The Connection Bridgewater-Somerville Edition Sept/Oct/Nov 2018

For almost eight years, I worked for a subsidiary of Cincinnati Bell. I was hired to run a 100-person operation in Piscataway. I started a daily commute from New York City to Piscataway. That lasted about a year until we moved to Warren. My drive time went from about 3 hours a day, roundtrip, to 40 min- utes. Nice while it lasted. Following several corporate reorganizations, I was assigned to run a group to support the busi- ness services division of AT&T. I was relocated to a small office in Bedminster. On one hand, my commute was reduced by another 10 minutes. On the other hand, almost all my people lived else- where, about half in Cincinnati and the other half in Orlando. After a few months in this role, I thought it would be valuable to bring my entire group together in Cincinnati to meet one another as well as receive some training. I contacted the company’s educa- tion department in Cincinnati to source an instructor that could help improve my team’s project management skills and in turn, provide better service to AT&T. I was pleasantly surprised when I learned that rather than assign an internal resource, our education department hired a consulting firm, Kepner-Tregoe, with expert- ise in teaching project manage- ment. I was even more surprised when the instructor, Richard, intro- duced himself. Just to break the ice, he asked if anyone had trouble getting to the class as he experi- enced some delays traveling in from Basking Ridge. Richard was an excellent instructor. He used personal stories to reinforce the key points of his lectures and our exercises. During the morning of the second day, he spoke about working on a barn repair project in his hometown of Princeton, where he was raised. At our next coffee break, I approached Richard, and said, “I know this is a long shot but a very close friend of mine, is the Episcopalian chaplain at Princeton University…” Before I could get my friend’s name out, Richard said, “Of course I know Frank. I have known him as long as I can remember. My mother is an Episcopalian priest as well.” Richard and his family lived just a couple miles from us as we are in “Northern Warren” and he was in “Southern Basking Ridge.” Even though Richard moved the family to Mendham, shortly after we met, we have been friends ever since we made our random connection in Cincinnati over 20 years ago. A PRIESTLY CONNECTION By: Dan Rosenberg PAGE 51 Spotlight on “SeniorS” www.theconnectionsnj.com