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Posted by Sara Beth Duyck on Thu, Nov 18, 2010
By Steven Manos
November is always a month that is near and dear to my heart. Fond memories of the way our house smelled on Thanksgiving morning, the bone crushing tackle from an uncle as we played “touch" football on the front lawn, and the building anticipation of the magical time that was Christmas in the Manos household. As big a part as all of these things were in my life, so to was the celebration of Veterans Day and the Marine Corps Birthday. Being both the son and the grandson of wartime U.S. Marines, one would be hard pressed to find a more patriotic bunch on the Southwest Side of Chicago (though I must admit we were the only family celebrating the Corps birthday that I recall).
This past week, as I participated in raising a glass to my father and a handful of other battle stamped heros of wars past at the local VFW hall, it made me think of my grandfather, Master Sergeant Peter Manos, USMC. My grandfather served in the South Pacific theater during World War II, fought in places like Guadalcanal and eventually led the engineering section for the fighter craft out of the Solomon Islands. I shared my grandfathers role in the war with yet another veteran, and a member of our critical services team here at Lee Technologies (let’s call him “Ben”) as we had lunch near one of the facilities we run in the Chicago area. In talking with him, I couldn’t help to not only draw parallels to their stories of being in the service, but also connect even stronger parallels to what it means to have dependable, strong and capable leaders and teams which we are/were both a part of.
I was going to title this post “The Dependables” but realized that this may portray most of the old war dogs that night at the VFW too closely. And not in the way I mean it. However, to listen to my father retell the stories of my grandfathers' herculean effort to keep the “birds in the air” and the exceptionalism necessary on the part of my grandfather and his team to build and maintain the thousands of aircraft is hard to comprehend. The ability to accomplish this under war time, with little resources and the specter of death ever present alone makes these men & women heros. Listening to my lunch partner on Veterans Day talk about maintaining the first nuclear powered aircraft carrier, the USS Enterprise, and its vital role in the Middle East, I realized that folks like my grandfather are still out there, maintaining and operating some of the most critical, complex and ultimately important things that we all otherwise take for granted. Let’s face it, whether is a fighter plane, a $500M aircraft carrier, or a data center, it’s a tough job to keep up with the wear and tear of these seemingly dissimilar, yet uniquely analogous entities. Every day brings new challenges, and there are always those unexpected events that require one to remain flexible but focused on the “mission of maintainability”. Sometimes it takes hard work, flexibility, and resourcefulness to keep your bird in the air.
While I’m certain that I, and many others in our organization thank folks on our team like Ben for all that he does to flawlessly operate and maintain our client facilities, it is the ingrained excellence, the battle-tested training, and simply the honor he brings to a team that we owe our gratitude and subsequent success to. I write this post today to honor all of you out there, veteran or not, who show up to do an incredible job in operating our client sites, those who manage your own, and everyone who has a role in maintaining critical facilities throughout the industry.
Semper Fidelis.
-SM