Generations Past

While working with Principal McKenna at the inner city school was her first "real" full-time job out of college, Lena Sorensen's actual first job wasn't any more glamorous or exciting than your average teenager's first job. In fact, it might have been less so, because it was working for her parents, starting her senior year in high school.

Mr. and Mrs. Soresenson, as executors of the family estate and its various foundations, wanted Lena to get a head start on what she would one day inherit as part of her own legacy. They started her off with menial tasks: answering the phone, running errands, and the general administrative and clerical responsibilities that one would expect to come with an entry-level, minimum wage position.

Lena was a bright girl, but her heart – and therefore her head – just wasn't in it. As Lena daydreamed and imagined what possibilities life could have in store for her, phones frequently went unanswered, incoming and outgoing mail piled up on her desk, and the family began to wonder what they would need to do in order to properly motivate Lena to take her responsibilities seriously. After all, she would be managing all this someday.

Young Lena didn't want to disappoint her parents; she really didn't. But she didn't have a passion for the family fortune like the rest of them did. She didn't care about the money, or the prestige, or any of the other things that defined the Sorensen family. Ironically, the one person who seemed to understand her was her great-grandfather; the man who had built the family fortune in the first place. Quickly approaching a century of life, Magnus' health was declining quickly and the family had tucked him away in a remote wing of the house, attended to by nurses and health care professionals, and largely forgotten about by his children, his grandchildren, and Lena's generation ... the children of his grandchildren.

His seven children had been largely unconcerned with how the family fortune had been made; that had been the first generation to enjoy the family's wealth and, without their seeming concern for how it was made, they imparted on their children a similar apathy toward the source of the family's finances. But Lena had always been special. Not only did she actually come to visit her great-grandfather and keep him company, but she seemed genuinely interested in hearing Magnus' stories, especially about how he emigrated from Sweden to the United States with only a few dollars in his pocket, and turned those few dollars into a few dollars more, and a few more still, until all of his savings culminated in a small fortune he was able to exponentially grow through smart, savvy investing into the large fortune that the family now controlled.

What Lena loved most about Magnus was his fierce, independent spirit. She sensed that, were he not hampered by the physical limitations of his body, the vibrant spirit inside him would be able to keep up with any of her younger relatives. And what Magnus loved most about Lena was that she seemed to be the only member of the Sorensen family who had any interest in doing something on her own; of accomplishing her own goals and making her own way in the world, rather than living off the family's assets.

Magnus, still in control of a rather large personal account, ended up hiring Lena away from her parents. Much to the family's shock, Magnus spent his own money paying Lena to run errands for him. She would pick up his medication, or run letters to the post office; doing the things that Magnus was now too old to do for himself. She would visit with Magnus daily, spending time and talking with him, learning from his insight and finding inspiration in his stories. He showed her how to manage her own finances and, instead of spending her paychecks on movies and clothes and eating out like all of her classmates at school did, she put the money away and saved so that she could go anywhere in the world, to study any subject at any college she wanted.

Her great-grandfather could easily have paid her tuition himself, but he recognized that Lena was like him; someone who had to make their own way in the world and didn't want to accept handouts from anyone. That was why she never did feel at home with the rest of the family; and why the rest of the family would never fully understand Lena.

As a result of their special relationship, Lena's first job wasn't so much on-the-job training, where she learned basic skills like customer service or the fundamentals of accounting. Rather, it was a lecture series, a collection of seminars, a business course, taught by her great-grandfather; the last Sorensen who had actually built something himself, from the ground up. It was the skills she learned during this first job, working for her great-grandfather, that gave Lena the real education she needed; the lessons and advice that would help guide her through the rest of her life choices, including leaving the family behind to pursue her dream of teaching. And it was Magnus' integrity, insight, and intelligence that guided her through the ups and downs of work and life, even today.

She owed everything that she had become to her great-grandfather and that first job.


(899 words)