John G. O’Leary – 50th Reunion Essay

John G. O’Leary

31A Grove Street

Chestnut Hill, MA 02467

BusinessLessonsFromRock@gmail.com

617-739-9772

Child(ren): Kimberly Fradelis (1973)

Grandchild(ren): Brennan Fradelis (1997), Courtney Fradelis (1999)

Career: Management consultant for 35 years; working musician for 50 years.

Avocations: Music, personal development, alternative medicine, spirituality

College: Silliman

Looking back a half century, I guess I didn’t wind up where I expected to be. I had dreams of glory as a musician, but the hit records eluded me. I assumed I would eventually find marital bliss, but I never wed. And I thought I’d have some literary success, but not much so far.

Yet Tom Rush sang it best. “No regrets.” This has been a carnival ride with amazing twists and turns. I never dreamed I’d live for a month with the Grateful Dead, share dressing rooms with dozens of R&R Hall of Fame acts like Joni Mitchell and Eric Clapton, run as an independent candidate for US President, or contribute to thousands of leaders as a business consultant, working with luminaries like Peter Senge, Werner Erhard, and Tom Peters. And the roller coaster just keeps picking up speed.

One surprise was realizing that my early interest in consciousness-raising (expressed in trivial activities on Silliman weekends) was a weak signal of a serious commitment later. I’ve followed a macrobiotic diet for the last 35 years, led est seminars for a decade, and been a meditator (TM) for almost a half century and a teacher of non-traditional spiritual practices for the last 25 years. I had zero interest in any of this when I hit New Haven in 1965 as a Catholic school graduate eying an academic career in Ancient Greek.

These personal development pursuits led me to management training and executive coaching in the early 1980s. Since then I’ve been able to pass on some leadership (and life) lessons learned from boardrooms, bars, and beyond. My blog, BusinessLessonsFromRock.com, features the lessons learned from my rock and roll days.

I should add that it’s because of Yale that I was afflicted with the dreaded rockin’ pneumonia and boogie-woogie flu—for which there’s no known antibody response. In the warmer months you’ll find me playing bottle-neck slide guitar most weekends on the sidewalks of Boston. (Why the street? Disintermediation. You can look it up.) Father Howard, my high school Greek teacher, was dispirited to find me playing for tips in the Public Garden a year ago—surrounded by my usual retinue of urban eccentrics—until I mentioned to him that I haven’t given up my day job.

How’s Yale to blame? Well, it was the most musical environment I ever landed in—with brilliant a cappella groups, the Beatles blasting out of every entryway, and the “almost famous” rock band I joined (The Morning) that launched my music career. Also, nearly every classmate I knew took popular music extremely seriously—and helped me deconstruct Lennon-McCartney songs and explicate obscure folk-rock lyrics. (Remember, we began our classes at Yale only seven weeks after Dylan made his ground-breaking discovery of electricity.)

All in all, a great life so far—if defined as intense, meaningful, aspiring to a higher good, inspired by a higher intelligence. And perhaps because I never cared much about finding happiness, it seems to have found me. (One shocking bonus was learning I have a daughter and grandkids, whom I’m now getting to know.) Here’s one vote for there’s something to be said for the road less traveled.