My Brother the Lifelong Learner

My brother dropped dead a few weeks ago from a massive heart attack.

Although Todd wasn’t exactly successful in traditional K-12 education, he exemplified a lifelong learner who possessed a personalized, robust learning plan throughout his life.

My brother was a funeral director, and he knew he wanted to be a funeral director by the age of 5. While other kids were playing little league baseball, Todd was visiting the funeral home across the street, interviewing Nobe Blust, the town’s undertaker.

At my brother’s funeral, a classmate remembered watching Todd wandering around the neighborhood’s yards, looking for dead birds to bury – while eating ketchup and white bread sandwiches and recounting the names of the U.S. Presidents in order.

When Todd played with the neighborhood kids, his friends were always mourners at some squirrel, rabbit, or bird’s funeral. Todd made his own coffins out of scrap wood. The grass beside our barn, where Todd’s funeral home was located, was always taller than the rest of the yard due to the number of animals buried in my brother’s pet cemetery.

Now some people, when they hear these types of stories, will think my brother was just a weird kid with a very strange career goal. But they would be wrong.

At Todd’s funeral, one funeral director friend of his came up to me and said this: “The funeral directors from across the country have discussed what I’m about to tell you and we think your brother might be the most famous funeral director in the world today.”

Life most lifelong learners, and especially those who learn better out of school than within, Todd had a passion for learning early in life. And he continued to stoke that passion throughout his teenage years into his adulthood. That passion was taking care of the dead and their bereaved families.

At age 16, he left home to go work in a funeral home – his first real job. For the next 55 years, Todd was either working inside a funeral home, or he was training new funeral directors as a mortuary science school faculty member.

It was this mixture of experience and training that made Todd who he was in the funeral profession. And here’s the deal – Todd would have never had the opportunity to mix such experience with training if he had focused on traditional public school education. It was Todd’s out of school learning that propelled him to be one of the best at his trade.

How many others could benefit from that same type of out of school learning?

And, throughout his life, Todd developed his own learning plan. A big part of that learning plan was his work in the funeral profession, but that wasn’t all.

Todd was an accomplished author, writing 8 books and over 400 articles.

Todd was an expert historian, specializing in the funerals of the U.S. Presidents, especially Abraham Lincoln’s, and other noteworthy Americans.

Todd was a skilled organist and hosted free concerts in his early adult years for the communities he lived in.

My brother was a classical music fan, listening to and studying the masters like Arturo Toscanini and Vladimir Horowitz.

Funerals, writing, history, musician, and classical music – that sounds like a vibrant lifelong learning plan.

What Todd was passionate about learning he pursued with gusto. What he wasn’t interested in he didn’t spend any time on.

I wonder what our learning world would look like if we modeled it more after how my brother organized his learning?

Finding what you feel passionate about.

Building experience and practice.

Developing a lifelong learning plan and living your whole life according to that plan.

Although we lost my brother way too early (he was only 71), at the end of his life Todd felt accomplished – but he was still always learning and working on his plan.

If it could only be that way for all of us.

Til tomorrow. SVB