Lawrence Michael Franks – 50th Reunion Essay

Lawrence Michael Franks

3233 1st Pl. N.

Arlington, VA 22201

lmfranks@earthlink.net

703-528-8603

Spouse(s): Teresa Tokuno (1970-88); Ellen Berelson (1994-present)

Education: Yale BA 1965; Clark University MA 1973

National Service: US Peace Corps 1969-71 (Kenya)

Career: Sr. Mgt. Consultant, Technology & Innovation (gov’t. & nonprofit); owner of two video production companies (17 yrs.); TV Producer & Distance Learning Consultant, retired 2007.

Avocations: Serving as Trustee and officer of The Theodore H. Barth Foundation, Inc. Trustee of Arena Stage, Washington, DC. Avid theatergoer and “consumer of culture” (opera, music dance, all performing arts).

College: Morse

It’s a daunting task: reduce a lifetime to 500 words. Here’s what it finally boiled down to.

Graduation/Commencement—One of the bigger mistakes of my time at Yale was skipping commencement to cram in a few extra days “back home” with old buddies before joining the Peace Corps. That left my time at Yale an “unfinished chapter” in my life; now I find I hate to leave things unfinished.

Peace Corps—Two of the best years of my life. Met so many interesting people; learned more about work and life in those two years than in any comparable time span. Took on responsibility far beyond what I expected to face at that early juncture, and thrived. Living overseas started satisfying an unfocused wanderlust that had always been with me.

Marriage—Married two very fine women; only managed to hang on to one of them. I’m still wrestling with the challenge of being a full-time, empathetic partner.

Career—I figured out early on that a career in medicine or law wasn’t my cup of tea. Without deliberately setting about a building a “creative” career, I was lucky to find satisfaction as a video writer/director/producer; for me it was a perfect conjoining of my left-brain fascination with tech and gadgets (there are lots of cool toys in the television industry) and my right-brain fascination with the art of communication and engagement.Even my work as a management consultant and distance-learning analyst represented a satisfying balance of left-brain analytical rigor and right-brain “artistic” creativity.

Epiphanies—Family is irreplaceable. I wish I’d had a better grasp of this before my father died, before we could have a couple of important conversations that never happened. I’m glad I learned this in time to have those talks with my mom. I also learned that really important issues, the life-and-death kind, are seldom simple binary constructs. Early example: At Yale, in our era, I became fairly radicalized by the Vietnam War and its attendant disappointments (q.v. the Pentagon Papers, the Nixon tapes, etc.). When I spent a half year living in Vietnam while in graduate school, I gained a much more profound insight into that conflict and the human complexities enmeshed within it. Since then, the segue from the radical ’60s, to the Reagan era, to now, has also engendered in me a deeper understanding of complacency as a constant pitfall I need to work harder at avoiding. I’m bothered by the feeling that I should have done more, or worked harder, to foster progressive change—but I’m also determined to do more in the time I have left.

What Yale did for me—The courses I remember the best, and value the most, were the ones I “had” to take, under the old distributional requirements. My prime takeaways from Yale: being open to new things and ideas is the source of much serendipity; lifelong learning is infinitely rewarding; one’s life is in a rut only if you allow it to happen. And that’s it in 500 words.