I. The impact of unexpected careers
Over 48 years so many have asked, "How did you go fr0m criminal prosecutor to hospital CEO?" The answer is so absurd many disbelieve it.
In 1975, my life was a river flowing predictably. Bruce Trumm (aka "Pink Panther") earthquaked that river diverting it into the lives of thousands I would never have encountered and delivering me to hospitals with river names: Riverside Episcopal* and Riverside Methodist.
Bruce touches you who read this. Absent him, there is no Journal and absolutely NO chance I would have run three hospital systems, started giant OhioHealth, launched an international T.V. show seen by millions, put out best-selling books, produced four televised healthcare documentaries...
No one would know of Radical Loving Care, The Mother Test or this writing. There would be no Riverside-based hospice in Columbus or "Thursday's Baby" in Nashville. Baptist Hospital would likely have gone bankrupt.
II. "Pink Panther?"
We expect family to shape us, not casual contacts. I knew Bruce vaguely as a fellow church board member. The polio that crippled him caused him to shuffle and he would sometimes approach unheard. He loved his nickname: "Pink Panther." He ran the Toledo hospital named Riverside (no connection to Riverside Methodist.) I was a federal crimes prosecutor headed back to private practice.
It took three tries for Bruce to convince me to accept his outlandish offer to help him run Riverside. I knew nothing about healthcare.
"Why me?" I asked Pink Panther. "I have zero training. You have hundreds of other choices."
"After polio slowed me down, I studied people more carefully," he said. "I watched you in board meetings. You're a leader."
It was the only reason he ever gave.
Caregivers and leaders change so many lives. Did someone unexpected change yours?
-Erie Chapman
*Shockingly, Google produced NO pictures of Bruce, who died in 1984. After 119 years the hospital, pictured, closed in 2002 (reopened elsewhere as St. Ann's). The building where we worked was demolished in 2018.
