I have alluded times past here to my brain-dead employer (and I intend the modifier in the nicest possible sense), an institutionally staid outfit that has been doing business in San Francisco almost since the place was a village, and on whose payroll I have been (starting literally in the mailroom) since I was but a downy-cheeked boy. I am here today to pay belated tribute to my former boss, "JP," who arrived here four years ago from our New York office in connection with a restructuring (actually it was what amounted to a hostile takeover, and even though the brain-dead employer was the pitcher and not the catcher, the transition was, ah, particularly fraught for an operation like my little graphics skunkworks), taking over from a predecessor whose seven-year regime I barely survived.

I was plucked out of our "International Division" and set up with a little graphics studio almost twenty years ago, by a boss now retired who wielded enormous influence throughout the BDE—he was a networker of genius—and who continued to maintain me under his political protection after he was promoted in 1995, His successor and I initially found one another a bit off-putting, but over seven years working with one another our feelings ripened into detestation on her side and fear and hatred on mine. I count myself fortunate that she was as lazy and disorganized as she was vindictive, because she waited until the eve of her own retirement (my patron having preceded her) to move against me, and the two acting chiefs who ran the joint during the interregnum were both kindly disposed.

So JP arrived at the end of 2002, just before the big merger, and I was a bit worried that some git from the East Coast—for as long as I've worked here, and as far as I can tell for several decades before that, the top man has traditionally been someone with San Francisco roots; even the late 90s Boss-from-Hell got her start here in the early 70s, although she'd been running one of the European offices for some years prior to her return—would not understand why San Francisco should have the only in-house graphics section outside of the Mothership. Nae fear, as it turned out. His response was: "Cool! I can use an art department." And so he did.

Unlike his two predecessors JP never actually connected with the workforce here, although I gather he was well-loved in New York. It was cultural, I think: he was a New Yorker's New Yorker, brash and brusque and blunt, and I think most of my colleagues found him alien and off-putting from his accent on. His senior staff came to like him very much, and a providential remark by one of them established between us a common admiration for European cinema within a fifteen-year radius of 1955. We were reasonably close in age: he left college three months before I began it, and we had plenty of cultural referents in common. One doesn't discuss this in a professional context, of course, particularly not up the food chain, but I'm confident that had our paths crossed in 1970 we might well have shared a relaxing doobie together.

After his appalling predecessor I had high old hopes for JP, and was dismayed to watch his health visibly decline after he arrived to take up our Northern California headquarters. He was a big man—not fat, but large-boned and about 6' 5"—who dressed very stylishly; during his tenure he gradually shrank, so that his tailored suits hung on his frame. I never knew the nature of his ailment, but I have the impression it was cardiac-related. After three years he gave up and retired last March, moving back to the Right Coast. We spoke a couple of times after that, and he provided me with some advice that came in very handy in positioning myself during his succession struggle.

On Saturday JP fell in his home, striking a table on his way to the floor and snapping his neck, paralyzing him at points south. My informants tell me that he was lucid until yesterday morning, whereupon he declined swiftly and died last night. I've never worked for someone I liked so much, and bitterly regret that I didn't send the Christmas card I'd intended. He was 58, and a good guy. As you all know, good bosses are rare as visible comets. I drink this evening to JP's memory.

cordially,

He was actually #2 in SF (back when I was in the international branch), and in 1987 I had got myself in such an exceptionally bad odor with him that when the graphics gig was offered, even though I could see that it would sidetrack my career, I jumped at it. When #2 died eight years later I asked a colleague "Will they bother with a funeral, or just pound a stake into his heart?" and another coworker suggested a variation on the military funeral, with the honor guard firing into the open grave.

cordially,