I’m reading a biography about Buckminster Fuller written by Lloyd Steven Sieden.
Fuller had a 4-year-old daughter Alexandra who caught the 1918 flu, later got meningitis, and finally was afflicted by polio. Though frail, she managed to survive all these illnesses until the age of 4. It was the fall, and Fuller headed off from New York to Boston by train to attend the Harvard-Yale football game. Fuller walked with his daughter and wife, using a cane both because canes were in fashion and he had suffered a knee injury playing football earlier in life.
As Sieden writes:
Before he got on the train, little Alexandra looked up and asked, “Daddy, will you bring me a cane?” Bucky [Fuller's nickname] promised he would bring back the souvenir as he set off for an enjoyable day of football and friends.
Harvard won that day, and Bucky spent most of his time lost in drink, camaraderie, and parties, forgetting his troubles as well as his family on Long Island. When he arrived in Pennsylvania Station in New York the following afternoon, Bucky telephoned Anne [his wife] who could barely speak. She told him that Alexandra had suffered a relapse and was in a coma. Stunned, Bucky caught the next train to Long Island. Arriving home, he found Alexandra still unconscious and a doctor doing all he could to save her life.
Bucky could only sit near her bed looking on helplessly as the doctors and nurses continued their work well into the night. Eventually, the situation calmed down, but Alexandra’s condition did not improve. Then, in the early hours before dawn, she opened her eyes and smiled up at Bucky. As he bent close to his daughter, Bucky heard her tiny voice ask, “Daddy, did you bring me my cane?”
Fuller could only turn away in shame and agony. In the furor of drinking and celebrating, he had forgotten his daughter’s simple request. Following her question, Alexandra closed her eyes for the last time and died in her father’s arms a few hours later. Bucky never forgave himself for that incident, which, even in the last years of his life, would bring tears of remorse to his eyes.
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As I understand, this was the event that motivated him to do everything he achieved for the rest of his life.
Not that I would wish it on anyone, but we should all be so (un)lucky to overcome such tragedy and have it shape us into individuals like him.
I wonder how many requests we all miss like this one? Its interesting how easy it is to do the responsible or kind thing sometime, but how often we become distracted and miss out on a real opportunity to make meaning in the world. I am guilty of this a lot, and wonder why I am so short sighted in my actions or are so wasteful with my time.
Thanks for sharing this story, I’ll carry it with me today.
He deserved to feel guilty. He was thoughtless.
Trite though it is when we see it on motivational posters, I find fundamental truth in the saying that nothing we accomplish in our lives will mean so much as whether or not we made a difference in the life of a child.
Sure, make me cry at work. Thanks a lot.
talk about a downer.
I feel so sorry for him — a life of torment for a moment of forgetfulness.
(Chance, #11, I’m glad I don’t know you.)
I’m not sure what the moral of this story is supposed to be… never, ever screw up because an unrelated event might make you feel terrible about it?
That moment must have been horrible. But it does not define who Fuller was as a father.