The look in my wife’s eye as I came through the door made me drop my briefcase on the kitchen floor. Time, and my heart, seemed to stop. "Sweetheart, what’s wrong?" I whispered. Teary, she murmured, "I don’t know how to tell you this . . . Charlie just died." Charlie was my friend, my mentor, my Best Man, my father figure. His death was sudden and much too soon. My lungs deflated; my heart hurt.

Work commitments and poor flight schedules left me with little choice but to drive from Colorado Springs to Charlie’s memorial in Temple, Texas. Against the desolate backdrop of the Texas Panhandle, I replayed the memories of my time with Charlie.

I arrived just as the memorial service was starting with the hymns and songs that meant so much to Charlie. The church was packed. I don’t remember much of what the pastor said, but toward the end of the eulogy, he invited people in the audience to come stand next to him if they could say their lives had been permanently marked by Charlie. At first just a few gathered around the pastor, and then a movement stirred in the church. The platform filled and people trailed down the aisles to the doors on both sides.

I stood in this crowd of young and old, professionals and laborers, business leaders, ranchers, doctors, students, church leaders, teachers, local residents and people from around the world — all of us standing in testimony to the impact this one man had on our lives. It occurred to me that a stranger happening into the church at that moment would have to ask, "Who was this guy and how did he make such a difference in the lives of so many?"

The answers to these questions made themselves plain on my long, quiet drive back to Colorado.

I met Charlie in the fall of 1970, just after arriving from Japan to attend college in Texas. Nothing about him seemed extraordinary at first. He didn’t possess much in the way of charisma or vast business knowledge or physical prowess. He was plainspoken, prematurely balding, with a nose that seemed too large for his face and a preference for western shirts, faded jeans and dusty boots. His large hands were rough from decades of hard physical work; belying the truth that Charlie was highly educated (as he mentored me, Charlie sometimes joked in moments of frustration that he was schooled in the veterinary sciences to train thoroughbreds, and here he was, stuck breaking a mule like me). His penetrating eyes brimmed with immense goodness and generosity of heart and a deep faith. We were an unlikely pair, the quintessential Texan and this kid fresh off the boat from Japan. That first meeting turned into a relationship that permanently marked me, and makes me so much of what I am today.

Looking back, I identified three attributes that enabled Charlie to have such a deep and lasting influence on me and so many others.

Charlie was, first of all, a man of clear purpose. He knew why he was on this earth. As he began to uncover leadership abilities in me, he said, "Dan, it’s not worth your life to just accomplish self-determined goals. Live your life so it makes a permanent difference in the lives of people and organizations you touch." His charge reminds me of the words of A.W. Tozer, written in the middle of the last century, that, "no man has any right to dedicate his life to anything that can burn or rust or rot or die." Charlie taught me that our lives are too valuable to be given over to the trivial. And he lived that way himself; always on the alert for opportunities to make a difference in the life of another - whether that person was a lifelong friend or a newly met stranger.

Charlie helped me see that most of us don’t discover and live out our purpose in heroic moments but in ordinary interactions. I learned to ask: Am I alert every day for possibilities - planned and spontaneous - to make a difference in the lives of people around me? Am I living my life for the trivial or the purposeful? In the end, even though his life was cut short, having lived purposefully Charlie lived fully.

Next up: More lessons from Charlie . . .