This year the American Farm School celebrates 40 years of its Greek Summer program, started by Christine’s father while he was director of the School. Christine was an unpaid junior counselor for many years and later directed the program for five years. Since that time she has remained close to the program, helping her parents when the participants visited Metamorphosis and initiating a ceramic tile project that celebrates the village improvement project undertaken by the group. On 11 July participants came to our house to decorate their tiles, make lavender sachets as a present for their village families, enjoy a BBQ and listen to a talk (below) by David.
GREEK SUMMER 2010
BEGIN WITH THE END IN MIND
LEARN HOW TO GIVE AWAY THE GOLD COIN
LIVE THE CHARACTER ETHIC
Introduction
I am now 71 years old during which time certain books and people have made a profound impression on me. Tonight I would like to tell you about some of those books and one person.
Begin with the end in mind
The second habit in The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People is ‘Begin with the End in Mind.’ Stephen Covey asks that we imagine our own funeral and what we would like people to say. I have attended a good few funerals but no one has commanded such respect, such love, and such appreciation as Bruce Lansdale who was director of the American Farm School from 1955 to 1990.
The personality ethic and the character ethic
Covey studied 200 years of success literature published in the United States since 1776 and found that the first 150 years focused on the Character Ethic as the foundation of success – things like integrity, humility, fidelity, temperance, courage, justice, patience, industry, simplicity, modesty, and the Golden Rule. Much of the success literature of the following 50 years focused on the Personality Ethic and was superficial, filled with social image consciousness, techniques, quick fixes, social band-aids and aspirin addressed to acute problems that left the underlying problems untouched to fester and resurface time and again. I worked alongside Bruce Lansdale for 12 years and believe that the foundation of his success was his adherence to the Character Ethic while also mastering aspects of the Personality Ethic such as public speaking.
A Life well lived
At Christmas 2008 we had former employees to our house where Bruce and Tad were staying; many spoke spontaneously with great warmth and affection because Bruce was all you could have ever asked for in a boss. When Bruce died two months later on February 2, those in charge of the funeral service had to cut short the eulogies. There was a memorial service in California on June 6th to which many people traveled from a considerable distance. On June 17th there was a memorial service at the Farm School attended by admirers from all walks of life. A surprising number of speeches were from people of poor and humble background – people who were deeply appreciative that Bruce had been there for them at their time of need. Some, who held high posts, told how Bruce had befriended and helped them while struggling early in their career.
The President of the Greek Republic, President Tsatsos, visited the Farm School in 1978 and after hearing Bruce speak told students that he was jealous of their calling; if he had his life to live again he would prefer not to be President of the country but a farmer who went to bed each night with the smell of Greek soil on his hands. Bruce was one of those people who had a profound influence on all who entered his presence. Without doubt Bruce Lansdale comes closest to my interpretation of the phrase ‘A life well lived’ or ‘A successful life.’
You are taking responsibility for your life
You are participating in the American Farm School’s Greek Summer Program and you will shortly be attending college. You have reached an age when parental influence is diminishing; you are making important decisions on your own; and you are taking responsibility for your own life. Daily you are creating the person that people will remember at your funeral. Perhaps someone on Greek Summer will remember that you acted honorably or heroically or with integrity or with compassion. Perhaps you will be happy one day that there are people who remember you with respect, love and appreciation.
You get most out of life by giving
Bruce learned early on that you get most out of life by giving because he had two very fine role models. In 1925, when he was six months old, his family moved to Thessaloniki where his father, Herbert Lansdale, became director of the YMCA, living near a settlement camp of Asia Minor refugees. The ethos of the YMCA has always been community service, service to your fellow man, and treating your neighbor as you would like to be treated yourself.
Frequent family outings to an innovative agricultural school on the outskirts of town were a delight to Bruce as a youngster. The special spirit of the place captivated him. Herbert Lansdale was good friends with Charlie House, the second director of the American Farm School, who became Bruce’s second role model. After his retirement as a missionary, John Henry House, Charlie’s father, founded the Farm School in 1904 when northern Greece was Turkish territory. Trained as an engineer at Princeton, Charlie was endowed with a missionary spirit but with his feet planted firmly on the ground. To understand what motivated Charlie House to the highest order of community service, it is helpful to understand what conditions were like in this area when Charlie was a young man.
These snippets are taken from Bruce Lansdale’s book Master Farmer: Teaching Small Farmers Management, written in 1986. “Malaria, typhoid fever, and tuberculosis were rampant. The life expectancy of the local people was less than forty years. Most families had six to eight children, hoping that at least half might survive. The birthrate was more than twenty-five per thousand as compared with fifteen today, and the death-rate was more than 15 per thousand as compared to fewer than nine today.” “The per capita income is estimated to have been less than $100 per year. Farm power came from donkeys, oxen pulling wooden plows that had changed little in two thousand years, and human labor, especially that of women, who had to wield mattocks to hoe their fields.” “ It required one hundred and twenty-six worker hours to produce a hundred kilograms of wheat compared to one and one-forth worker hours in Greece today and far less in the United States.”
Bruce’s decision to work at the American Farm School
It was after the Second World War that Bruce decided to make the Farm School his life’s work. He describes his decision in these words: “I returned to the United States for schooling, and after completing an engineering degree at the University of Rochester, was assigned as an interpreter for the Allied Mission for Observing the Greek Elections. I found myself in a country torn apart by all the conflicts between “East” and “West”, recovering from the devastation of World War II, the German Occupation, and Greece’s civil war that followed. Alone at the Menelon Hotel in the market town of Tripolis in the central Peloponnesos, I received a telegram from my parents on 11 February 1946. ‘Congratulations on 21st birthday and for making Phi Beta Kappa.’ I lay in bed and wondered where, as an engineer who enjoyed working with people, I could invest the rest of my life. A strong inspiration came to me, ‘Go to the American Farm School.’ A few days later I flew up to Thessaloniki in a British Army two-seater airplane to share my vision with the director and his wife, Charlie and Ann House. It was there that all the nostalgia of my childhood flooded back, confirming my decision. The school that had so intrigued me as a boy held many challenges for me as a committed young man. I was eager to train Greek village youth.”
Service above self interest
Bruce knew from the beginning that he would be on a missionary salary and that his life-time earnings would be a fraction of what he would earn in the outside world. But strange things occur when you choose service above self-interest. Bruce always seemed to have enough for what was important but was never burdened by wealth. The Lansdale children learned to stand on their own two feet. Christine got through college by getting scholarships and working. She is a better person for the training she had to be self-sufficient and not dependent upon handouts. Because you have modest means but are very generous, people are generous back to you in unexpected ways. Many people were very generous to Bruce and Tad.
Giving away the gold coin
Bruce was very fond of Hodja stories and his favorite was Giving Away the Gold Coin. I went through all of Bruce’s Hodja books looking for it and when I couldn’t find it Tad told me that Bruce invented the story himself.
It goes like this: “For many years Hodja coveted a priceless gold coin owned by a simple monk who lived in a hermitage high above the village. Finally one day he decided to climb the hill and demand the coin which he felt rightfully belonged to him as the religious leader, judge, and teacher. After a two-hour climb, he knocked on the monk’s door and demanded the coin, ‘Since I am the most educated and wiser, I should have the coin.’ To Hodja’s amazement the humble monk dug into a trunk and handed the coin to Hodja, who was so surprised that he barely thanked the monk. As he headed down the hill, he happily fondled his prized possession. Two hours later, the monk’s meditation was disturbed by another knock on the door. He was taken aback to see Hodja a second time. ‘Take the coin back,’ said the Mulla, ‘but I want you to give me something far more valuable. Tell me the secret of how you gave the coin away so easily.’”
If there is one reason why Bruce commanded so much respect and love and appreciation it was because he had learned the secret of how to give away the coin so easily. If there is one reason why the American Farm School received such high honors from the Greek state it was because the institution had learned under John Henry House, Charlie House and Bruce Lansdale to give away the gold coin.
A life of service
A life of service is out of fashion today when success is measured by the size of your greed and how well you manipulate the financial system to your personal benefit. But a life of service need not mean that you do not share in the good things in life; Bruce and Tad had a great life and retired to the paradise beside the sea that you enjoyed at the beginning of your stay in Greece.
Nor does a life of service mean that your organization is not run to the highest standards of the most successful businesses. Peter Drucker wrote these words in The Most Effective Organization in the U.S.: Leadership Secrets of the Salvation Army: “The Salvation Army is by far the most effective organization in the U.S. No one even comes close to it with respect to clarity of mission, ability to innovate, measurable results, dedication, and putting money to maximum use.” That was quite a compliment from the world’s most preeminent management thinker, especially when you consider that he was comparing The Salvation Army to world-class corporations like General Electric, IBM, and Johnson and Johnson. It is one of those strange things about life that the Salvation Army, founded on the philosophy of giving away the gold coin, beats America’s greatest corporations at their own game.
The importance of the head, the hands and the heart
It was the founder of the American Farm School, John Henry House, who believed that you must train the head, the hands and the heart to be a whole person and to be successful in life. That phrase has become the Farm School’s trademark in a society that no longer appreciates the dignity of manual labor. Our work world is very goal oriented, striving for more, faster and better, with little investment made to integrate the head, hands, and heart. When emotions, thinking, and actions are not in alignment we cannot be a harmonious person and as a consequence we create chaos rather than peace and well-being in our relationships with others and in society.
Greek Summer: giving away the gold coin and experiencing the Character Ethic
Bruce created Greek Summer, nursed it through its challenging early years and believed that it was a good way to introduce American youth to the philosophy of giving away the gold coin. You have learned about the rewards of giving in two ways during Greek Summer: you have given by undertaking a village improvement project; the villagers have given by taking you into their homes and overwhelming you with their hospitality. You may have noticed that no one is so liberal at giving away the gold coin as the Greek villager.
Bruce also believed that it is important to step out of our goal-oriented society for a short while and experience an alternative life style in the village where the integration of head, hands and heart is still a way of life. The Greek villager lives the Character Ethic of integrity, humility, fidelity, courage, justice, patience, and industry because on a farm superficiality, quick fixes, band-aids, and sweeping problems under the carpet to let a later generation pick up the pieces, just do not work.
Bruce is with you in spirit
Over the past 40 years some participants have found the American Farm School’s Greek Summer program life-transforming or at least a different way of looking at the world. I know that Bruce is with you in spirit during your stay in his adopted homeland. His magic touch is still felt and honored at the School, in the graduates, those who worked alongside him, and those who have contributed wealth, work or wisdom to make the School the magnificent institution it is today. If Bruce could talk he would have so much that he would like to share with you. But his work is done and it is the responsibility of lesser mortals to make sure that his wisdom is not lost to the world. I believe that he would be happy if you were to leave Greece at the end of your Greek Summer program having learned three things: Start With the End in Mind; Learn How to Give Away the Gold Coin; live the Character Ethic.