Buck and the Art of the Handwritten Note

It's Sunday afternoon as I write this with Beethoven playing in the background taking me back to a much earlier time. I've just finished writing four hand-written notes, also taking me back to a practice that is now more a part of the past. They were to folks who were kind enough to visit the Sunday School class I teach and one who joined just today.

I was tempted to email them (I had addresses for at least a couple of them). I admit that I really enjoy the efficiency and speed of using internet correspondence plus I'm a much faster typist. But, I felt these notes were important enough that they required ink to paper. So I jotted simple but sincere wishes on personal stationery.

The very act brought to mind a great man I once knew who communicated in this very same way as he cast vision for a whole community. He was the late Buck Mickel, and if you were in anyway involved in the community of Greenville, S.C. prior to the late '90s, you knew him as one of the very "pillars" who "got things done" in that city.

Buck as accurately described in the South Carolina Business Hall of Fame: "retired chairman of Daniel International Corporation and retired vice chairman and president of Fluor Corporation, was respected as a giant in the Greenville community and the world of commerce, but he was an even bigger person when it came to helping others. Friends and acquaintances remember him as a thoughtful and generous person, an outstanding leader, and a willing mentor to those who sought his counsel." (More here: http://tinyurl.com/nxrq42)

This community giant, who with his wife and children played a major role in improving that part of the country, was a master at the art of the handwritten note. I'm a bit of a correspondence "pack rat" and I have many treasured notes from important people in my life in my files. Some of the most special were handwritten notes from Buck.

He wrote them by hand, always in red ink on his own simple personal stationery with his name at the top. Though the address on the envelope was typewritten by his faithful assistant Dottie, the notes were always scrawled in red in his unmistakable script. On one occasion I got two in one day as he had apparently had another thought after the first was sealed so he fired off another.

Former Greenville Mayor Bill Workman who worked with Buck for many years at Fluor Daniel, described these famous notes as Buck's "red bullets". They were sent to countless community leaders (and who knows how far beyond) with Buck's thoughts and observations of things that needed doing or to show appreciation for what had been done. This from a man who took it upon himself to keep a running list of the things that needed to be done in Greenville to make it a better city. If you visit the downtown area of Greenville you'll see the fruit of a lot of these ideas.

Buck "got it" in more ways than we younger leaders could ever hope to understand. That included the simple but effective power of a handwritten note from a person of vision and leadership and what it meant to those he was trying to mentor. Now more than a decade after his death that mode of communication is still a lesson to those of us who knew him.

In this day of Facebook; Twitter; and Blackberry (some would say I'm more than just acquainted with all three) his example reminds us that sometimes nothing says it better than a handwritten note. There's even a book by Margaret Shepherd by the title "The Art of the Handwritten Note." Though I haven't read it, an excerpt does capture that special experience of opening the mailbox to find one of these missives: "When you receive the daily mail do you jump to open the handwritten envelopes first because you can’t wait to see who has written and why? Or do you hold those letters aside to savor and enjoy after you are done sorting your bills and tossing the junk mail? Whatever your approach, you no doubt recognize the importance of the note that comes in a unique envelope with distinct handwriting and possibly a decoration or two. Indeed, in an age when even birthday greetings are sent by e-mail, the personal letter is appreciated more than ever before."

So am I saying that I'm planning to abandon Twitter or Facebook or email (not to mention this blog)? Not a chance. But I am committing to try to recapture the discipline of following the example of my friend Buck Mickel by putting pen to paper when it really counts!

What do you think?