Lost December (3 page)

My father threw himself into his work, but he didn’t neglect me. Rather, he took me with him. I spent my early years at his side. When most boys my age were learning to throw a curve ball, I was learning how to replace a toner cartridge in a color copier.

By the time I was sixteen, I was managing my first copy
center—a small Crisp’s copy shop in Gilbert, Arizona. I’m pretty sure that I was the only sophomore in high school driving a self-financed BMW. I oversaw twelve copy centers while going to college. By the time I was twenty-one, I had graduated summa cum laude from Arizona State University.

People always say that I look a lot like my father, which I consider a compliment. We are both tall and a little gangly, with light brown hair. But that’s where our likeness ends. My father’s most noticeable trait is his intense, dark eyes, partially shadowed beneath bushy eyebrows. He always told me that the secret to success is “laser focus,” and he had the eyes for it. He could always see through me.

On the calendar, all days look the same,
but they do not carry the same weight
.

Luke Crisp’s Diary

If I had to pick a day that my life turned, I’d peg it to six weeks after my December graduation from ASU. My father and I had been working together on a presentation and stopped to have dinner at our favorite restaurant, DiSera’s, a fancy and popular Italian restaurant halfway between our home and the Crisp’s corporate office building. We ate there almost weekly, and the owner, Lawrence “Larry” DiSera was a close friend of my father. We even had our own table in the restaurant, beneath a painting of a buxom Tuscan girl stomping grapes. On special occasions—birthdays and celebrations—Larry himself would come to our table and play the mandolin.

But the night my life changed, it wasn’t my birthday and we weren’t celebrating anything. We were just eating. Somewhere between the antipasto and the primi piatti, my father said, “I think you should get an M.B.A.”

The comment came as far out of the blue as a meteor. I was glad to be back to work at Crisp’s and already felt like college had been an unnecessary delay. For a moment I just looked at him. “Why?”

“I think it would be good for you.”

I hoped he wasn’t serious, but from his demeanor I knew he was. It was the same look he’d had when he suggested I take over as area manager of our Phoenix stores.

“I’d rather learn business in the real world,” I said, “You didn’t get an M.B.A. It hasn’t hurt you.”

“More than you think,” he replied.

“You founded one of America’s largest companies. How can you say it hurt you?” I punctuated my argument with a bite of caprese salad. When I finished chewing, I said, “Besides, we’ve got enough going on getting ready for the public offering.”

“That’s why I think you shouldn’t wait,” he said

“You want me to go back to ASU?”

“I was thinking somewhere out of state. Maybe Harvard or Wharton.”

Our conversation seemed to be spiraling off in the wrong direction. “What’s wrong with staying here?” I asked. “ASU’s got a great business program. And there’s Thunderbird.”

“They’re good schools,” my father said. “I just think it might be good for you to get out on your own for a while. Going back East would help you get a feel for the climate outside the Southwest.”

Up to that point in my life I had always lived at home with my father. “You sound like you’re trying to get rid of me.”

My father smiled. “Maybe I am,” he said. “I’ve been thinking a lot lately. It’s a parent’s job to give their children roots and wings. I’ve given you roots—maybe too many of them—but not enough wings. I think I need to nudge you out of the nest a little. I want you to fly.”

“Or plummet to my death,” I said.

He grinned. “That’s not going to happen.”

“I didn’t think I was doing so bad here,” I said.

“Bad? I couldn’t be more proud of you. You were successfully running a multimillion dollar business at nineteen. This isn’t about not measuring up. This isn’t even about business. This is about your life. I want you to have the opportunities I didn’t have. I don’t want you to have any regrets.”

“I
don’t
have any regrets,” I said.

He looked at me for a moment, then sighed. “Maybe I have them for you. You didn’t have the childhood most of your schoolmates had.”

“I don’t want their childhoods. I like my life the way it is. I like working at Crisp’s.”

“It’s a lot bigger world out there than just Crisp’s.”

“You don’t want me to work at Crisp’s?”

“I’m not saying that. You know that I want you to take over the company someday. But I want you to make that choice with your eyes wide open. It may be that in the end Crisp’s is exactly what you want—or maybe it’s not—but, whatever you choose, at least you had a choice. I won’t take that away from you.”

“If I went back East, who would take care of things here?”

“Henry will do until you get back.” Henry Price was my dad’s chief financial officer and number two. “I’m sure he’ll relish the chance to step up.”

I had no doubt he would. Henry had always struck me as ambitious. “Who will take care of
you?”

My father looked at me and I saw a mixture of sadness
and pride in his face. “That’s what I was afraid of,” he said softly. “You’ve been watching over me instead of the other way around. I’ll be fine. Besides, I’ve got Mary.”

Mary was my father’s personal assistant. She had been with my father even before my mother died—way back in the early days of Crisp’s when there were just three stores and they were still running to the local office warehouse to pick up boxes of copy paper. Mary was in her late fifties, single, childless and affable. She didn’t have a high school diploma, but what she lacked in scholarship she made up for in devotion to my father. I always thought she seemed more like a mother than an assistant.

My father went back to eating while I thought over his proposition. After a few minutes I breathed out slowly. “I’ll think it over.”

My father said without looking up, “Fair enough. In the meantime, we have the national conference to prepare for. So hurry up and eat. There’s work to do.”

Under the right circumstances, a tiny spark
can grow into an inferno that can overcome an entire city.
So can an idea
.

Luke Crisp’s Diary

The spark from that dinner conversation caught fire. By the next week I had sent in my application to Wharton business school. My father had an old investor friend in the Wharton administration who was able to help expedite things, and a month later my father and I were on a plane, flying to Philadelphia for my enrollment interview.

In spite of my initial resistance, I liked what I saw. I suppose that my father was right—a part of me wanted to venture out and see what else was out there. I was accepted into the program, and I enrolled with a major in operations and information management. A week after my acceptance I returned to Philadelphia to find housing. I found an apartment in Sansom Place, a tower within walking distance of the campus, and by the next August I was back in school.

Even though I was in my twenties, I was homesick those first few weeks away. It was the first time I had lived alone and Philadelphia was a strange new world. The city was crowded and old and, for most of the year, cold—a far cry from the dry heat of the Arizona desert. I had my own room in Sansom, which was a double-edged sword. The good news was that I had privacy. The bad news was that I had too much of
it. Those first few weeks I was agonizingly lonely. I had no idea how much that was going to change.

My fifth week at Wharton, I was sitting in a management communications class when a pretty young woman sitting two chairs to my right, suddenly leaned toward me, her long, brown hair spilling over the vacant chair between us.

“Hi. I’m Candace,” she said. She had beautiful dark, almond-shaped eyes, the kind you’d probably stare at if you knew you wouldn’t be caught. I instinctively looked behind me to see if she was talking to someone else. That made her smile. “I’m talking to you,” she said. “What’s your name?”

“Luke,” I said.

“Hi, Luke. Some friends of mine are getting together for a study group tonight at Smokey Joe’s. Want to join us?”