Uncommon People I Have Known

The title of this book would appear to say a great deal about its subject matter. Yet a question continues to nag. What makes a person uncommon? Why should such people be identified and have a book devoted to them?

It is quite clear that uncommon people are not common. By definition they are rare; the dictionary suggests they appear infrequently. That does not necessarily mean they have special attributes. So we have to go beyond their scarcity to discover what it is that makes them worth our attention. Again, the dictionary provides us a clue. The key synonym it provides for uncommon is exceptional. There we find an array of descriptors that reveal uncommon people as truly special: outstanding, excellent, brilliant, extraordinary, and incomparable. While I will not argue that the people in this book possess all these traits, they do have enough of them. It is fair to say they are uncommon, and I am proud that I knew them.

Not all essays appearing here were written for this book. Indeed, two appeared in scholarly journals, one as a lengthy obituary about John W. Macy, Jr. and another as an introduction to a symposium about the work of Neely Gardner, who died in 1987. Another was written and published in a book I edited on the history of the Washington Public Affairs Center. It covered the career of Edward J. Perkins. Three essays were written at the time of the deaths of important people in my life, Edwin F. Self, Diogo Lordello de Mello, and Amin Alimard. The essay about Edward C. Gallas was also written at the time of his death in 2010. One chapter, about John P. Thomas, contains very little of my writing. John had published a book, My Saints Alive, that contained brief but lively accounts of his life and make for great reading. The book is about his continued relations with two dead and deeply loved wives. The chapter about Frederick Fisher contains a mixture of things. It includes much of what Fred has provocatively written about his early days but also contains pieces I have written and published about his consulting work.

Four chapters were prepared specifically for this book (Edwin A. Bock, Sid Fleischman, Margarida Costa Batista, and Lem Truong). Another, about George B. Hartzog, Jr., is an original for this book but it builds on material I wrote for a book, George B.Hartzog, Jr., A Great Director of the National Parks Service, published by the Clemson University Press in 2011.

As has already been reported and also indicated in the book's title, these uncommon people have all been my friends. The character of our associations, however, has differed greatly; and specific details about these relationships are best covered in the individual chapters. There is one common element, though, that will be found in 13 of the 15 chapters. That special link developed from my work as a university professor of Public Administration. I was tied to these great individuals because we were all Public Administration people, either working directly for government, serving in allied fields, or teaching in the discipline. The biographies of these uncommon people should therefore have special meaning for readers involved, in some way, in Public Administration. The other two people in this book were friends from childhood. It's a great joy to report that such old chums have done so very well.