Finneran: Of Mothers and Brothers

Friday, March 06, 2020

Tom Finneran, GoLocalWorcester MINDSETTER™

Tom Finneran

They were titans in life, two American kids on the make.

And, as is true with most American kids, they needed a good hard boot in the rear end along the way.

Dennis Picard ran Raytheon to soaring success during his stewardship as CEO. Jack Welch brought GE to dazzling heights during his years as CEO. Success was their shared trademark, sparked by that kick in the fanny at a critical time.

Picard was a local, a North Providence kid from a working-class family, without a trace of privilege in his life. He attended Catholic school—LaSalle Academy—where the Christian Brothers ruled the roost. Their specialty was corporal punishment, often delivered via a punch to the head followed up by a body slam into the blackboard or onto the schoolyard pavement. Apparently, such pedagogical methods have their uses. I have several childhood friends who can testify to the attention-getting bone-bruising keep quiet in class techniques of the Brothers.

As Picard himself said, “I was a punk kid and the Christian Brothers let me know. They straightened me right out.” Thus are legends born, at the business end of a knuckle sandwich. Not surprisingly, after such loving interventions, this largely self-taught engineer saw the world quite clearly as opportunities rose and as he turned Raytheon into a global defense technology leader. The Christian Brothers deserve a large portfolio of Raytheon stock for their contributions to world peace, curing Picard of his wayward impulses and setting him on the path to success.

Jack Welch was also a local, a kid out of Salem, Massachusetts. No Christian Brothers punching bag was he. Rather, it was his mother who had the outsized influence on him, sparing him a cotton-candy view of the real world. Welch’s family was also a working-class family, with neither pretensions nor privilege. His father was a railroad man, often away from the family for long stretches of time. Thus, his mother, with a prodigious capacity for numbers and with a mother’s tough realistic love, filled her son’s early life and framed his clear-eyed approach to the world.

He too was an engineer by training, with the competitive edge of a former athlete. It is often on the playing fields of youth that we learn how to win, how to lose, and how to carry ourselves and others forward.

Welch’s own recognition and words paid tribute to his mother’s firm shaping hand in his life, reminding me of deTocqueville’s quote…..”to what the singular prosperity and growing strength of that people (American) ought mainly to be attributed, I should reply: To the superiority of their women.”

For their love and their guidance, might we say thank you for special mothers and Christian Brothers.

Tom Finneran is the former Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, served as the head the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, and was a longstanding radio voice in Boston radio.