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Restoration and Renewal
November, 2003 Ken Howell's midlife crisis began after Business School graduation in 1967 when he realized there would be no more semester breaks and summer renewals. That led him to become a $350-a-month "hired man" on an Idaho ranch. Business School classes on operations and cases were useless, he discovered, when trying to help 300 heifers deliver their first calves. His bride from New York City wasn't that thrilled living in their 60-foot trailer either. "So after calving and the last cutting of hay, we moved 30 miles to Boise." There, out of necessity Howell developed income property, emphasizing apartments and historical restoration. It took a while to realize that he loved this work, especially renovating some of downtown Boise's landmark buildings. But it also took longer to accept that there was more to life than work. "Life is an endless unfolding," the late John Gardner told Howell's classmates at their 25th reunion in 1992. "An endless process of self-discovery, an endless and unpredictable dialogue between our own potentialities and the life situations in which we find ourselves." Gardner, who joined the School faculty in 1989 to teach self-renewal and leadership, died in 2002. "His remarks had a profound effect on me," says Howell, who saved a copy of the speech and reads it occasionally. It prompted him to "explore in many ways questions beyond vocation." One of Gardner's self-renewal speeches to GSB alumni is included in a new book of Gardner's writings, Living, Leading, and the American Dream, edited by Gardner's daughter Francesca. |
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Restoration
and Renewal in Idaho
