four leaf clovers

Riding downtown today with my housemate we were talking about four-leaf clovers and I told her about my old boss at NFPA, Walter Masson.

He was my professional father. Although I quit NFPA in 1975 20 years later I would still ask him what he thought about this or that and always took his advice because he was always right. He was a mentor before the term became important. He never quite understood why women wanted careers, but if we did he would helps us be as successful as we wanted to be.

He had his own syndicated garden column that he continued after his retirement. My first year working for him, he gave me and Chris, our secretary, amarylisses for Christmas. They looked ugly but when I followed the directions it bloomed into something incredible. He turned my black thumb green, or at least light green.

Even after I moved overseas we corresponded, and from time to time he would put a four-leaf clover into the envelope. The times between our correspondence grew longer and longer and I thought of him less and less until today.

I checked the web and found his obituary at 91 over four years ago. I wish I could tell him how sad it makes me, and I can see him sitting at his desk saying, "It's all right. It is the way it should be." I found his column on the four-leaf clover on the web too. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/flowers_and_plants/index.html?offset=30&&s=oldest&&&&&