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The first one is my friend Richard, "Pete" Fromme. I met Pete in 2000 when I was corporate director of materials management for Genesis Health System in Davenport, Iowa. I had been there a few months when Pete arrived on the scene. Actually, a more correct phrase would be "returned" to the scene. Pete had been the director of finance for Genesis Medical Center prior to my advent and had left for greener pastures as CFO at a hospital in Chicago. Finding those pastures more brown than green, Pete was able to negotiate a return to Genesis and to his former position.

Nondescript is a word that Pete would probably have to look up to understand. It is definitely not an appropriate word to describe him. Descript is more appropriate — extremely descript.

Pete is in his mid-50s, approaches six feet in height and is approximately three feet thick no matter how you shoot a vector through him. He is a gray-haired, round-faced, gregarious, opinionated person. And he’s loud! You can only imagine how someone as nondescript, quiet and unassuming as I felt when I first encountered him.

It was love at first sight, although we seldom agreed on anything. Pete would tell tall tales — tales whose veracity was always in doubt with me. Like when he said he was a Navy Seal. I told him that I had never seen a Seal that big — a Walrus, maybe, but not a Seal. Turns out he was telling the truth. As the years went by, almost everyone of his stories were eventually validated. But they hadn’t been validated when we first met, and I had mixed reactions to Pete.

Everything changed the day he and I put it all against the wall.

Genesis was a progressive institution in many ways, but it had one process that was archaic. The system was still affixing yellow stickers to any items whose acquisition cost exceeded $3. I had been successful at transitioning a few organizations to a hybrid system that drastically reduced the number of individual charge items, and I wanted to do the same at Genesis. I talked to my boss, the CFO, and he accepted it in principle, but wanted me to clear it with Pete before we implemented the change.

I knew Pete would be a difficult nut to crack so I began collecting literature on the subject. One of the articles I collected was from a hospital in Illinois. It was written by a man named Chuck Garvin. Chuck Garvin? He worked for us. Could it be the same guy?

I called up Chuck, who was our director of patient accounts. He told me that he was indeed the person who had written the article and that he would be more than happy to share his thoughts with Pete and the folks from finance. So I got a room, went into everybody’s schedulers and set up a meeting. The meeting was set for 11:00 in the morning.

I showed up with a pile of documentation and hope in my heart. This was going to be easy. Chuck Garvin would tell his story, we’d figure a few things out and BAM, we’d be off to the races.

That’s not the way it went. Despite the brilliance and clarity of both my case and presentation, Pete balked at every point. It didn’t matter that I had articles documenting both the possibility and practicality of my approach. It didn’t even matter that Chuck was there to tell us of his experiences. Pete just wasn’t about to come on board.

When I lose it, my ears get hot, and they were getting hotter by the second.

Finally, unable to take it any longer I picked up my documentation and announced loudly, "Well, I guess all this stuff doesn’t mean a thing!" Then I tossed it over my shoulder. It crashed against the wall with a resounding noise.

Not to be bested, Pete picked up the pile of papers in front of him and said, "Hell, why don’t we just toss it all against the wall and see what sticks!"

The people at the meeting were shocked. Several moments of pregnant silence were finally broken when Pete and I burst out laughing. "Hell, Fred," Pete said, "We ought to be able to work something out."

"Let’s go to lunch," I replied.

And that was the beginning of a long and beautiful friendship. Every day for three years, Pete and I would go to lunch together and hold forth in the Cafeteria. Other directors and managers knew where we would be at 11:45 every day and they would bring issues to us for discussion. It would not be unfair to say that the preponderance of the organization’s best and most important finance and supply chain decisions were reached every day at lunch.

In fact, one year we were at an educational retreat and the executive director of the cardiology program singled Pete and me out for praise. He said, "If we ever have issues that need to be addressed with either materials or finance, we all know where to go. We can ask Pete or Fred something at lunch and they will be back with us before the day is over with the resolution."

As for the second lesson — Chuck Garvin was not so fortunate as Pete and I. Even as we had our tantrum-tossing meeting, Chuck was dealing with real issues. Shortly after our meeting he had what folks thought was a stroke. It turned out to be far worse — a brain tumor.

Two surgeries did not resolve the issue, but Chuck hung in there. One day at lunch he told Pete and I that he had just bought a new set of Taylor Made golf clubs that had cost over $2,000. He added, "Hell, I’ll be dead in a year, so who cares if I spent too much money."

Chuck taught us how to deal with the ultimate no-win scenario. Three weeks before he died he showed up at a meeting, bald and haggard from the treatments and the ravages of the disease. His body had weakened, but his good humor remained. I remember going back to my office after the meeting, closing the door and crying.

When Chuck died it was as though the whole hospital stopped breathing as well. But we went on. After all, that’s what Chuck had done.

I remember him often.

And I remember Pete, too. How could I not? On the wall in my family room is a picture of a handsome, tall, thin guy wearing a University of Miami baseball cap and a T-shirt with a picture of The Rock on it standing with his arm around a generously-sized, jovial gray-haired guy.

Both guys are laughing. It’s me and Pete.

Who else?