Did Father Murphy Start All This?

Do you believe in fate??Are things truly “meant to be?” Are you a risk-taker? Are you someone who throws caution to the wind, takes your chances and believes your destiny is the one you create for yourself?

Before you stop reading for fear this “Witz”dom will wax too poetic and become overtly philosophical, I’ll share that I don’t plan on justifying a right or wrong answer here. But we all, at some point or another, reflect on how we arrived at where we currently are in our lives.?Is there one event that dramatically altered the course of your life – and did you realize it when it happened? And how do YOU answer the question, “If you could do anything in your life over again, what would it be?” I always thought the better question for people to ponder would be, “How would your life have been if something that did occur had never happened?”

I have answered that question, at least as it applies to me.?The direction of my life was set one afternoon late in my sophomore year in high school based on a chance encounter I had with Father Joseph Murphy, my Latin teacher.?Yes, completely unbeknownst to me, the course I would take over most of the next 35+ years was established shortly after my 16th birthday.

I was never much of a rule-breaker growing up (surprising, right?). And attending an all-boys Catholic high school in the 70’s was the perfect place for a kid who did things by the book. Our school was laid out with two sets of steps at opposite ends of the building that spanned four floors.?To keep the traffic of rowdy teenage boys flowing between classes, one stairwell was designated the “up” stairway, the other, “down.”?Logical – and you’d pray when your class schedule came out each year that you wouldn’t have classes at opposing ends of the building—four floors apart. And even if you had to sprint a long distance during those 5 minute intervals between the class bells ringing, you always had a plan which involved using the proper stairwells.

But one “fateful” afternoon in late May, 1976, I was running late for class and my life would be forever altered. I can’t remember what caused me to be late, but the bell had already rung for the next class. I saw that if I ran down the steps, I might just be able to sneak into the classroom without being noticed before roll was taken. Except the closest path to me was the “up” staircase. The crowds had dispersed into the classrooms, and I started to sprint down them as quickly as I could, hoping I’d make it before anyone could see me. I thought I was in the clear, until I heard a thundering voice boom from above me.?“Reisenwitz!” was the sound echoing in the stairwell (if you went to a school like mine, you never really heard your first name used, no matter how hard your last name might be to pronounce). ?I froze, knowing that my attempt to skirt a demerit for being late would now result in a multiple occurrence event as I was caught dead to rights running down the up stairway.

Father Murphy was the owner of the booming voice. And he always carried a typical expression on his face- it was part smirk (a “gotcha” grin), part befuddlement (think “How stupid can you be?”). This was his look in class, at our basketball games, almost any time you saw him. So when I saw those eyes glaring at me as he caught up to me in the stairwell, I knew this wasn’t going to be pleasant.?As I flinched awaiting my certain punishment, his tone shockingly changed. “Do you want a summer job?”?What??A job? Without processing what was happening, I immediately, but still nervously responded, “Yes!”

It seems Father Murphy’s sister was the personnel administrator for a local law firm – my high school was in downtown Philly, close by her offices.?He indicated that over the years he has sent a few students down to her offices for jobs in the mailroom, and there was an opening for the summer – would I be interested??Little did I know that saying yes meant that I’d need to go down to her office right after school that day to “interview,” but he gave me the office location and told me to tell them when I arrived that he had sent?me. ?I’d of course need to let Mom know I’d be home late – but that was better than explaining the punishment I seemed to avoid for being late to class (easily now explained away by a “meeting” I had with Father Murphy) and my journey down the wrong stairs (did he even notice?).

How did this chance encounter change my life?

·??????I did get the job that day – I actually never interviewed; when I arrived, Father Murphy’s sister wasn’t even there, but the receptionist directed me to mailroom, where the supervisor greeted me as “the new kid,” showed me where to put my stuff, and immediately had another kid show me what to do. I was working not even knowing what I was getting paid!

·??????I worked part-time during the school year and full time in the summers during my remaining years in high school. I considered two colleges – one nearby home in Philly, the other in DC. Economics played into a need to stay closer to home, plus I could keep the part time job to help fund college expenses (and college weekends!), so I became a LaSalle Explorer. All told, I worked at the law firm for six years.

·??????When I entered college, I thought I wanted to go to law school post-graduation. However, working at the law firm exposed me to the pressure young clerks and legal associates experienced. This pushed me to at least delay (and as you now know, completely drop) any law school decision.

·??????On the personal side, three years into my law firm experience, I met a legal administrative assistant - and we each challenged the other to buy ?a drink for our 21st birthdays which were only a few months apart. Three years later, Karen would become my first spouse and a few years later, Erica’s mother.

·??????Graduation was fast approaching and I needed a real job. Father Murphy’s sister had since retired, and a new personnel administrator joined the firm. Mrs. Peitzman had taken an interest in helping me find a job and introduced me to a friend who was a recruiter for local insurance companies and had done a lot of work with the Insurance Company of North America (INA), headquartered in Philadelphia. INA merged with Connecticut General (CG) in April, 1982 to form CIGNA (yes, throw those 5 letters up in the air and that’s how you land an acronym for a merged corporate name!).?In early May, 1982, Mrs. Peitzman’s contact set me up for an interview to be a underwriter trainee in the group disability unit.?I graduated on May 15, and my first day on the job at CIGNA was June 1.

·??????The rest is history – some of which I’ve shared in prior editions of “Witz”dom.?Needless to say, the direction of my career, my family experiences, and my opportunities to travel the world had their origins with this first “real” job.?And I cannot deny that the roots of that job were deeply connected to Father Murphy.

So I guess you can conclude that I must be a big believer in fate.?If I had taken the appropriate staircase that afternoon long ago, would I have had such a successful career in the employee benefits industry??Would I have had the chance to travel the world through work assignments and meet some amazing people??Many of our closest friends today are people we met on my career journey.?And would there have been an Erica, and our two grandchildren, Gemma and Lana?

I could go on, but the “Witz”dom lesson this week, and one I applied throughout my career, is NOT tied a belief in fate. Is fate even real? Maybe.?I do have beliefs and faith that keep me grounded. But I don’t believe my career and life’s direction happened simply because I went the wrong way on the staircase as a teenager. ?It wasn’t so much fate, but what I did with the circumstances I was presented. I always had control of my actions and decisions. It’s what I did with those chance opportunities that determined my fate. That was true in May of 1982, and remained true as I moved through various companies, roles and experiences in my work career.?It is still true today.

Back to the question posed earlier in this article - how would my life had turned out if something hadn’t occurred – like getting caught on that stairwell??What if I didn’t take the risk and ran to the other stairwell that afternoon? Perhaps Father Murphy always intended to ask me if I wanted that summer job and just took the opportunity to ask me because he saw me in the moment. Maybe I would have met my daughter’s mother at a party or through friends? CIGNA was one of the biggest private employers in Philadelphia back in 1982, so it’s not out of the question that I might have applied for a job their on my own.?On the flip side, I do know that if I had received more financial aid for college, I would have almost assuredly gone to DC for school.?

But none of that happened – I broke the rules, and while I can diagram my life’s journey back to Father Murphy for a starting place, it’s what I did with each opportunity that made the rest of it happen. And for that, I thank Father Murphy.?I might have said “no” to his question about the job. Maybe he wanted to catch me in a situation where it might be hard to decline, but he saw something in me that he trusted to share with his sister. As an educator, he was tough.?“Throw enough mud at the wall and maybe some of it will stick” was a phrase with which he’d often lecture us. For him, it was his attempt at teaching a group of motley teenage boys.?But it was also his approach to trying to accomplish a goal – something I learned and tried to follow in my life.?“Ad astra per aspera,”?the Latin phrase Father Murphy wrote in my yearbook back in the 70’s – and displayed in the picture above, is also a guidepost I have followed. “To the stars through difficulties,” seems to validate you need to work hard to achieve life’s goals.?Don’t leave anything to fate. Thinking too much about what you might have done differently with your life wastes the time you have to take advantage of living your life.

For the record, Father Murphy was very aware of where he cornered me that afternoon.?The next morning in Latin class he asked me how the “interview” went. I shared with him that I took the job, and thanked him. “Great,” he said. “I’d hate to have had to write you up with a demerit for going down the wrong staircase yesterday.”

Reisenwitz, from the German, translates something akin to “travel joke” in English. It explains why many a German-speaking border agent would snicker as I passed through passport control when I was working in Europe. I would subsequently translate the name to mean traveling fool – a jester, or a “wit,” given my career on the road. Throughout that career – and my overall life journey – I have acquired insight I have found beneficial that I’d like to share in this periodic newsletter. You can decide if it’s wisdom – or “witz”dom.?Hopefully you’ll find a little of both.