A Life Well Spent
As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.
Leonardo Da Vinci
Harry Heltzer died last week and Harry was not exactly a household name, but then at 94 he’d been out of the public eye for quite a time. Unless your eye is attracted to reflective green highway signage, the stuff of expressway turnoffs that spreads familiarity across the nation’s roads.
Harry invented it.
I guess he didn’t make any money out of the idea, because at the time he came up with the it, he worked for 3M and that sort of thing belongs to the company. Matter of fact, he worked his whole life there, but it’s a side-issue anyway, the connective tissue of who Harry was and what he did that you and I might relate to. Personally, I like that signage.
But there’s more to the story and, as DaVinci’s quote suggests, Harry’s life was well spent. In typical Horatio Alger style, Harry started out at 3M fresh out of college and, because it was…