The People We Meet

What shapes our lives?

To a remarkable degree, it’s people we meet, largely by coincidence, not by anyone’s plan.

Reflect on that. Think back on the people who came into your life purely by coincidence, and how they changed your life, for better or worse.

Which changed you most?

I’ll tell you of one from my life, now seven decades long.

I met him in the late 1980s, on a once-in-a-lifetime adventure, a trip to Braemar, Scotland, to shoot driven grouse. The trip was a gift from a grateful client who had sold his company, a “liquidity event,” as the bankers call them.

By tradition, a grouse shooting party consists of nine guns. One of these in my client’s regular annual party could not make it that year, so he invited me to fill the gap in the line. (Again by tradition, the number of stone butts in a line on a grouse moor is nine).

The night my wife and I arrived at the Inn in Braemar (home of Balmoral, the British monarch’s Scottish estate) we went to our host’s room for a welcoming drink. He showed me a list of the nine guns in our party. I recognized one name, from reading it often in the American Field: Edward L. Baker.

Next morning at breakfast I went to Ted’s table and introduced myself with, “Mr. Baker, I sure liked your dog Builder’s Addition.” That ice breaker led to a huge change in my life, one that has given me countless hours of fun and adventures.

When we arrived home I wrote up a little journal of the shoot and put it in a booklet together with snap shots and sent one to each of the guns. A few days later Ted Baker called and invited me to report the Florida Open All-Age Championship. I confessed I had never reported a field trial and doubted the Field would accept me, but Ted said not to worry. From that came my second and third careers, avocations really, reporting trials and writing stories, fictional and non, about the great sport. They have given me countless hours of pleasure.

The client who took me to Scotland was William G. Pannill of Martinsville, Virginia and thanks to the “liquidity event” later of Palm Beach.