Prologue

The Change Artist

 

Although he would not readily admit it, he was, in many ways, a lucky man.

He was born into a society whose fabric had been torn apart by World War II. He ate cheddar cheese and jello pudding, the leftovers of American care packages no longer needed by the general population but dished up by celibate Franciscan monks whose vows included poverty.

Later in life, when he could turn his nose up at the rarest of cheddars, his taste buds favored cheeses such as Pont-l’Évêque, which hails from Calvados, the French region also known for the eponymous liqueur. He had his first sip of the apple brandy in the cellar of a home as deep as it was tall. The three-story structure had been spared by the bombs that rained down on the southwestern German university town in November 1944. Miraculously, the town’s Cathedral, with its filigree sandstone towers, also survived.

Another dish frequently served by the men in habit was “Kutteln” – German for those grizzled strings of innards. Much like the variety he later sought out at Chinese restaurants in Chicago, Cleveland, and Seattle, they were served with a sour sauce, neither of which was prepared for American tastes.

America was not on his mind until the Cuban Missile Crisis. At first, what he knew about the event was sketchy. The more he learned from his classmates who did not live in the Franciscan orphanage, the more frightened he became. During that time, the bell on the second floor rang, summoning roughly eighty boys to assemble in the upstairs chapel. World War III seemed possible.

Every so often, when he lay awake in the dormitory at night, he could hear the sound of an airliner. He liked the hum of the engines and listened intently as the sound grew louder, then faded again. He saw himself as a passenger, escaping from a place he disliked intensely. Now his eyes were wide open, imagining the plane was about to drop bombs.

There were three large dormitories, each housing 20 to 30 boys, organized by age. One was under the rafters, where the temperature at night was uncomfortably close to freezing. He pulled the covers over his head not only to keep warm but also to listen to the outside world. It was afternoon in Texas when the music was interrupted by a special announcement. Excited, he jumped out of bed and ran down the stairs to the Prefect’s room to report the sensational news. The reaction was a stern stare and the swift confiscation of the verboten transistor radio. 

The transistor was invented in the year he was born. Advances in technology would be a constant in a life marked by abrupt changes, some intentional and others painful. From hand-assembling lead letters on a stick to composing pages on a Macintosh Quadra to creating websites increasingly rendered obsolete by social media, he embraced change and participated in it.

He first learned about the internet in Shaker Heights, Ohio. Jeff, whom he had met on an online bulletin board for local businesses, opened his eyes to a fascinating new world. As a designer educated in Switzerland in the spirit of the Bauhaus, he felt at once uneasy and inspired. That evening, he exclaimed to his American wife: “What I’ve just seen will change the world more than the invention of movable type by Gutenberg!”

Gerhard grew up with a reluctant mother and without a father. Lacking authority in his early childhood, he often questioned his judgment when he should have taken the reins. After the dot-com bust, he embarked on a second career, searching for ways to return to his first. Then he and his wife lost their only child, a son, who was still alive.