What's in a Name?

Using a method I know makes little sense, one that is admittedly imperfect and statistically flawed, I determine my odds of long life by checking the Tribune’s obituary section each morning to see if any McClures died the previous day. When none do I take comfort in knowing we, at least those of us in the immediate area, are all still healthy and alive. According to the Tribune, and by using this method and its logic, McClures hardly ever die.

Yet on Sunday a McClure’s obituary was in the paper. Let’s call him Carl. You get so little good information from Chicago Tribune obituaries. The death blurb about Carl told me this; he was a beloved husband, a loving father, a cherished son, a dear brother, and an adored uncle. It didn’t give his age. By far the best and most telling information in the piece was this “McClure will also be missed by his dogs Sally and Cocoa, his cat Edward, and 13 chickens.” Either he didn’t name the chickens or the Tribune refused to list them individually. Then too perhaps the Trib charges by the line and the family decided the chicken’s names were just not worth it. Could be Carl was much more into poultry than they. The obituary went on to say that memorials may be made to his son Jason’s education fund. I wrote Jason a check and sent it to the funeral home. I have a son who recently completed his education and I know how important it was for this McClure to have been able to help his children do that. I had a desire to know more about Carl. He was, after all, a McClure like me.

I searched for him on Face Book and found sixty four Carl McClures. Wow. And you think you’re one of a kind. None of the profile pictures resembled the man in the Tribune, though our profile pictures are now often no longer us, but rather acquaintances, grand children, pets, you name it. Something tells me Carl was not on Face Book. Probably too busy with his chickens.

I Googled Carl McClure and after a bit of a search found only two mentions of the Carl in question; the Chicago Tribune obit and a notice from the funeral home handling his arrangements. The notice on the funeral home’s web page aped the Tribune editorial but did add his age. Sixty one. Young. There were very few comments in the funeral home’s on line digital sign in book in which people say nice things about the deceased. That made me think that either Carl had a small circle of friends, or they didn’t have much good to say about him, or few of them accessed that web page. Either or all of those assumptions could be absolutely wrong for all I really know. The picture in the Tribune, repeated by the funeral home, was of a man much younger than sixty one. Carl McClure died, he was reportedly a good guy (beloved, loving, cherished, dear, adored and all that) and was into animals but what exactly was his life about? Why did his existence matter?

The first Carl McClure listed on Google, page one item one, was a partner in a Pittsburgh law firm smiling back at me in a handsome head shot wearing a nice suit. His responsibilities included “the management of the firm’s commercial collection practice, including the filing and defense of mechanics’ liens, foreclosure actions, replevins, involuntary bankruptcies and other credit related matters.” Replevins? Appearing next was software developer Carl McClure. Linked In, the business rival of Face Book, had an entry near the top, telling me there were thirty six Carl McClures on their system of pages. I clicked on that and recognized some of the Linked in Carls from the Face Book Carls. There was what appeared to be a pretty high powered Dr. Carl McClure, a urologist, with a practice in Florida. Then there was an Ohio Carl McClure on Twitter followed closely by a dentist Carl McClure in Miami and another in Ft. Lauderdale. The Carl McClures just kept coming, but I discovered nothing more about my Carl McClure, my Illinois neighbor who passed away at age 61. Of course I could have subscribed to an online service that would have allowed me to dig deeper and find Carl’s credit score and no doubt much more about him, but I refused to pay.

I think what we get on Google are the people, mostly self employed, who need to be known. Google, or at least the results of Google searches on the first few pages, has apparently become another way to advertise rather than a pure search resource. You can have a pretty big online name, and a presence, but to do so you have to promote yourself. My Carl, the deceased Illinois Carl, wasn’t one of those guys. Carl, who he was, and why his existence mattered, remained a mystery to me.

Take the name Dave McClure as an example. Google Dave McClure and you will find the first fourteen Google screen shots (and is anyone still reading past fourteen screens?) to be virtually all about Dave McClure the rich venture capitalist from Mountain View California. He is the famous creator and owner of 500 Hats, a notoriously successful funder of startup tech companies. This Dave McClure is a publicity monster. I watched a video interview of Dave McClure conducted by a woman who fell all over herself searching for superlative adjectives in her introduction, fawning all over the guy, who appeared to be a pretty ordinary and balding young man who happened to hit it really big in some world I know nothing about.

One Silicon Valley web site described Dave McClure as “‎Geek, Marketer, Hustler, Investor, Dancer, Blogger, Troublemaker, and Sith Lord.” I don’t know what a Sith Lord is but it doesn’t sound healthy and I’m glad to say I’ve never had it. You could discover practically nothing about any other Dave McClure. Only three other Dave McClures made an appearance on Google’s first fourteen screens. The three Dave McClures whose lives were acknowledged are: David L. McClure, Associate Administrator for the U.S. General Services Administration, a CPA Dave McClure who consults on organizational development, and Dave McClure the basketball player who played for Duke from 2005-2009 and is now playing in Lithuania. Dave McClure the Sith Lord dominates my name. I don’t show up. And Carl from the Chicago area showed up among the Carl McClures only because he died. I conclude that Carl wasn’t famous. I’m glad really.

I have in my lifetime met three other Dave McClures in person. The first lived in Bloomington around Franklin Park when I lived on Franklin Avenue near Illinois Wesleyan. He was middle aged businessman of some kind and a small plane pilot. I used to get his mail by mistake from time to time. The first time I received his mail it was an advertisement for a fly in breakfast. I took it to his house and rang the door bell. Dave McClure answered the door.

“Hi. Are you Dave McClure?” I said.

“Yes I am.”

“So am I,” I said. “My name is Dave McClure.” I paused and made eye contact with him to gauge his reaction. There wasn’t much.

“Apparently I got some of your mail,” I said, handing him the advertisement.

“Well, what do you know,” Dave McClure said. He looked down at the folded and stapled paper flyer.

“Tell you what,” he said. “If you get any other mail for me, give me a call.” He fished around in his wallet and gave me a business card. “I’ll tell you if it’s important and if it is I’ll send someone to get it. This, for example, is junk mail.”

“That sounds good,” I said.

“Thank you,” he said.

With that he closed the door. That was the end of it. Face to face with another Dave McClure, and it was a non event. It meant nothing to him. I’m not sure it meant anything to me. I thought it might have though. I was anticipating something. Whatever that might have been, it didn’t happen. He was just another guy.

I met my second Dave McClure in Minnesota. I was on a family vacation driving to a resort on Little Ball Club Lake outside Deer River. As we passed through the little town I stopped at a bait shop, bought some lures and fishing gear, and paid for it with a credit card. The shop keeper saw my name on the card and said

“What do you know? There’s a Dave McClure that lives in this town too.”

I thought nothing of it and went on to the resort. It had been a long drive and the first thing we did after greeting the resort owner and unpacking the car was to get into our swimming suits and take a swim off the dock. I was fooling around with the kids, throwing them up in the air and letting them drop into the water, when a man I’d never seen walked out on the dock. He walked as close as he could to me and said

“Are you Dave McClure?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Well I’m Dave McClure too! It’s very good to meet you!” I rarely use exclamation points but he was definitely talking in an exclamation point kind of way, loudly and excitedly. “My friend at the bait shop called and told me you were here!”

I was in the lake up to my chest and he was on the dock but he walked as close as he could to me, squatted down, and stuck out his hand.

“I want to shake your hand Dave McClure!”

I felt as if I was being congratulated for something I didn’t do. But being congenial by nature I waded over and shook his hand. He was one of those guys who continues the handshake too long.

“So how old are you Dave?” While he said this he was still shaking my hand. And with that he began a series of probing questions designed to get to know Dave McClure from Ottawa quickly, followed by answers to his own questions pertaining to him, Dave McClure of Deer River, so that I might know him equally well. Dave McClure of Ottawa was forty, Dave McClure of Deer River was thirty seven. I had two kids, he had three. We’d both gone to college. Dave McClure from Ottawa was an English major while Dave McClure from Deer River was psych major.

“Can you believe we both work for not profits!!” said Dave McClure, his face the embodiment of amazement and wonder.
He worked with developmentally disabled adults and I worked with troubled kids. There was no getting away from the guy. My wife minded the kids in the lake and I climbed up on the dock. That was a mistake.

“Dave I can’t help but see as you were walking up here you have a bit of a limp. Is that your ankle causing you problems?”

I thought it was both odd and in poor taste that he brought up my bum leg but I responded by saying

“Yeah, I broke it skiing. It never healed right.”

“My god!!” Dave McClure from Deer River said. “I’ve got a bad ankle too!!”

With that he hauls up his pants leg, pulls down his sock, and shows me a big scar just above his ankle bone.
“I had a motorcycle accident!!”

I truly didn’t know what to say.

“And it’s MY LEFT ANKLE TOO!!!! JUST LIKE YOURS!!!”

I caught my wife’s eye in the lake and she was beginning to giggle. I was trying not to. They guy went on and on. He gave me his address and phone number. He wanted to know if he could bring his wife and kids to meet me later on.
I said no, that we were busy. I said we had a pretty hectic schedule when you got right down to it, and that I was glad to have met him and would be in touch with him, maybe, when I got home. I thanked him for coming to see me. He just stood there on the dock smiling. At what seemed to me an opportune moment I said goodbye, turned, dove off the dock headfirst into the lake, and swam out to where my kids were. I waved at him from out there, and then swam further away. Finally he went back to his car and drove away.

I met a third Dave McClure in the Las Vegas airport when our name was called on the public address system. We walked up to the counter at exactly the same time reporting that we were Dave McClure. We looked at each other and laughed. They wanted him. That Dave McClure was an engineer from Texas. He was a nice man and our conversation was short.

From these encounters I’ve learned there’s little to a name. Why I wanted to know more about Carl McClure, because we shared a surname, I have no idea. Google can’t tell us who a person is any more than Face Book can, or Linked In, or anything else. We are truly known only by the people that love us and are close to us. We are known by our family and our friends. We exist and are important, we have meaning and create meaning, for relatively few people in the world. But those people matter greatly.

Our public persona? What is it really? Who we are to strangers? Who is Dave McClure, venture capitalist and creator of 500 Hats? For all we are able to read on line we really don’t know. He could be a wonderful person or he could be a dick. You would have to be with him to make that judgment. You would need to hear his voice, see his smile, listen to his words, and observe him interacting with others. We might think, from what others say or write about another person we haven’t met, that we know him or her. But do we? Can we? I think not.

I think we should concentrate on those people we can see, hear, and touch. We should focus on those people we communicate with and who respond in kind. I think that is where the important part of our life is really lived. I think that is where and why our existence matters.

I hope you had a good life Carl McClure. I hope your son makes it through college and that your family remains close. I’m sorry I pried into your identity. I hope you made arrangements for all your pets, especially your nameless chickens, and that they go on unfazed by your absence. Your pets will no doubt have an easier time adjusting to life without you than the people who loved you. Rest in peace Carl McClure, whoever you are. Rest in peace.