About Pete Sinclair
I was sad to read that my old professor and probably the most influential teacher I ever had died in late November 2015, just days before I left Summit. I was in Newport, OR the day he died, contemplating building a new company. There was nobody around to tell me and I was just about to write him, something I’d do about every five to seven years or so and I was long overdue to drop him a note this time.
http://publications.americanalpineclub.org/articles/13201213593/Leon-Russell-Pete-Sinclair-19352015
He was unquestionably the most brutal teacher I ever had. I don’t know why he took me under his wing, but I think it had something to do with my resilience to his barbs and my general good or possibly naïve nature in school.
Early in our relationship, I wrote a paper and was scheduled to meet with him in his office to go over it. He wouldn’t unlock the door and instead slowly slid the paper under the door at me without saying a word to drive the point home that he was on the other side pushing it out the door, as I soon discovered that it meant my paper completely sucked. Knowing Pete now, and remembering the incident, I’m guessing he was laughing like hell and stifling it as he slid the paper under the door. He never said one word.
I soon learned that if we were scheduled to meet and his door was closed, it meant I had to try again. Back then, there was no word processing. Everything was typed, so it wasn’t as simple as an edit and a resubmission. It would be like getting a couple of sentences wrong and having to throw the whole thing away and start over. I was a very slow typist and so this meant hours of work.
I still hear Pete in my head when I write. I still find myself correcting the same mistakes he’d correct like he was sitting here with his dry wit making fun of me. He was the one guy who could call me stupid without me feeling like I was stupid. He had a way of saying things that seemed to come from a guy who spent way too much time in the wilderness. He measured every word before it came out of his mouth. It was like listening to someone twice his own age.
He told some great stories. Just one of my favorites was when he went to Alaska alone to trace a river via kayak and apparently forgot about how long he was gone. Everyone was expecting him back in a matter of weeks. He thought they understood that he’d be out there for months. It wasn’t until a rescue party was paddling up stream past him looking for Pete Sinclair that he thought it might be a good idea to tell someone. I can just see Pete sitting there with a grin on his face, gnawing on some jerky or something watching them paddle by.
Pete joined the board of directors of my boat business and his advice was outstanding. He always offered interesting insights and a unique way of looking at things. He never stopped teaching or admiring others who did great work with their hands or their brains. He said things that still make me laugh. There were four of us young guys fresh out of college packed in my Saab along with Pete driving on Bainbridge Island and I still remember the exact intersection in town where we’d seen some hottie walking across the street and we all commented. Pete, very dryly, says, do you have an umbrella in here? I said no, why? He said, because I need to get out of this hormone storm. I've never driven through that same intersection and not thought of him.
He also said once about relationship challenges, that you can’t have real intimacy without conflict and that simple idea has stuck with me all these years. His books are a joy to read and he writes just like he talks, with just enough words to get the job done.
Shortly before I finished my BA, I received this big folder in the mail from Pete. Inside were copies of letters that went back and forth between this Provost and Pete that went all the way to the internship’s governing board without my knowledge. What I didn’t know was that a Provost had challenged my internship validity because he didn’t believe that my promotions were consistent with the idea of an internship. Bob Perry promoted me from intern to VP, then President while I was in my internship. Bob did it in part to make fun of my over-confidence in my belief that I could fix his business, something I did. I knew nothing about what I was doing and I was scrambling every day to live up to the role. I just dove on the work at all hours and like most internships, I wasn’t paid much to do it. That work is what eventually led to me buying the business in 1983 and started me on a path of starting, building and fixing companies.
The Provost had disqualified my internship without my knowledge and Pete sliced and diced the guy in letters, pointing out that I was achieving great things, something the school should encourage rather than discourage and that his thinking was entirely backwards. The other board members agreed. As I read the letters Pete wrote, tears were streaming down my face because I had no idea anyone had gone to bat for me. Pete was the one who got me the internship in the first place and he understood just how serious it was to me. He was brutal as hell, but he’d always be there for you at the same time.
Pete was someone who had a dramatic impact on my life and he exemplified someone who lived with real commitment to doing things right. The world would be a heck of a lot better place if there were more people like him.
When I meet with him at a Starbucks about ten years ago, I asked him why he stopped climbing. He said, “Well, you’re up on the mountain, and God is dropping rocks on your head, telling you to get off, and I decided it was time to listen.” It was the last time I saw him. I loved seeing Pete, but I always knew I’d spend about ten minutes enduring his wrath in one form or another. He always had something to tease me about. It was usually something I was wearing or my political views. I can just hear the conversation in my head if I visit his grave. “Pete, you were supposed to tell me you died.” Pete, after a moment of silence, “Nice shoes.”
Pete will never stop influencing me.