My First Article - from 1978

For some years now I have been paying to maintain a domain name of my own name: duncancmcdougall.com.  Though it was originally intended to become a site from which people could access me in my consulting role, with my growing involvement internationally over the past six years, I have not been focused on consulting, and the site's maintenance has taken on a different purpose.  It is the only place on the web where my older articles can be found.

Last weekend (while reorganizing my computer's overloaded hard drive!) I discovered a .pdf file of my very first published article, from the November-December, 1978, issue of the Harvard Business Review (HBR).  With the help of my son (and webmaster) Jesse, that article is now found at the link that follows this post.  But please, before going there, read its story.

The article is the outcome of a visit of my Muse during an all night hospital vigil with my young wife Shirley, who was experiencing serious abdominal pain in the middle of her second pregnancy.  Shirl had been visiting her parents' home in Westborough, Massachusetts, that week, while I was teaching a summer-school class at Plymouth State College (now PSU) in New Hampshire. When  I received a call from my sister-in-law Joan Kimball telling me that Shirl was going to the Framingham Union Hospital, I drove south at once to be with her.  We all feared that the pregnancy might be in jeopardy, but, thank God, Jesse was doing fine in there.  However, Shirl was in excruciating pain, and was unable to eat or drink anything without losing it a few minutes later.  A series of diagnoses were hypothesized, and ruled out, one by one.  The one my Dad, Mac, had told me over the telephone to have them check for, a bowel obstruction, was not seriously considered at the hospital's emergency room, as Shirl had been examined with a stethoscope, and had been said to have "normal bowel sounds."  So, Shirl was admitted for the night.  Because of her pregnancy, the hospital's emergency room doctors chose not to take an x-ray of her abdomen, a decision with which Shirl concurred, so as not to risk harming our baby.

As Shirl lay sedated that night, I, her husband, spending the night at her bedside in a state of worry and sleepless nervousness, borrowed a pad of lined paper from the nurses' station, and with a borrowed pencil, wrote the article that I called "The Corporate Ratchet."

On the following Tuesday, after Shirl had remained in the hospital for four agonizing days, and was in danger of starving to death if the problem were not solved soon, Basil Kimball, Shirl's father, called an older surgeon that he knew from Worcester, and asked him to examine her.  That 80 year-old doctor examined Shirl, said he suspected an obstructed bowel, and asked Shirl to allow one x-ray.  The x-ray revealed the obstruction.  The doctor operated within the hour, and a week later Shirl was back on solid food, as good as new.  Praise God for Shirl's father's wisdom.

A week or so later, I typed up the linked article (below), and sent it to the HBR. The HBR editors accepted it for their then-new section of short thought-pieces called, "Ideas for Action." They changed almost nothing, except for the title.

Postscripts

• My Muse visits me at strange times.  But in 1978 we were in a time of 12% per year inflation, so I guess she knew what she was doing.  I later learned that this article was being assigned to some Harvard MBA students in a management accounting course.
• Tomorrow we shall be driving to France to honor Basil Kimball's service during World War II.  It is fitting that we do so.  Basil loved his family, loved his country, and lived a righteous life in service to God.  May Basil rest in peace, knowing that we in his family love him still, and hold him in the highest regard.

Link to the article:
http://www.duncancmcdougall.com/articles/the-corporate-ratchet-effect-on-spiraling-inflation/.

A Love Story: "I once met a girl named Maria"

I met Maria Kimball when she was about three years old.

When I first met my wife Shirley, back in 1972, we both lived in Westborough (also spelled "Westboro"), Massachusetts.  Shirl was about to enter her senior year at college, so, at 28, I was "robbing the cradle" a bit in asking her for a date.

Perhaps recognizing that age discrepancy, or perhaps simply because I had somehow offended her when first we met, Shirl's mother "invited me not to visit at the house" for over a year, by which time Shirl and I were engaged to be married. (Thankfully, Barbara Kimball and I have since come to love one another.  Barbara is as fine a mother-in-law as I can imagine.)  Hence, while I had heard about the battered Puerto Rican infant that Shirl's older sister had brought home as a foster child from Boston City Hospital, where she worked as a nurse, I did not actually meet Maria until the summer of 1973, when she was almost three years old.

At three, Maria still did not talk, and often banged her head on the floor in frustration and anger when she could not make her needs known.  Maria was sequentially diagnosed as autistic, as developmentally disabled, as brain-damaged, and as many other things by various specialists.  But her adoptive mother, Joan (Kimball) Cichowski, refused to accept that she was never going to develop.  Joan, always a professional nurse and always a dogged positivist, soldiered on, working with Maria, with the help of her parents, Basil and Barbara Kimball, of Barbara's mother Flora Landon, and of siblings David and Shirley Kimball.  So, once she got to Westboro, Maria was never without caring adults.

Maria gradually learned to walk, to talk, and then to play with toys, to do complex puzzles, and to remember the birthdays and names of every one of her relatives, be they aunts, uncles, cousins, or second-cousins.  She would even ask by name about everyone's pets.  She learned to ice skate, and to dance.  (And, she liked my singing, and would often ask me to sing for her!)  In the 1980s, before Joan and Dick Cichowski were married, I once took Maria to a "father-daughter" dance put on by the Westboro Girl Scouts.

Maria became a well-loved special education student in the Westboro Schools, and an active competitor and medalist in the figure skating competitions of the Massachusetts Special Olympics.  After graduating from high school, Maria went to work at a Papa Gino's Pizzeria in town, and continued to be active in the regional association for disabled adults.  There, in 2009, at about age 40, she met Ian DeCew.  Ian is a tall man, a few years older than Maria, who is also disabled, but who has a lovely daughter Callie by a previous marriage.  Though partially disabled, Ian is able to work and to drive, and he and Maria began dating in 2009, with the blessings of both their families.

A few years ago, Maria was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis.  It is a progressive disease that slowly erodes the nervous control of one's muscles by removing the insulation from the nerves, causing the brain's signals to dissipate in the body before reaching their intended muscle cells.  It is a cruelly weakening disease, but it is treatable, and Maria has begun treatment.  Still, MS has taken away her skating.

Ian has reacted to Maria's condition as a supportive friend and with great love and loyalty.  He has won the hearts of our family.  He has attended several Christmas, Easter and Thanksgiving events in the Kimball-Cichowski home.  Ian is an avid reader, and reads to Maria often.  Maria's maturation in the two years she has known Ian is amazing to observe.  She has blossomed into an active, articulate, and interested young woman.

Yesterday, on the 11th of June, 2011, at the Evangelical Congregational Church of Westborough, Ian and Maria were united in Holy Matrimony.  There were dozens of young people on hand, for Dick Cichowski brought three sisters and a brother for Maria when he married into the family, all of whom now have children of their own, and six of Maria's first cousins came to Westboro for the wedding, including our four children, Jamie from Orlando, Florida, Jesse from Hartland, Vermont, Piper from Aspen, Colorado, and Alexander, from Plymouth, New Hampshire, and David Kimball's two, Christopher and Kelly, who both brought their spouses.  Add in all of us "older folks," and it became a sizable event, featuring a formal church wedding followed by a lively reception at the Knights of Columbus Hall in Westboro.

My mother-in-law Barbara Kimball, 95, came to the reception with her son David and our son Jamie, who brought her from the local nursing home in her wheelchair.  Barbara entered the K. of C. Hall, and received a standing ovation, second only to that given to the bride and groom themselves. 

Maria was lovely in her wedding gown.  She has never smiled so much, never appeared so happy.  Ian and Maria went over to see Joan and Dick Cichowski, and told them "Thank you for the wedding." Then Ian said, "I have never in my life had such a happy day."

It was a blessed atmosphere.  All of us felt it:  Amazing Grace.