Today is Friday, so this post is on interpersonal competence.
If you read this blog somewhat regularly, you know that I’m a Pittsburgh guy. I grew up in Ambridge PA, just 15 miles from where the confluence of the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers forms the Ohio River. Growing up there, I am a lifelong Pittsburgh Steeler fan.
Displaced Pittsburgh guys like me have a love affair with their hometown and its football team. I often get e mails about the Steelers (and the Pirates and Penquins for that matter) – as well as happenings in the ‘burgh. Last week, a friend of mine forwarded an article about Art Rooney, the founder of the Pittsburgh Steelers (his family still owns the team), by Jim O’Brien a well known writer on all things Pittsburgh. I think it is worth sharing here.
Art Rooney Was a Professor on Subject of Funerals
I go to many funerals because Art Rooney, the founder and owner of the Steelers, taught me why I should be there. He said you didn't go to stare at the dead but rather to share with the living. He said it was more important to go to a funeral when a friend lost a loved one than it was to go to the funeral of that friend.
It makes sense, like Mr. Rooney did on so many subjects.
I thought about him when I paid my respects last Friday at the funeral of Father Francis Lackner at the Laughlin Funeral Home in Mt. Lebanon. Father Lackner had lived in retirement at nearby St. Bernard's and at the end at Marian Manor in Green Tree. He had been the pastor for many years at St. Margaret of Scotland in Green Tree.
I had only met and spoken to Father Lacker perhaps two or three times, but his brother Dan has been a friend and booster of mine for many years. Dan Lackner is the president of Paper Products Company on the South Side. His wife Lois is from my hometown of Hazelwood. One of their sons, Rich, is the football coach at Carnegie Mellon University.
Dan Lackner helped out in the offices of the Steelers when he was still a student at Central Catholic High School in Oakland. He recalls that he and Rege Cordic got out of school 20 minutes early each day so that Dan could get to the Steelers' offices and Rege could get to KDKA Radio where he would become an on-the-air star as an adult.
Lackner learned a lot about Art Rooney in those days. Once, a few years back, when I was having lunch with Lackner at Bruschetta's on the South Side, he told me a story about Art Rooney that may be my favorite Art Rooney story. It tells you everything you need to know about why Mr. Rooney was so special.
Dan Lackner, who is 80, and still goes to the office most mornings, remembers going to the funeral of Kathleen Rooney, the wife of the Steelers' patriarch, at Devlin's Funeral Home on the North Side.
"No sooner had I stepped inside the door of the funeral home," recalled Lackner, "than this guy comes down the hallway and calls out to me. We'd gone to school together at Central Catholic many years before. His name was McNamara. Joe McNamara. He told me his father of the same name had died at the VA Hospital and was laid out in the next room. 'All his friends are gone, and I didn't know whether to have a funeral for him or not,' said his son. 'But I decided to do it, so here we are.' He told me his father had been a city fireman and had lived on Dawson Street in Oakland.
"I went with him to pay my respects. There was nothing in the room but the casket and a kneeler. That was it. It was a sad scene.
"He told me they were only going to be at the funeral home for one day. When I left to pay my respects to Kathleen Rooney I bumped into Art Rooney in the lobby. He said, 'Dan, who were you talking to back there?' I told him about my boyhood friend and his father. He said, 'C'mon, let's go back and pay our respects.' So we went back together and I introduced him to my old friend whom I hadn't seen in years, Joe McNamara.
"Mr. Rooney talked to him for awhile, offered his sympathy, and I could tell it meant a lot to McNamara. Art signed the book and took a Mass card with him. He went to more funerals than anyone in Pittsburgh did, and he always took one of those Mass cards with him when he left.
"As we're coming out of the room, a big, powerfully built black man is coming through the main door, carrying a big basket of flowers in each arm. Art called out to him, 'Where are you taking those flowers?' The man said they were for Mrs. Rooney. Art said, 'We have enough flowers. You take them back to our friend McNamara.'
"I saw Joe Greene and I think Terry Bradshaw coming in behind the man carrying the flowers. Mr. Rooney sent them back to see his friend McNamara.
"In the door comes Tom Foerster, the former County Commissioner, with his friend, Pete Flaherty, the former mayor of Pittsburgh. Mr. Rooney greets them, accepts their condolences and tells them, 'Don't forget to go to the back room and pay your respects to our friend McNamara.
"Foerster shoots Rooney a look. 'What McNamara?' And Rooney responds, 'Our friend McNamara, the fireman.' "And Foerster says, 'I don't know any fireman named McNamara.' "And Rooney rather testily tells him, 'Yes, you do! The one from Dawson Street! Out in Oakland!'
"And Foerster gives in and says, 'Oh, that one.' And he and Pete Flaherty go back to the other room. So Art had everyone pay their respects 'to our friend McNamara' and sign the visitors' book. It went on like that the rest of the day.
When I came back the next day my friend McNamara was still there. He said, 'We decided to stay another day.'
"I went into the room once again to see his father. You could hardly see Joe McNamara. The room was full of flowers. It looked like Phipps Conservatory. He showed me the visitors' book and so many famous Steelers, such as Joe Greene and Mel Blount and Terry Bradshaw, had signed the book. Pete Rozelle, the NFL Commissioner, and Al Davis, the owner of the Oakland Raiders, had been there, too. Everybody who was anybody in the National Football League had signed the book.
That's just the way Art Rooney was. That visitors' book might be worth something these days."
That was the way Art Rooney was. I have a personal story about Art Rooney that I can tell. Bob Gaona was one of my father’s friends. He played for the Steelers in the mid 1950’s. In those days, the Steelers were terrible. My dad and his friend had season tickets for the Steelers for a few years then. But, you don’t make a lot of money working in a steel mill, and my dad had other important things to do with his money – like saving for his two kids’ education. So my dad dropped his season ticket.
In the 1970’s the Steelers got good – they won Four super Bowls in six years – and my dad, like everyone else in Pittsburgh, wanted season tickets. He had a little bit of discretionary income as my sister and I were out of college by then.
One problem – at that point in time, there was a waiting list that was several years long. Bob Gaona was visiting in Pittsburgh around that time. My dad mentioned this to him. Bob called Mr. Rooney and explained the situation. Mr. Rooney said “I understand. It was more important for the guy to save for his kids’ education then to pay to see the Steelers. I’ll make sure he moves to the top of the list.” The following week, my dad got his Steeler season tickets. He held on to them until he left Pittsburgh to retire in Florida. When he did, he passed them on to one of my friends – who will pass them on to his son.
The common sense point of all this? As the two stories above indicate, Art Rooney was a man who did things for others – even if they could do nothing for him. Interpersonally competent people do this. They know that the secret to building relationships is to do things for people without expecting anything in return. Jeffrey Gitomer, well known sales guru, calls this “giving value first”.
Whatever you call it, being nice without expecting anything in return, is the best and quickest way to become a truly interpersonally competent person. And, interpersonal competence is a hallmark of all career stars.
As Ralph Waldo Emerson said: “You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.”
That’s it for today. Thanks for reading. Log on to my website www.BudBilanich.com for more common sense. Check out my other blog: www.CommonSenseGuy.com for common sense advice on leading people and running a small business.
I’ll see you around the web, and at Alex’s Lemonade Stand.
Bud
PS: Speaking of Alex’s Lemonade Stand – my fundraising page is still open. Please go to www.FirstGiving.com/TheCommonSenseGuy to read Alex’s inspiring story and to donate if you can.
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