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Memorial for John W. Gardner
4/17/02
Tribute by Sara L. Engelhardt
We’ve
heard some wonderful tributes to John. I just have to say that when
I first met John Gardner, I was not the least bit impressed. I was
probably all of five years old at the time, and here comes this
family: father, mother, pretty boring. But they had these two daughters,
with exotic names—Stephanie and Francesca—who were just
enough older than my sisters and me to be really impressive.
The best part about these girls was that they treated us kids as
though we were real human beings, as though we counted for something!
Of course, looking back now, I realize that Stephanie and Checka
were growing up in a family where John and Aida treated everyone
they met—great and small—with caring and respect, but
it was pretty special to see this kind of behavior in children.
Fast forward to my junior year at college. I needed a summer job.
Mother said, “Why don’t you try Carnegie? John Gardner
runs it, so it must be a fascinating place to work!” That’s
how I found myself in the typing pool at Carnegie Corporation. Mr.
Gardner (as I knew him then) had written two books—Excellence
and Self Renewal—that were attracting a lot of notice.
He reworked their themes in his commencement addresses and in the
speeches he gave around the country. I’ll bet I typed those
books ten times over, in one form or another, that summer. I soaked
up the compelling ideas and the values of those books through my
fingertips, and they burrowed deep into my soul. The rest of my
life has quite simply been a search for the ways I can do my part
in the world that John Gardner held out to us.
By
the time I returned to Carnegie for the long haul, John had gone
to Washington to build the Great Society. But I was heir to his
legacy at Carnegie, and I was one of the countless young people,
including, I suspect, many of you in this room today—none of
us as young as we used to be—whom he continued to follow, to
encourage, and to counsel. Over the next 37 years, John not only
helped me over career hurdles, but he always encouraged me to see
myself on a broader stage and showed me by his example the extraordinary
breadth of action we’re all capable of. He could challenge
without scolding and inspire without leaving you paralyzed in admiration.
When I finally left Carnegie in 1987, it was to join the Foundation
Center. This was the first in that long list of organizations that
owe their existence to John Gardner. Yes, he was responsible for
the Center’s establishment in 1956.
Both
my family and the Gardners have very serious California roots. During
those East Coast years, my mother and Checka and her girls provided
the home base for us on the West Coast, and I didn’t see much
of the other Gardners. When John and Aida moved back to Stanford,
soon the whole Gardner clan was assembled in the Bay Area, and I
reconnected with them, spending more and more time on that coast,
as my own two daughters pursued their education there. That final
chapter in my long friendship with John allowed me another chance
to see him as a father—and grandfather and even great grandfather—and,
this time, I was impressed. He was the same man within his family—wise
and caring, demanding yet patient—that he was in public. His
life was all of a piece, and the support of his loving family allowed
him put tremendous time and energy into the public sphere without
conflict or compromise, to the great benefit of the rest of us.
In
these past few weeks, I’ve wondered how Aida and Stephanie
and Francesca and Billy and Justine and Gardner and Jennifer can
go on without John at their center. But then, I’ve wondered,
too, how the rest of us can move forward, as our world seems to
become more confusing by the hour. Then I consider that perhaps
the most precious gift John gave us all was confidence in our own
power, as individuals and as citizens. And I believe that at the
end of his extraordinary life of service to others, he was absolutely
certain that we all will push on without him. In doing so,
we will be paying the greatest tribute to John’s life.
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