It was a privilege and a joy to know Charles. I was fortunate. We worked together. We traveled together. Charles was a friend and mentor. I was also fortunate to spend 2 days with him taping the story of his life.
It is fair to say that without Charles John Wiley & Sons would NOT be the successful company it is today. We can speculate that someone else might have done what Charles did. But the fact is that for Wiley, he was the right person at the right time. And for that we will be forever thankful.
When Charles joined Wiley 20 years ago, we were in bad shape. Our largest business was doing poorly. We were burdened by an overly ambitious acquisition. Two essential transitions -- from the 5th to the 6th generation of Wileys and from one CEO to the next -- were going badly. In short we were at an unusually low point in our 181-year history.
Charles was a breath of fresh air, an inspiration. He was the person who held the reins while he and his colleagues drove the old wagon out of the ditch. And for this we will be eternally thankful.
Charles was an experienced publisher, who had faced his own challenges with dysfunctional organizations. After all he worked for Captain Maxwell, not once, but twice, something we didn't let him forget. Charles was confident. He knew what he was doing. He knew that Wiley, despite our problems, was filled with talented publishers, many of whom are sitting here today.Where we lacked talent, he went out and found it. And some of those people are here today.
Above all, he had that important essence that every truly great leader has: he was a fine human being.
He was modest. He was modest because his people were modest. I worked with Charles for 11 years, and it was only after he left that I really found out who Charles was, about the circumstances that shaped the man. We are pleased to be able to share some of that story with you in his memorial biography. He was warm-hearted. He was approachable. He had a wonderful sense of humor particularly when it came to talking about the self-inflated types that one encounters in the business world. He had a keen sense of social justice. However, he did NOT pal around with Bill Ayres and Bernadine Dohrn. Working for Bertrand Russell was radical enough. But Charles could be tough. He wasn't a person who could be pushed around.
I personally and all of us at Wiley benefited enormously from Charles' presence. People today have spoken about Charles' legacy. Let me say a little bit more. The death of a colleague, of a friend, of a beloved is the ultimate shock. One day they are with us; the next day they are gone.
They linger in our memory, in our thoughts. We meet them in our dreams. But we want to see them in the flesh, to speak to them, to touch them. But they are gone leaving us with a sense of life's brevity, a sense of life’s transience.
But with a person like Charles there is a definite permanence to his legacy. At Wiley, Charles interacted with dozens, hundreds of people. He shared his knowledge of publishing, his wisdom, the example of his way of working with people. And in turn those people – wittingly or unwittingly – took away from those experiences a little of bit of Charles.
And those people whom Charles influenced have done the same sharing their knowledge, their wisdom, their ways of working with people and so on into the next generation. In a sense Charles' legacy is deeply embedded in Wiley's DNA where it will reside for a long time to come.
This is Charles' legacy: what he gave to others, to me personally, to my family, to my colleagues, to his friends and most importantly to his wife and family. And for this gift we will be forever thankful.
