A couple of years ago, in one of those thrashing fits of indulgent self-analysis that periodically overtakes us, the Board of Directors decided to institute a mentoring program. A mentor is someone with experience, savvy and know how who shows a young architect the ropes, provides him insight into the work and gives him a connection to the firm – right?
I was assigned to be Larry MacKenzie’s mentor.
Larry MacKenzie has employee number 400 - 25 lower than mine and higher than only five other people at TSA – and I was supposed to be his mentor.
In his twenty years in this office Larry has developed more associations with people who have retired than I have developed in total. He has one of those silver Tiffany cups and I don’t. He can tell you what Steve Lane, Seb LaBella and Peter Scott ate for lunch on alternate Tuesdays. I can’t.
And I was supposed to be his mentor.
Several years, on one of Michael Kraus’ projects at Giralda Farms, I worked as a designer and developed several elevations and details for the entry and elevator lobby. Larry took a few days and checked the drawings. One morning I found my three sheets on my desk with some cryptic marks. I asked Larry what they meant. Never one to use eleven words when ten will do, Larry replied simply, "You need some heavy studs in there, like a frame."
"You really think so?"
"Yep."
I sat down and revised my drawings to include the studs. As I was completing them - one Saturday night - I realized that my design truly wouldn’t have worked. Even if the contractor could have built it, which was unlikely, it would have fallen down. As luck would have it, soon after that the project was put on hold. It re-emerged recently to become Seven Giralda Farms, the last project that Larry worked on here at TSA. Thankfully, my lobby design was never executed, even though I am sure that with Larry’s stud frames it would have held up just fine.
And I was supposed to be Larry’s mentor.
Larry MacKenzie survived Charlie Mitchell at Vanderbilt University. Charlie was vain, self centered, belligerent, abusive and rude. Larry stroked him, listened to him and tolerated him with aplomb. He conducted himself with poise and grace and emerged from Vanderbilt with TSA’s reputation and his own self respect intact. In nineteen years I have never heard Larry be discourteous, say a bad word about another person, or utter a word in anger.
And I was supposed to be this guy’s mentor.
Larry knows the state of New Jersey – not to mention the Massachusetts south shore – better than I know my backyard. For vacation, he goes to the frozen tundra of Nova Scotia, forty-eight hours away by dogsled, and stays on top of a mountain. Not just any mountain, this one is named after him. Larry MacKenzie is Scottish, for god’s sake, and he commutes to Cambridge every day from Pembroke. He has more hair on his head than most thirty five-year-olds, and he has forgotten more about construction administration than I will ever learn.
And I was supposed to be his mentor.
I think there is a lot more about life, TSA and architecture that Larry MacKenzie can tell me than I could ever tell him. Maybe he should have been my mentor. I know our Board of Directors’ imposed relationship was pretty short-lived. I never offered him any advice. Really, what was I going to tell him? To this day I can really only think of one thing.
At the reunion in Marblehead I asked Sebastian LaBella how he liked retirement. He said, "It’s great, and not really all that different from working. You get up everyday just like you always did, except you can do whatever you want to all day long and no one complains about it. You can go to bed early and take a nap whenever you feel like it. And, oh yeah, you still get paid. "
At least I think that’s what he said.
So, two years after I was assigned to be Larry Mackenzie’s mentor I finally have a suggestion he should take. Here it is.
Larry, enjoy your retirement! You deserve it.
Jim Beyer
Offered on the Occasion of Larry MacKenzie’s Retirement
October 29, 1999