UPFRONT December 10, 2007 Issue

No small man

WARREN BOLON, SENIOR WRITER

Frozen pizza and clean overalls. Not exactly the stuff that dreams or fortunes are made of, yet they pair beautifully in my memory when I think of two men who said little to me about being a man, but spoke volumes with their lives.

Pizza was the product of my dad's devotion to a business he started from scratch and nurtured six days a week, doing everything from management and accounting to sales and, sometimes, delivery. My father-in-law owned and operated an industrial laundry service, investing his whole heart and mind in it over several decades.

Both of my dads were entrepreneurs before the word was in style. They would have said, "I'm just a small businessman," and would have added something about small businesses being the backbone of America's economy. That's still true, and true for the global economy despite all the attention paid to billionaire deal-makers and mega-corporations. So, small businessmen, maybe, but neither was morally a small man. They showed me mountains about real manhood as it's practiced face to face, at the street and shop-floor level. They may have produced pepperoni pies and cleaned mechanics' uniforms, but what they were made of was more lasting than what they made—solid integrity, an honesty that would rather lose business than gain it unfairly, fairness with and care for employees and their families, a basic goodness.

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