Article April 1, 2002 Issue

Things of the Spirit and better business

A leader in the social responsibility investment field, and the director of spiritual life at Babson College, discuss spiritual medicine for what ails business.

By Warren Bolon Sentinel staff

better business

My Wife And I Call it the Family Small Business Hall of Fame. There are no plaques, busts, or framed "first dollars." Just a half dozen photos on a kitchen wall. The oldest is a sepiatoned picture of my great-grandparents in their turn-of-the-20th-century jewelry and piano shop in southern Indiana. Another was taken on an empty sidewalk in front of my grandfather's Depression-era hardware store in Hobart, Oklahoma. And then there are snapshots of our dads' businesses—my father-in-law's north-side Chicago industrial laundry, and one of Mom and Dad representing their then-promising Tulsa Pizza Company at a trade show.

I've never run a small business, unless you count selling peaches door to door when I was five. But I know the spiritual investment that went into some of those family businesses, what it took to start them, and to keep them going when revenue feel short of expenses. And it was in those crucibles that the moral and ethical values my wife and I learned from parents and grandparents were tested and proved valid.

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