Spring Break
The Daily OrangeThe ordinary, extraordinary, life of Buzz Shaw
By Chico Harlan
Posted: 4/22/04, 3:03 AM EST Section: News
A regular guy, that's one way to put it. Buzz Shaw does things people can relate to, things people can laugh about.
He's the chancellor of Syracuse University, yet he doodles on his agenda papers during meetings and plays tennis on Thursdays and still imagines himself as the Midwestern boy with loving parents and a crew cut who shot basketballs at a coffee can nailed vertically to the house.
Buzz watches his weight. He guards his money. He'll join some friends for a poker game, buy in for $2.95, then camp out for the free food and beer. He'll move an annual March meeting into New York City just so he can be in town for the Big East men's basketball tournament.
The old SU chancellor, Melvin Eggers, drove a Cadillac as the business car. Buzz turned it in for a Toyota Avalon. Buzz reads a lot - regular guy books: Jonathan Kellerman mysteries and Tim Green thrillers. He enters his office every day at 7:30 a.m. and scans the daily papers. Then he walks from his office and heats the water everybody else uses for tea.
But Buzz's regularity is just a half-truth. Weird things happened when, long ago, the regular guy left the white, two-bedroom house he'd lived in for all 18 years of his life, learned to become a teacher and then, almost accidentally, ended up [ITALICS] making [ITALICS] history instead of lecturing about it.
Buzz became a leader. He did things a regular guy would never think of doing, things a regular guy wouldn't even [ITALICS] want [ITALICS] to do. Buzz learned to transform himself, at least partly, into somebody people can look up to. And his ontogeny, which always followed such an ordinary line, suddenly became extraordinary.
And so now, Buzz works like a leader, sometimes 80 hours a week. He makes money like a leader: $419,192 a year. He thinks like a leader, too. He studies social systems and writes books and coins aphorisms about management. ("The ideal committee or group has between five and nine people." "Most speeches and meetings are about 35 percent too long.") He does a lot of paperwork. Kenneth A. Shaw, that's how he signs his official documents. Buzz is just an eponym for regularity.
He's the chancellor of Syracuse University, yet he doodles on his agenda papers during meetings and plays tennis on Thursdays and still imagines himself as the Midwestern boy with loving parents and a crew cut who shot basketballs at a coffee can nailed vertically to the house.
Buzz watches his weight. He guards his money. He'll join some friends for a poker game, buy in for $2.95, then camp out for the free food and beer. He'll move an annual March meeting into New York City just so he can be in town for the Big East men's basketball tournament.
The old SU chancellor, Melvin Eggers, drove a Cadillac as the business car. Buzz turned it in for a Toyota Avalon. Buzz reads a lot - regular guy books: Jonathan Kellerman mysteries and Tim Green thrillers. He enters his office every day at 7:30 a.m. and scans the daily papers. Then he walks from his office and heats the water everybody else uses for tea.
But Buzz's regularity is just a half-truth. Weird things happened when, long ago, the regular guy left the white, two-bedroom house he'd lived in for all 18 years of his life, learned to become a teacher and then, almost accidentally, ended up [ITALICS] making [ITALICS] history instead of lecturing about it.
Buzz became a leader. He did things a regular guy would never think of doing, things a regular guy wouldn't even [ITALICS] want [ITALICS] to do. Buzz learned to transform himself, at least partly, into somebody people can look up to. And his ontogeny, which always followed such an ordinary line, suddenly became extraordinary.
And so now, Buzz works like a leader, sometimes 80 hours a week. He makes money like a leader: $419,192 a year. He thinks like a leader, too. He studies social systems and writes books and coins aphorisms about management. ("The ideal committee or group has between five and nine people." "Most speeches and meetings are about 35 percent too long.") He does a lot of paperwork. Kenneth A. Shaw, that's how he signs his official documents. Buzz is just an eponym for regularity.
