Frances Hesselbein: Let me tell you. I am eight years old. I adored my grandmother. She has had the greatest impact upon my life.
Warren Bennis: Grandmom?
FRH: Mama Wicks, my life and my work of anyone in the world and they lived in a coal mining town. Every weekend I was with her, nine miles away. In the music room—they had 18-foot-high music room and they had built a church-sized pipe organ into the wall of that room and on the shelf of the pipe organ were two beautiful ancient Chinese vases. I am eight years old, and every Saturday I go, I say, “Mama Wicks, may I please play with the vases” or “may I please touch the vases?” The answer always was no. ”No one may ever touch the Chinese vases.”
So one Saturday I guess I am feeling very assertive at eight. I actually stamped my foot at my grandmother, I said, ”I want those vases.” Instead of telling me I am a bad girl, she puts her arm around me and she takes me to the loveseat facing the vases and the pipe organ. “Let me tell you about those vases.” She told me the story.
“Long, long ago when your mother was eight years old there was a Chinese laundryman in our little town of South Park, Pennsylvania. He lived in a little white shed that was his laundry. He slept behind the laundry and his tubs. Every Tuesday he picked up your grandfather’s shirts. He brought them back Thursday beautifully washed, starched, and ironed. He wore traditional Chinese dress.
Sometimes your mother and her little sister would come home from school crying, because the bad boys were chasing Mr. Yee. They would call him chinky, chinky and far worse, and try to pull his queue. One day there is a knock on the kitchen door.” My grandmother said, “I opened it. There was Mr. Yee, and I said with a large package wrapped in a newspaper and I said, ‘Oh, Mr. Yee, please come in. Won't you sit down?’ He stood there and handed her the package. He said “This is for you.”
She opened it and here were these two beautiful ancient Chinese vases and she said, “Oh Mr. Yee, I couldn’t possibly accept them, they are far too valuable.” “I want you to have them, he said. I am going back to China. I've been here 10 years and they won't let me bring my wife and my children. The only thing I brought with me, were my vases. I want you to have them.” My grandmother said, “But Mr. Yee, why do you want me to have them?” This Chinese gentleman looked at her. He had tears. He said, “Mrs. Wicks, I have been in this town for ten years and you were the only person who ever called me Mr. Yee.”
Now that was the defining moment, when I learned respect for all people. And my grandmother and Mr. Yee traveled with me.