Being a genius

I decided to write a blog about Jim, not about how I'm coping with the loss of Jim. Unfortunately there just wasn't enough time to post all the blogs that I wanted to about Jim before he passed away. He's an amazing person and I just need to write a few more posts about him.

So, that being said - what I'm going to talk about today is the fact that my husband was a sheer genius with corrugated cardboard. When Jim and I first met and he explained what he did for a living, my first response was..."so, you cut out boxes?". Let me tell you that a Packaging Engineer does a heck of a lot more than cut out boxes. Anything you buy - anything - comes in a package. And chances are, it was shipped to where ever you bought it. And if you bought it and whatever it is still works, isn't crushed, dinged or wet, then the packaging engineer did their job.

Over the years Jim has packaged everything from cleaners to poultry to snowblowers to toilets. He was hired into International Paper (IP) at just the right time. Jim was laid off from his previous company the week before we closed on our first house. But the timing was right and two brothers who ran the IP Geneva plant hired Jim. About a year or two after that Jim applied for a promotion to Charlotte, NC and got it.

We've moved three times with International Paper. Each time was a great move for us. IP makes moving painless. And of course, our last move was to Wisconsin, a location in which we both really wanted to be.

Jim's worked with a lot of people. Not just at IP - Jim also met with a lot of clients and worked with some of their designers, as well. I've never seen someone get so excited about boxes. Jim would come home with his eyes gleaming and say things like "I figured out a new, inexpensive toilet pack and it's awesome!" or "the crush test passed!". He has patents on a number of boxes, including a tomato box that you're seeing at the grocery store all the time, you just didn't know it was Jim's design. (Or, for that matter, you didn't notice that a lot of times you're picking tomatoes out of the boxes they were shipped in!)

Jim got to knowing how good he was. I think he always knew, of course he knew - he was Jim. But once he got to IP, they hooked him up with a mentor that really brought out Jim's talent. And after that, it was like a snowball. Jim got better and better. He got to train a slew of new kids fresh out of college. I'm certainly not immortalizing Jim - he could also get very annoyed. If Jim didn't think you were a good designer, I imagine he'd let you know it. There have been a few designers over the years that Jim really crabbed about. On occasion it was personality conflict, but more often than not it was the simple fact that Jim didn't think they were a good designer. He hated correcting work that wasn't any good. Jim was a measure twice, cut once kind of guy.

In the last five or six years or so, Jim got hooked into a group of a very few designers that are really good. And I think then Jim knew how good he was. These are the types of guys that make you want to come to work every day. They were his support network through annoyances, troubled times, or when he had to correct other peoples' work. Sometimes I could hear him call one of them when he was annoyed and by the time he got off the phone he was doubled over in laughter. Sometimes he'd laugh so hard at something one of them had said that he'd actually have tears in his eyes.

These are the kinds of guys (Jim included) that get an idea for a pack at 8:30 at night and call to talk about it with another designer. Not because they have to, but because they want to. I imagine they're all a lot like Jim: when their kids open a Christmas gift, dad spends about 10 minutes looking at the box. Case in point - the wonderful gift playhouse made completely of corrugated cardboard that Jim's mentor made for the kids. Check this out. And he somehow got the Jets logo in there. These guys are the pinnacle of creativity. These guys lifted Jim up. Finding a designer worthy of respect in Jim's mind was tough. And certainly it would be tough to crack the skin on this group because they know just how good they are. But it's not just that. They treat each other like brothers. No one is excluded from the merciless teasing or practical jokes. Even when Jim was sick they were still making him laugh and keeping him in the loop. They even called and talked to him about designs. I was so appreciative - I think he really needed that.

If ever a designer had the potential to break into the group, it was the other IP designer that was here in Kohler with Jim. Unfortunately Nick left IP about a month ago to move closer to home and take a better career opportunity. But every time Jim saw Nick, he felt better. Poor Nick really never knew Jim without cancer. Jim hired Nick in...June? And the following September Jim was diagnosed. It was Nick that originally drove Jim to the hospital. Nick also fielded the Kohler work while Jim was in treatment. After diagnosis when Jim went into work, I could see glimpses of the old Jim. He was normal after a day of working with Nick. Not depressed or someone with cancer. He was just Jim. And Jim thought Nick was a good designer. And for Jim to say that...keep cutting out boxes, Nick. You're really good.

In any case, over our lifetimes I'm sure we'll all work at a number of places and possibly span more than one career. Packaging was the only thing Jim ever wanted to do. And no wonder. He was so good at it. He had an amazing, funny, haughty group of guys that acted as his sounding boards, his friends, and his confidantes. Wouldn't you want to keep going into the office day after day if you had a group like that? Wouldn't it inspire you to do more? Design cooler stuff? It certainly did for Jim. He had great managers and coworkers. And he knew he'd found his niche at IP. I'd call it luck, but the fact of the matter is that he was Jim. He was just that good. He found his place and his cohorts because he truly cared about the job.