I was mentally pinching myself.  Seated around the dinner table were my team-mates and Howard and Jeanne Hendricks. He had been a conference speaker for our organization many times.  He was notoriously funny and to the point.  The consummate teacher, he could turn a phrase into a long term memory.

What an amazing evening!  As we feasted on barbecue, they shared many of their stories and their wisdom. We laughed; we cried. We asked questions- tons of questions.  They were so gracious to invest the time with us.

What impressed me the most was Dr. Hendricks’ deliberate invitation to draw  Jeanne into the conversation.  One of us would ask him a question, and he would look across the table at Jeanne and say, “Jeanne can tell you more about that than I can.”  While he could have regaled us with many stories of his own, he chose to make it…