Remembering My Mentor, David Gergen

Levity. Brevity. Clarity. Charity.

Four words describing what every speech should contain so that it would speak to our individual and collective ethos, logos, and pathos.

These were among the many lessons that David Gergen, a commentator, editor, teacher, public servant, best-selling author, adviser to presidents and—above all—a patriot, liked teaching. They also characterize some of the many virtues David possessed.

The world lost David to Lewy body dementia July 10 at the age of 83. I hope he would pardon me as I forgo brevity in recalling my relationship with him.

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Although the many obituaries for David will recount his public service and accomplishments, I thought I’d write here about who he also was outside of the public spotlight—the values he lived.

I can speak to them because, apart from his many illustrious titles, David was my mentor. He was a mentor to many—among them, a crew of at least 13 former research assistants spanning multiple decades, who love him and his family, of which we feel we are a part.

David and Anne Gergen with me and my wife on the occasion of a surprise party that his past research assistants threw to honor his retirement from Harvard and the Center for Public Leadership.

On Mentorship

The origins of the word mentor come from Greek mythology. The son of Alcimus, Mentor took charge of Odysseus’s son Telemachus when Odysseus left for the Trojan War. Later, when Athena visited Telemachus, she disguised herself as Mentor to encourage Telemachus to stand up for worthy causes.

In other words, the original character named Mentor had a caregiver assignment; a second character, Athena, who assumed the identity of Mentor, provided encouragement and practical plans for dealing with personal dilemmas.

All of that described how David mentored us. He didn’t just inform. He educated us in the truest sense—meaning he helped us lead forth.

As David wrote about mentorship in his book Eyewitness to Power: The Essence of Leadership, Nixon to Clinton, “[I’m convinced that] a young person should either sign up with a bright, shining star who can serve as a mentor—in effect, become a tail to someone else’s kite.”

He was quite the kite. Without him, I don’t know that I would have gone to the Harvard Business School; worked with and be mentored by Clay Christensen; cofounded the nonprofit think tank, the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation; and created a career around writing, speaking, and teaching, as I have.

The first time I encountered David, I was a freshman at Yale. It was the fall of 1998.

David was a Yale trustee. He was giving a talk in Linsly-Chittenden Hall with Yale Law Professor Stephen Carter. I attended because I noticed that he was an editor-at-large at U.S. News & World Report, where my high school friend's father, James Fallows, was editor in chief.

Of all the talks freshman year, that hour and a half with David and Carter stayed with me. For years I could recite David’s entire speech about the generations of presidents who had shared the same formative experience—or crucible—and the impact that shared experience had on their governance until the Baby Boomer generation.

That history; those crucible moments; that sense of shared sacrifice; the concept of servant leadership; that sense of loyalty to country over party—they were all core values that David held. As I came to see when I helped him prepare for classes at Harvard’s Kennedy School on presidential leadership, those lessons weren’t surface level ideas in his mind. To be around him was to become infected with those same ideals and ways of understanding the world.

Clarity

David wasn’t just a great mentor. He was a wonderful manager. When I took the reins as David’s research assistant, David was understandably nervous about no longer having my predecessor at his side. I remember one fumble I made in coordinating with his administrative assistant early on around a television appearance. David minced no words. He called us both in to explain how things had to work. He was direct and blunt. He made clear it wouldn’t happen again—and it didn’t. I loved his clarity and candor.

Charity

I also cherished his kindness. David was a caring, empathic person. And yes, he was charitable. On a personal level, there were the dozen bottles of wine he purchased for me one year for the holidays—six pairs from the Old World (France) and New World (America) so I could start to learn the different grapes and the impact of the winemaking process.

And there was one day in April when we were walking between meetings near the Charles Hotel. I was briefing him for his next appearance, but I was distracted. And he could tell. He stopped us dead in our tracks, looked at me, and said, “Something’s not right with you, Michael. What’s going on?”

I told him that my girlfriend and I had just broken up. He immediately empathized. It didn’t matter what he was about to do. He made time for me—and helped me put things in perspective. I shared how important I thought it was to be working around the clock for him. That was my priority right now. And he reminded me that life isn’t just about the work—a lesson that’s served me.

Levity

David also knew how to have fun. Early in my tenure with him, the Center for Public Leadership, which he cofounded, held a retreat in southern Massachusetts by the ocean—which wasn’t warm.

There was a rock in the water, some 150 meters or so out. As David watched a few brave souls jump in the water, he suddenly ripped off his shirt, told me to do the same, and said, “Michael, we’re swimming to the rock.” So we did.

As we were headed back to shore, I remembered thinking as we swam slightly askew that if this somehow ended badly, it would not look too good. But David and I both got safely back to shore.

And he made his appearance on cable news that evening—just barely.

I’m sure there are dozens of cable news producers out there who remember David’s knack for being tardy—generally because he was living in the present and soaking up every minute of life wherever and with whomever he was.

When he worked for President Bill Clinton—someone not known for his punctuality—David was so late that the staff even called it “Gergen time,” I’m told.

I remember the calls coming in as we raced back to Cambridge on the heels of the swimming and the producer yelling at me to figure out where David was. I didn’t know the answer, but it worked out somehow. It always did. David could just fly into the seat with about 30 seconds to go, a woman named Phoebe somehow was always there to give him a bit of powder and flick the comb through his hair, and then he was in command answering the questions of the night—often helping to slow things down in our present time to put them into greater perspective. With clarity and brevity.

Part of his ability to do that wasn’t just from his experience walking with luminaries in the halls of places like the Democratic National Convention—an experience in 2004 that was formative for me as I gained an appreciation of David’s superpowers: understanding the arc and sweep of history and his ability to pull in analogies from that history to the present day—not to tell you what to think about a given issue per se, but more to help you understand how it might unfold over time and the different currents in play.

His capacity to put things in greater perspective also stemmed from David’s ability to see that we all have something to contribute and to learn from each other.

Valuing Each and Every Individual

He displayed that on a daily basis with me. When I would brief him on the day’s events and different people’s opinions, he never assumed or displayed that he somehow knew more than I did, even though he knew infinitely more. His patience with me—a young squirt with a relatively limited sense of history—was remarkable. As was his ability to keep asking questions: What do you think about this? How do you think it might play? Why is that important?

His curiosity was endless—even to the present day as we spent time together, whether in Lexington or on the Cape or in Cambridge, when he nicely attended one of my classes at Harvard. And he respected people’s opinions, even when he disagreed.

He didn’t just do that with me. I remember a couple occasions when he quoted his barber, Clinton, on cable news. That happened because he had taken the time to ask Clinton what he thought as well.

David, like my late mentor Clay Christensen, knew that each and every individual mattered. We all have something to contribute.

What an example for our country and the world—and for me, his mentee. It wasn’t just lip service. This curiosity and belief in each and every person was who David was.

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In my second year on the job with David, President George W. Bush made a surprising visit to Iraq over Thanksgiving to thank the troops. A television station unsurprisingly wanted David to come on to put things in perspective—but he was at a family gathering outside Philadelphia and I couldn’t reach him.

At some point I decided to go play tennis with my family—and on the way back, David called my cellphone.

I said to him, “Just give me one minute to find my keys and let myself in my house—and then I can tell you what’s going on.”

He responded, “It’s OK, Michael. I lose my keys all the time.”

I remembered thinking, “I’m not like you! I know where my keys are! I don’t have a million things going on!”

Years later I look back—and, while I typically don’t lose my keys, I marvel at how much I’ve tried to model large parts of my life on David’s example. I’m sure I don’t do it justice on any number of fronts: a pale imitation in a limited slice of the large world he inhabited. But I always aspire to be better—and to help others find their better angels, too.

Because David knew, in the words of one of his favorite poems, Invictus:

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

We could all master our fates. We could all captain our souls.

Even in passing, as he leaves behind his darling wife, Anne; his two wonderful children—Christopher and Katherine; his amazing grandchildren of whom he spoke lovingly; and all of us—his family of research assistants—David was the great mentor whose memory reminds us all of that fact. That we all can master our fates and captain our souls in search of the better angels of our nature and the common good, with some levity for good measure.

Amidst our grief, his memory is a blessing, a comfort, and a teachable moment.