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Two days. \u00a0Two deaths. \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nThat was the week of 4-6-15.On Monday, I lost my sweet 91-plus year old grandmother. \u00a0A great soul she was, always a lady. \u00a0Then Tuesday rolls around, and our perfect little 15-plus year old Schnauzer was laid to rest. God, we loved that little girl.<\/p>\n
If you have followed along with my writing and thoughts, then you know a central and reoccurring theme is \u201cTribal Knowledge\u201d. \u00a0Capturing what our great leaders, mentors, coaches and those that have gone before us know and sharing that with those that are following.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n How does Tribal Knowledge play into the two deaths that I opened this with? \u00a0One doesn\u2019t, it just punches me in the gut. That would be Bunni, the Schnauzer. \u00a0Grandma on the other hand is a different deal.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Thyra Alexander was my mother\u2019s mother. \u00a0Born in, as she would say, nineteen and twenty three, one of nine kids in the family. \u00a0That alone would allow for a lot of knowledge, but I thought about something much deeper over the last week. \u00a0My life is all about technology, internet, data centers and #LifeLongLearning, what was it about this fine woman that had my mind churning so hard. \u00a0She certainly was not on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook, at least as far as I knew, yet she had so much to offer.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n My mother\u2019s brother, Dale Alexander, has a wife of 42 years named Cindy. \u00a0Cindy has always been a dear person and has been, from my view-point the \u201cglue\u201d to a lot of sticky situations. \u00a0Dale asked Cindy to deliver the eulogy for his mother, Thyra, to all of the friends, family and on-lookers who showed up in the small chapel in extreme western Georgia last weekend to celebrate the life of Grandma.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Cindy stepped up to the podium, she was following Robert Brown who was conducting the service. \u00a0Most of us are nervous when we step in front of a crowd, let alone having to deliver a 15 minute eulogy, and Cindy was no different. \u00a0She took two deep breaths, brought her hands together twice in kind of a silent clap, in a \u201cOK, here we go\u201d way. \u00a0Deliver is the key word and Cindy did a great job. She spoke of the good times, the trying times and most of all, the remarkable part of Thyra that most people who knew her saw.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n To me, this is the good part.<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n The honesty, the sharing, the caring, the \u201cother people first\u201d mentality that she carried all 50 years I knew her. The \u201cmake other people shine and I\u2019ll take the back-ground position\u201d that she was famous for. \u00a0The story of preacher Robert Brown’s first breakfast visit to my grandparents\u2019 home, where, she, not knowing what Robert liked to eat, cooked a rather large sampling of many dishes, so as not to disappoint him. \u00a0The churning of fresh butter with her elder sister, Christine. This was in the late 1980\u2019s! \u00a0She wanted to provide fresh butter for Robert, he was after all the new preacher who deserved to be taken care of. \u00a0In a funny side note, Christine said, \u201cThyra, you know we can just go buy some butter right?\u201d Thyra replied, \u201dOh, Christine, just keeping churning.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n What does this have to do with us? Now? Business? Data? Internet? Learning and serving well?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Just about everything in my mind. \u00a0We get SO wrapped up in the latest and greatest. \u00a0Biggest and fastest. \u00a0Larger screen and HDMI, etc\u2026 \u00a0But, this is ground-zero, this is what makes us all different, our exposures to grace, to servant mentalities and just in general, people taking care of people.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n I take this away from my week: Sure, we can do all the cool business stuff like travel, meet, greet, take orders, deliver proposals and respond to RFI\u2019s, but if you can take some of the deep-down honest, trust and appreciation and apply it to what you are doing or going through, you too will have your very own Cindy singing your praises in the end. \u00a0Not that you want the notoriety or \u201cHey, look at me\u201d feeling, but the \u201dWow, she really took care of those in her Tribe\u201d feeling.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Stay committed to excellence, devote yourself to better, polish your \u201cInner Thyra\u201d and watch how the world will receive you.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Two days. \u00a0Two deaths. \u00a0 That was the week of 4-6-15.On Monday, I lost my sweet 91-plus year old grandmother. \u00a0A great soul she was, always a lady. \u00a0Then Tuesday rolls around, and our perfect little 15-plus year old Schnauzer was laid to rest. God, we loved that little girl. If you have followed along […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gregcrumpton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4875"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gregcrumpton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gregcrumpton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gregcrumpton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gregcrumpton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4875"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.gregcrumpton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4875\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4882,"href":"http:\/\/www.gregcrumpton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4875\/revisions\/4882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gregcrumpton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gregcrumpton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gregcrumpton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}