Leave as big a wake as you can...

On Sunday November 18th, 2018, my father passed away at the age of 95. While this is a huge personal tragedy for me and my family, I want to talk about what this means for the rest of you. Setting aside his role as dad, husband and friend, my father had a huge impact on the world around him. And for that we should all be thankful. And we should take a moment to consider the lessons that his life holds for everyone, but particularly those who did not know him. At the end of this post I’ll provide my eulogy, spoken on the day we laid him to rest. It’s a hugely personal document but I share it because of what it says about my father as a model, a guide and a lesson. Everyone’s dad is special and there’s no comparing one to another. This is not about Ernst Frankel the dad. It’s about Ernst Frankel the driver of impact and change. Over the course of his life my father did many things including:

• Combat officer in two wars. Chief engineer on British Navy vessels in World War II and Captain on Israeli Navy vessels in the 1948 war. 
• Ship captain sailing the world’s oceans on both commercial and passenger ships
• Head of the test nuclear reactor at MIT
• Professor of Ocean Engineering and Business at MIT for 44 years
• Member of the board of several shipping companies including Neptune Orient Lines and member of the Advisory Board of the Panama Canal
• Author of 21 books and hundreds of papers on shipping, port development and transportation economics
• Consultant and/or adviser on the development and construction of many of the largest ports in the world and a key adviser on the shift to containerization in shipping

It’s all very impressive but what does it all mean to most of us? The answer is simple. Ernst Frankel was – for half a century – one of the thought leaders and key drivers of the development of ocean transport and the shift to containerization. These developments were nothing less than a revolution in the way goods are transported globally and had a massive and lasting impact on global commerce including the cost and availability of goods (to read more about containerization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Containerization and Mark Levenson’s The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger). Today, 90% of non-bulk cargo is carried by container ships, much of it through ports and port systems that Ernst Frankel helped design. And along the way he taught hundreds of students from dozens of nations. Through three generations they have returned to their homes and had a huge impact on the transportation systems of their countries. 

And what should you take away from this? I’d say a few things:

• Ernst Frankel had a huge and lasting impact not only on the friends, family, clients and students he spent time with but on whole swaths of the global economy. For this we should be grateful.
• Read some of his stuff….it’s interesting and important (I’ll put some links below)
• Your most powerful impact is often made by the people you teach, advise, train and develop.
• In your own way, be an adventurer and take a big sloppy bite out of life.
• I miss my dad.

Eulogy of Ernst G. Frankel on November 20, 2018

In some ways, I’m a lot like my dad. I’m comfortable speaking from the cuff. I like to tell a good story. But today I want...I really need...to get this exactly right so I’m going to read.

My father Ernst Frankel was a massive ship and he left a massive wake on all his journeys. I’ll never do his huge and rich life justice but let me try my best to tell you a good story.  In many ways, my father can best be described as a sailor and a storyteller. 

The essence of a sailor is a person always moving, always seeking out new ports and new adventures. For many years my father was a ship captain and engineer. But for his whole life he was a sailor. He may have traded airplanes for ships but for 95 years he was always travelling, exploring, adventuring and experiencing life. 

As his wife Inna likes to say he lived 9 lives. He began life as a German Jew growing up as Germany recovered from World War I and began its path toward World War II. Ever a contradiction, my father was a blonde haired, blue eyed Jew living in the Germany of the Third Reich. In 1939 at age 15 his family made a narrow escape from Germany to Palestine. For most of his family, and families like them, this would mark the beginning of a life in what would be Israel. But my father was cut from a different cloth. He went to London, finished his schooling and joined the British Navy. He saw battle, had a destroyer sunk from under him, and even found himself taking the surrender of a large part of the Italian Navy. For many men that would be enough adventure.  But for Ernst Frankel it only stoked his appetite, to see, to do, to explore. Soon after World War II, he joined the tiny Israeli Navy and fought in the 1948 War of Independence. After the war he soon became a ship captain and spent about a decade on the oceans of the world captaining commercial and passenger ships. Brought to the US to be the chief engineer of the first nuclear powered commercial vessel, when that effort stalled, he found himself applying for a role at MIT running their test nuclear plant. This in turn led him to a 44-year career as an MIT professor of ocean engineering and business. Even in academia, he was always exploring new spaces and topics. Why settle for designing ships, when you can design ports? Why settle for designing ports when you can design port systems and their economics? 

My father spent the next 40 years travelling the world advising on the development of many of the world’s largest ports. His thoughts and ideas shaped the massive global ocean transportation system that today. For those of you not steeped in ocean transport research, roughly ninety percent of the world's goods are transported by sea today with over seventy per- cent as containerized cargo – his specialty. Amidst all this work he found time to write over 20 books on a range of topics from highly technical to heavily economic. He served as the head of the transportation division of the World Bank. He served on boards and advised massive companies. It’s amazing that all this was accomplished by one man.

And throughout this, he always found time to mentor and teach. Not just his son, or his students. But anyone who came to his door. Our tradition teaches that receiving and welcoming guests is a great mitzvah, or good deed. My father’s home was always open to guests and he was happiest when surrounded by family, new friends and old, telling stories.

My dad was a great storyteller. I can see my father this way in so many venues. Standing in front of a class of students. At a dinner table in Singapore with shipping executives. In our living room surrounded by friends and family, and when I was a kid with me, lounging on the carpet at his feet. It manifested itself in a career of teaching and advising. His stories were rich and thick with details and they often, in the rabbinic tradition, had some message or learning embedded in them. But most important perhaps to him they were entertaining. And he couldn’t have welcomed so many people into his home without Inna.  Inna was the love in his life and his partner in his adventures. She made the warm home, the wonderful meals, the loving life into which he was able to invite all these people. She was his anchor and his partner as he traveled the world. And she listened to all his stories.

So I thought I’d share one of his stories with you. He traveled the world for work, but took great pleasure in drinking in the customs, people and food of all the places he went. Our house is filled with pieces of art and culture brought back from dozens of trips over 50 years. One of my particular favorites are a set of wooden dioramas, each intricately – almost magically - carved from a single piece of wood. As the story goes, my father was in Istanbul and found time between meetings to go to the shuk and look for things to bring home. He found one stall with these beautiful wood carvings and stepped in. The store owner greeted him and showed him the various pieces. They began to chat about how the pieces were carved, where my father was from, the weather in town. Eventually the store owner offered my father some tea and they sat. My father asked how much two of the pieces would be and the store owner quoted him a price. They began to haggle as they drank their tea. Interspersed with offers and counter offers they talked about their families, their children and their lives. Every few minutes the store keeper would stop to address another customer who entered the shop and, in each case, quoted the same price for the pieces and each time the customer paid and left. After an hour, they had negotiated down to a price of about ? of the original price. They shook hands and the shopkeeper began to wrap the carvings. My father asked him. Every few minutes you have another customer. You’re very busy. And they’re all willing to pay you full price. Yet you spent an hour negotiating with me over tea and are taking a fraction of that price. Why did you bother with this? The shopkeeper smiled and waved his hand toward the customers milling outside in the street. That? That’s not business. He waved his hand between the two of them and the empty cups of tea on the table. This? This is business. 

My father took big sloppy bites out of life. He not only saw the world, but he engaged with it. When he went somewhere he left a mark. Some of those marks are massive and steel and drive the commerce of the world. Some of those marks were left of hundreds of men and women who in turn are changing the places they call home. He reveled in the accomplishments of those he touched. While he was proud of the things he helped build, he was most proud of the people he helped mold and nurture, and in turn of what they accomplished.

I have a challenge to all of you. A favor to ask. Whether at the Shiva at his home, or when you’re back at work or with your families. Tell an Ernst Frankel story. I know that each and every one of you has at least one. Honor my father by telling some tales. And remember his lessons. Take big bites out of life. Eat the good food. Drink the good drink. Find and cherish your love. Make a big impact on whatever you do. Try new things. Meet new people. Leave as big a wake as you can.

 If you judge a man by the impact he had and the people he left behind, who he influenced, then I think you will my father left a huge wake as his ship sales away from us.

https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/bostonglobe/obituary.aspx?n=ernst-frankel&pid=190779379&fhid=5816

Some of his books:

https://www.amazon.com/Ernst-G.-Frankel/e/B001HOTJDM/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1543005056&sr=8-1

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0865691002/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i11

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/027594476X/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p2_i4

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0792306740/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i4

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1402089953/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i8

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0131845578/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i6