Caring for People

About ten years ago a small consulting firm in Houston had more work
than they knew how to handle. So advertisements were placed in
various places online and one of the responses was from Wynn Martin.
It was, as I recall, the most genuine-sounding of the inquiries and
we scheduled an interview.

Wynn arrived for the interview, took one look around the place, and
seemingly decided that we were decent people and that he would like
to assist us with our problem of too much work. There had been a
number of other interviews but none of them could match the qualities
that Wynn brought. We made an offer and he graciously accepted.

For the next few years, Wynn helped people deal with computers and
their problems for Entech's consulting practice. He excelled at
this. One reason for his distinction was that he truly cared about
the results and strove to ensure the clients were happy. After
Entech merged with another company and its focus changed, Wynn set
out on his own to continue helping people. His energy and interest
in helping others with complex systems and situations eventually led
to helping them with their most serious health issues. Wynn's quest
to become an RN seems to be a logical extension of what Wynn liked --
helping people solve problems and both feel better and feel better
about themselves. No problem too big or too small.

Then there was this silly yellow ring. Made of plastic, it was from
an old mainframe tape and it was used to write-protect the tape. The
tapes looked like this:

http://www.columbia.edu/acis/history/media.html

If the ring was removed from the tape, the computer wouldn't write on
it, like the little plastic tab you move or break on a video or audio
tape to keep it from being erased.

For years, Wynn constantly wore this ring around his ankle. He
reminded everyone that he would be happy to listen and respond (and
learn) as long as the ring was there. Occasionally, he would take
the ring off his ankle, hold it up, grin, and say he was "no longer
retaining information - please stop speaking".

His sense of humor was ever-present, even in the most dire of
circumstance and he will be missed by a great many people.

Mark Williams