VIEWPOINT: Keep Things In Perspective

It’s no secret. These are challenging economic times. Cash is tight. People are being asked to do more with less. The stock market is up one day and down the next. The country’s first recession in nearly two decades is clearly taking its toll, but despite the current economic uncertainty, it’s important to keep things in perspective. Business conditions may be tough, but things could be a lot tougher.

I was reminded of that fact when informed of the recent death of Joe Cheshire, Southeast District Sales Manager for LiphaTech Inc. Cheshire passed away after a two-year battle with cancer, leaving behind a wife and two children. He was only 48.

Unfortunately, it is often only in death that we learn about someone’s extraordinary life. How many times have you attended a colleague’s funeral only to discover – in hindsight – that they were a multi-talented person with a wide range of interests and accomplishments, yet you viewed them only through the narrow perspective of their professional life? That was certainly the case with Joe Cheshire, a man liked and respected by his co-workers, but someone I had little contact with except at industry trade shows and educational events. Little did I know what I was missing.

According to his obituary in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Cheshire was an Eagle Scout, varsity football player and state champion wrestler. A graduate of the University of Georgia, he earned his Ph.D. in entomology from the University of Missouri – Columbia. Following graduate school, he joined the faculty of the University of Georgia as an assistant professor in the Department of Entomology. An innovative thinker, Cheshire was the developer of the Bugvac, one of the first vacuum devices developed specifically for the structural pest control industry.

By all accounts, Cheshire’s most lasting legacy – in addition to his two children, Mayson, 15, and Katie, 12 – was the courage he exhibited in battling ocular melanoma during the past two years, traveling to the Wills Eye Clinic in Philadelphia, Pa., and the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., to receive treatment before succumbing to the disease on February 10th. As his obituary stated, Cheshire “embraced that battle with the same fervor with which he embraced life.”

So take the time to get to know the “Joe Cheshires” in your workplace, your civic groups, your community and your industry. They’re the people that make this country strong, regardless of the state of the economy.

The author is publisher of PCT magazine.