tucked off to the side.
My father, Jamie Houghton, was the CEO of Corning Inc., a glass manufacturing company started by his great-great-grandfather, Amory Houghton, in Somerville, Massachusetts, in 1851. In 1868, after a brief stop in Brooklyn, New York, Amory floated his whole operation via the Erie Canal to the banks of the Chemung River and the town of Corning in western New York. From this humble start the company had grown significantly. Corning now had more than 25,000 employees around the world and was known for such consumer brands as CorningWare, Pyrex, and Steuben as well as for the fundamental research that led to such world-changing technologies as the glass lightbulb, the envelope for the cathode-ray tube (which enabled the mass adoption of the television), and fiber optics.
Though the company had gone public in the 1940s, four decades before he became CEO, Dad was the sixth Houghton to run Corning. He had taken over from his brother, who had taken over from their father, who had taken over from his father, and so on.
I seem to have somehow become friendly with a number of men my age whose fathers are titans of industry—owners of sports teams, founders of huge financial institutions, famous architects, and authors. In each case, the shadow cast by a famously successful father put my friends in the no-win position of attempting to measure up to a father of inhuman proportion. In no case was this more true than of James, who had six generations of Houghton men to live up to. For him to find his own way in the world, and for his father to support that choice, seemed on its face very nearly impossible.
The plane landed on the rain-soaked tarmac, and we were soon hurtling through deserted streets to the Norfolk Naval Hospital. Dad had been airlifted to the trauma center after being struck by a car in Williamsburg, Virginia, some forty-five miles away. He had just finished dinner and was crossing the street back to his hotel when a busboy at the end of his shift drove out of the garage at 20 mph and hit him, throwing him into the air. Dad broke several ribs, shattered his right leg, and suffered a severe blow to his head.
Two surgeons met Mom and me as we entered the disorienting green glare of the emergency room. They explained that the situation was stable for the moment but that they needed to operate immediately. They wanted to put a rod in his tibia, screw the rest of the bones back in place, and insert a shunt to drain excess fluid and relieve pressure on his brain. Mom and I stared dumbly, comforted by their curt competence but neither of us daring to ask the obvious question. We merely nodded our consent to their hurried requests to proceed.
We turned to follow a nurse to a waiting room, and there was Dad. He was being ferried on a stretcher, surrounded by trauma personnel and covered by bandages and tubes. “If you want to talk to him, now’s your chance,” one of the surgeons offered. “He is going to be out of it for a while.”
“Hey Dad,” I mumbled weakly, “How are you doing?”
“Hey,” he tried to smile back and reached out his hand. “What are you doing here? I am such an idiot. This is just so stupid. You shouldn’t have come. I am so sorry to drag you into this. How do I look?”
When he saw Mom he let out a stifled cry and grabbed her hand as hard as he could. “I am so sorry,” he said. “I am just so sorry.”
James pauses for a beat and looks up. This is actually the second time I have heard James read this story in the presence of his Dad. The first was an off-Broadway reading we had last fall before a packed house. I was too worried about the whirlwind tour we were in the middle of to take in what was actually happening. But this time, with a more intimate crowd and the luxury of time, I can see it clearly: a father and son who love each other unconditionally despite the weight of legacy.
The haze that followed over the next twenty-four hours included many hushed consultations, with the doctors and with various company executives who began to assemble to help manage the crisis. Dad had come through the first set of surgeries but was still in intensive care and would require several more operations. Despite their gravity and repeated references to “a major trauma,” the surgeons seemed confident that Dad would make it. But it was unclear whether he would suffer any lasting damage. The Corning executives, meanwhile, started planning how to deal with the impact the news could have on the company’s stock price and on the broader Corning community. The company may have been on a roll, but now the CEO was gone, and this would be the first time in many years that a Houghton wasn’t at the helm. I sensed that the looks of concern directed my way were about more than sympathy.
Afterwards, I joke with “Jamie” Houghton that I am glad he made it through the accident and equally glad that in the end James decided to go his own way. Just after leaving Corning, he had become my business partner, a decade ago now. I kiss James’s mom and wife Connie before giving my friend a hug good-bye. Before leaving, Jamie jokes about how James still has trouble speaking up in public. “It’s because he has such a big heart,” I reply.
Tom Matlack is cofounder of The Good Men Project.
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