Putting the Citizen in Global

(originally posted to the Global Citizenship blog at the Thunderbird Graduate School of International Management)

Putting the Citizen in Global

Over the past month or so I have been reminded of what it might mean to be a global citizen and how our classmates, peers, business partners and others from the larger Thunderbird world exemplify that global citizenship. This reminder came in two forms – a fellow TBird and friend we wish to honor, and the TBirds who choose to honor him – as part of one effort. Let me explain. When I came to Thunderbird in the Fall of 1989, one of the first people I met was Donny Howell.

Donny and I hit it off early on in the semester and after a couple of road trips and some on-campus adventures at the pool and playing rugby, our friendship was sealed. In the Fall of 1990, Sumner Wyman chose Donny and me to serve on the same InterAd team, so I finished my time in Glendale before heading to Germany in that intensive manner with Donny and our other fantastic teammates. As fond as these memories are, this is not just about my relationship with Donny, it is about Donny’s relationship and affect on so many other people. And the fact that Donny is no longer with us, just adds to that sense of his presence in some way.

While at Thunderbird, Donny was the ASLC President, a Pub Bartender and he wrote a regular column for Das Tor, “Donny’s Wild Kingdom,” just for starters. And there was so much more beyond Thunderbird for Donny. He traveled the world as a member of the Circumnavigators Club, the place for those that have truly circled the world, which Donny had done. The primary purpose of that club – “Through Friendship, To Leave This World A Little Better than We Found It.” – says a lot about how many of us saw Donny and saw our role as Thunderbird global citizens.

Many of us will remember the pictures of Donny from his many journeys (and the stories that went with them). I recall a picture of him with a group of monks and after he told me the story of meeting them, he took a necklace off his neck and handed it to me. “Take this, it is a fertility symbol that was given to me,” he said with that Belushi smile. “You should have it.” This was his style. We all have stories like that.

Donny left us too soon in the year 2005. He was only 42. He was living in Hawaii, surfing every morning before work, at the top of his game working for Marriot and loving life. That love of life is something that anyone who met Donny immediately recognized and we all remember him fondly. My memories have been reawakened by digging for pictures and scanning to create a small memorial album for Donny on Facebook, as well as sending them on to the T-bird rugby page.

I found a clipping of a Fall 1989 Das Tor column concerning one of our early adventures and was brought back to those days. I also found his final column from December 1990, where he meditated on graduation. I read the final two paragraphs of that column out loud to my wife, who never had the chance to meet Donny. They say it pretty well and I share them here for all our global citizenry, those long graduated and those still to walk in the long black-robed line:

“Find a great and fulfilling job, but don’t lose sight of the fact that a job is only part of a great and fulfilling life. Drink great wines, listen to wonderful music, play with children, learn to fly an airplane, visit the most exotic place you can imagine, read the finest books ever written, walk in the forest at midnight, help the hungry, get married, have children, help save the environment, do a triathlon. Do everything you have always wanted to do and make the time and plans to achieve your life’s dreams.

We’re Thunderbirds and the world is our playground. This isn’t graduation, it is recess. It is time to leave the classroom and act out our dreams on the stage of reality. Break a leg.”

This is pure Donny and I believe he was one example of a global citizen, as we try to picture ourselves. He surely loved Thunderbird with all his heart – a heart that beat furiously and passionately for too short a time on this earth. Which brings me to that second reminder I received. In his honor, a group of classmates from overlapping semesters is gathering funds to donate to the Tower Restoration, in particular to “buy some floor space for Donny” in the new T-bird Pub location.

I thought we might raise $500 so we could buy a square to remember him by, but we have already raised over $1,000 and the donations keep coming. Here are Donny’s friends from all over the country and the world, sending checks and wire transfers in remembrance of their fellow traveler in life. These too are exemplary global citizens of the Thunderbird kind. My hat is off to them and to all of you who live those fulfilling lives. This is global citizenship to me.

Original blog url: http://knowledgenetwork.thunderbird.edu/globalcitizenship/2009/03/30/howell/