Large Mouth Bass

You couldn't just meet Dick Bass.  You had to experience him. If he was awake, he was talking...a mile a minute. (and there are great stories about him when he wasn't awake) He had a story or a poem for every occasion...and he was quite a story in himself. The clergyman presiding at his memorial said he could imagine St. Peter, after meeting Dick, turning to God and saying "Are all Texans like this?" Rancher, oilman, ski area developer, adventurer, Dick went after everything he did with a vengeance. Why not the Seven Summits!?

It's hard to say who came up with idea to climb the highest mountain on every continent and call the effort the Seven Summits. But Dick and his cohort Frank Wells, then president of Warner Brothers, decided to tackle that daunting challenge in a big way.

I met them both back in the 80's when they started that journey and now, with Dick's recent passing, the story of their quest will be left to the history books.  Frank took a detour to be president of Walt Disney before he could reach the final summit of Mt. Everest, but Dick kept his eye on the prize. He finally put his name in the record books as the first person to reach the Seven Summits in 1985.

Persistence and tenacity were high on Dick's list of important traits and he wreaked of them. Four times he tackled Mt. Everest before he made it the final jewel and his crown of mountains. I'm personally disappointed and I might say even offended that the New York Times published a major obit, choosing to focus on the "paid assistance of professional climbers" who went with Dick on the Seven Summits adventure.  The majority of those climbers were not paid to be there.  They wanted the opportunity to go places they had never been  Dick and Frank gave the climbers that opportunity, while surrounding themselves with the best, like good leaders do when they tackle an unknown challenge.

Dick's mountaineering achievement has been credited and discredited for the the dramatic rise in guided climbs on the world's highest mountains. But Sir Edmund Hillary and Reinhold Messner were predicting the advent of guided (paid) Everest climbs long before Dick and Frank had their great idea. Governments and guide services both discovered on their own the opportunity to make money from the mountains with encouragement from their clients,

Do not mistake Dick Bass's business success and personal wealth as the reasons for his climbing accomplishments in the mountains of the world.  He took every step on his own.  He scaled every obstacle and avoided every danger to reach his goal under his own power. He earned the Seven Summits. And he did it with heart and soul and his own inspiration.,

When it was over, Dick celebrated as only Dick Bass could. Big Time. At Snowbird. And his partner Frank Wells was right there with him when they walked together to the top of Snowbird's peak. There, several hundred of his closest friends, even the mountain people like us, listened to his stories one more time and afterward the symphony choir echoed "Climb Every Mountain" into the valleys below. Frank was later tragically killed in a helicopter skiing accident but, fortunately, he was able to be there to relish the realization of the dream. It was an amazing celebratory moment in time. Well done and well deserved.

For several years after achieving the Seven Summits, Dick was the oldest person to have climbed Mt. Everest. Finally someone surpassed his record and immediately he began to get ready to win that honor back. During the ensuing years, I spent a lot of time working and playing with Dick at his home in Dallas, at Snowbird and around the world.  A few months ago, he made a special trip to Seattle to add his comments to a film we were working on about uber expedition leader and guide Lou Whittaker. Dick credited Lou with opening the door for him to the mountains of the world that he came to love. We spent the day with him telling stories and he was still planning his next Everest climb and looking for the next $80 million development deal,which he always seemed to be chasing.  He was always moving ahead. "If you never stop, you can't get stuck" he used to say.

At the time of Dick's Seven Summits quest, I formed a group called the First Team made up of interesting and exciting individuals who had all achieved a first in some kind of sports endeavor.  The tag line I coined to describe it was "Records are made to be broken, but a first lasts forever."

My long-time friend Phil Ershler, a member of the First Team who, with his wife Susan, became the first married couple to reach the Seven Summits, went with me to Dick's memorial service in Dallas.
Phil spent more time with Dick on the Seven Summits and Mt. Everest, specifically, than anyone. As we sat in the honored row of "Mountain People" next to his family at the service, we listened closely to one of Dick's best and oldest friends paint a water-colored picture of Dick's life.

In summing up, his friend said he asked Dick which was more important to him, being the oldest person to climb Everest or being the first to reach the Seven Summits. He said that Dick replied without hesitation, '"The Seven Summits, of course, because there can always be somebody older but a first lasts forever." Phil and I just looked at each other and smiled.  Dick is with us and always will be.

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Can you feel it?

We all know about it.  We can watch it on television. It’s waged half way around the world and costs billions of dollars. It’s a drain on the economy. We’re defending our country and those who are representing us are who we care about. It’s not the war in Afghanistan. It’s the Olympic Games.

 Can you feel it? Olympic Fever. We’re coming down with it. 

Every two years now, our country faces the competition.  The rest of the world wants to beat us and we want to rack up as many medals as we can. London will be my 10^th Olympiad with some involvement. I’m not counting some minor efforts in three other editions. Over the years,  I’ve worked for sponsors, for athletes, for non-profits, for venues and for organizing committees. Each competition has been in a different locale but the similarities in the activities around the events are pretty amazing.

One thing I’ve learned for certain is that no matter how much advance planning there is, when the opening ceremonies arrive, the operations become free form.  Most of the spectators come from driving distance. Sponsors never use all their benefits and, except for some of the giant multinationals, they are never entirely satisfied.  Locals ALWAYS grumble about the disruption and, during the competition itself, there are always tickets available, usually at a reduced price.  In Beijing, they were giving away thousands of tickets a day just to fill the stands.  The opening ceremonies have the best attendance. Track & Field is always the hot ticket. And the winter games are a crapshoot every time because of the weather and access to the competition, though ice skating draws great crowds, as does hockey…for sure, if you’re in Canada, eh.

For me, it began with 1980 Winter Games in Lake Placid, New York…the year of the “Miracle on Ice” for the US Hockey Team.  I was working with K2 Skis and helped put together their successful bid to be the “Official Ski”.  The original K2 Skis were red, white and blue for a reason.  They were made for the USA Women’s Ski Team.

Customer entertainment is a major factor in any sponsorship and it certainly was in Lake Placid, Calgary and Sarajevo, especially with the Mahre twins, Phil and Steve becoming my clients and winning medals like they were going out of style.  In Atlanta, I worked for Coca-Cola and Helly Hansen (sailing in Savannah). My connections with Coke’s agency McCann Ericson tied me in with them.  The bombing unfortunately put a damper on the enthusiasm at that entire event.  The crisis communications work does trickle down to all the sponsors but especially if you’re in the world headquarters of a company like Coke.

We had just completed organizing and promoting one of our around the world sailing races with a stop in Sydney, when the Olympics showed up there.  Our local corporate contacts, as well as some of the sports organizers there, brought me into the fold to help with international communications and crisis work. Australians certainly have their own way of doing things.  They don’t take advice particularly well but somehow things seem to work out for the best.

Lillehammer and Salt Lake were mostly about long-time client Helly Hansen.  Lillehammer is a cool little  village of about 25,000 people and they did an amazing job of entertaining the world.  Helly is a very Norwegian company with a well-manufactured product. They took great pride in playing a major role in hosting the Olympics.  The organizing committee there was completely engaged and took their job very seriously.  That focus really paid off for them.  In Salt Lake, we also worked with Snowbird Resort, an established client that was one of the host venues.  Friend and owner Dick Bass would not let the Olympics come to town without making a major commitment.  And I did see Mitt Romney, but, no, I didn’t work with him.

The small group of Olympic specialists who travel the world from one Games to next that I have gotten to know over the years, brought me into the Beijing Games.  That event will be very hard to match…ever.  The entire country was behind the effort (or had to be) and no holds were barred.  The commitment was clear and it was a spectacular production. It was a truly enlightening experience to see how the organizers handled it all.

Vancouver was a great host. I saw them through several difficult situations that they managed very carefully and, for the most part, effectively.  The death of a luge competitor in practice before the opening ceremonies and the overzealous celebration after the Canadian win on the ice were both handled with care and compassion.  I was impressed.  And I even got my own cameo on NBC during the Today Show while talking to Jane, who was in Florida visiting her sister and saw me there live on the telly.  Pretty cool.

So now , it’s on to London.  I love the city.  We’ve been travelling there for decades.  It is full of history and the Royals.  We have close friends there and I buy my socks at  Marks & Spencer…wouldn’t feel right without them.  The organizers have the right idea.  They are not trying to compete with previous Games, especially Beijing.  They are going to do things their way, within their budget during these hard times.  It is bound to be fun and exciting on the field.  I mostly want it to be safe.  Jane and I will be there and I’ll let you know how it’s going and what it’s like.  You’ll see the competition on television.  I hope to tell you what’s going on in the concourse, on the river, in the tube and in the neighborhood pub. Cheers for now.