The epicenter of global economic change in America has been in the Midwest. To those of us with roots in Ohio, this economic cataclysm has been the challenge of our time in personal and public ways.
Great people are attracted to great challenges. Dr. John Logue of Kent State University is a shining example of this kind of greatness. Arriving in Kent in the mid-seventies from Texas - by way of Princeton and Europe - Dr. Logue's credentials, charm, optimism and moxie could have taken him anywhere to teach and work. He chose northeastern Ohio. His life's work has addressed our challenges.
John was diagnosed with a particularly virulent cancer on December 6 and was gone by December 9. He touched so many of us in a personal way that the e-mail list serves cannot possibly reach everyone. It is a measure of his contribution to the community that it takes an editorial to reach all who need to know.
Long-time Director of the Ohio Employee Ownership Center and professor of political science, John burned the midnight oil with workers trying to buy their closing plant. He worked with the same intensity, the same mix of pressure, charm, counsel and insight, as he taught their sons and daughters at Kent State University. He made his students stretch: he taught us to travel, to interview, to observe and to participate. He made us write for publication and he got our work published. He took us with him into the plant; he forced us to be equal, to speak, to testify. We became journalists, labor leaders, civil servants, political scientists, marketing directors, business owners. We were better for having studied with him.
He taught the parents of his students on the shop floors of industrial plants. His life's work with employee ownership touched Ohioans affected by plant closure from communities across the state. He made them stretch - to explore options, to learn business strategies and finance, to lead, to cooperate, to facilitate. His work was beyond the social safety net. He worked with displaced workers as investors. They became investors. From the closure of the steel mills through the departure of DHL from Wilmington, for the past 25 years the reaction to economic disaster in Ohio has been: "Call John Logue!" In the face of difficulty, he gave us a sensible course of action. He is uniquely optimistic, uniquely American - but his optimism is born of faith in us, faith in our ability to stretch and to succeed.
In the last two years, John's work moved to employee ownership in the community through Cleveland's new cooperative green venture, the Evergreen Laundry. He brought the same expectation of high achievement to the workers and investors in the new enterprise. His vision of a cooperative and egalitarian workplace is the right vision for our future. Not only has it been embraced by hundreds of Ohio companies and cooperatives and thousands of workers, but major institutions – the United Steelworkers, for example – are moving to a model of economic progress based on employee ownership, worker participation and investment in community.
Great challenges bring hardship and yield progress. John Logue has provided steady, sure, insightful and lasting progress in our economic storm. We are grateful for his contribution.
by Wendy Patton, former student and OEOC colleague, and most importantly, close friend.
John Logue was an insightful theoretician, a capable administrator, and a passionate advocate, and this uncommon synthesis of thought, coordination, and action will be missed.
ReplyDeleteJohn Logue has made a major contribution both to the cause of employee ownership and to the body of knowlege concerning social well being and workplace organization. Over the many years that I have known John, we have not always agreed but he has withstood the test of time and his legacy will endure.
ReplyDeleteTim Jochim, Chair
Business Succession Group
Kegler Brown Hill & Ritter
John's passing makes me so sad...and then I think back to the many times over the past 25 years or so when we brainstormed about how to save this or that company or advance the cause of employee ownership. John's legacy includes not just the Center; it also includes the thousands of individuals who have jobs because of the work he did. Sincere condolences to John's family, colleagues, students and Friends. Mark and Mary Barbash
ReplyDeleteI cannot fully express what John Logue meant to my life for the past 19 years, except to say, he was the most inspiring and supportive person I have ever known. In the work-place, he encouraged independence and fostered an environment of achievement and excellence; on a personal level, he was always willing to give advice that was sensible, thorough and consistently on the mark for a positive outcome. He has been the best mentor and truest friend one could ever hope to have. I will miss his counsel, friendship, laughter and never-ending kindness.
ReplyDeleteI met John about 12 years ago and, while we never became close friends, he was a person I could always count on for advice. To me, he represented the very best of academia, of what universities and people within universities can accomplish. John was a great man and all of us at Kent State will miss him very much.
ReplyDeleteDave Kaplan
Professor of Geography
When I last spoke with John a couple of weeks ago, he was talking of this time of life for him being a period when he would give back. I was struck because that seemed to be what he was doing for these decades we have known him. I am left with a feeling that he would have us carry on in building upon some of dreams he had and on some of the foundations he had laid.
ReplyDeleteDr. Logue, truly an inspirational individual with abilities to interact with persons at all levels. John personally spearheaded Select Machine's journey in becoming an employee owned facility. John not only performed in an professional capacity, also as a personable caring individual. We, at Select Machine will certainly miss John's wit and vast knowledge.
ReplyDeleteI first met John in 1998 at a time that as a local labor leader I was attempting to lead the first of two efforts to save my now former stainless cold rolling facility in Massillon, Ohio.
ReplyDeleteFrom our very first conversation I was convinced I had found a Champion, a person who was not only able, but importantly a person who was more than willing to assist in teaching me how to lead an effort I was in no way prepared to lead.
Due to John's willingness to nurture and teach, I soon found myself leading an effort I would never have thought I was prepared to lead. Through this process, and due much to John's patient willingness to take me under his wing, I found that I could in fact organize and lead such an effort, that I could learn the inner workings of not only employee ownership, but also to lead and coordinate a business venture / effort that would positively impact many peoples lives, and I have John to thank for that learned ability.
Through the combined efforts of many, by far not the least of which was the Ohio Employee Ownership Center through the aforementioned patient teachings and leadership of John along with Steve Clem, we were successful in averting the closure of our facility. Unfortunately the economy once again reared its ugly head, and although we probably worked harder on the second affort than the first, we lost our battle, the facility was gutted, and the machinery within removed and sent to China, India and beyond. But, this loss was not due to our failed efforts, but was a direct result of a spiraling econonmy, and an uncaring government.
Subsequently John once again found something within me that I did not know existed, as he requested I go to Washington to testify on behalf of the creation of an Employee Ownership Bank within our nations treasury department. When first asked my immediate response was you have got to be kidding me! Me testify before members of congress?!
In John's calm and nurturing voice he told me yes, yes that I could do it, and that by doing so I would be representing the millions like me that were being negatively impacted by the mass exodus of American manufacturing jobs abroad. And so, I found myself in D.C. doing yet something else I never dreamed possible.
You see... What I am trying to say is that John Logue had such a positive impact on my life that he in many ways helped make me the person I am today. I was honored to have been asked to speak on his behalf several years ago at the time he was being recognized nationally for his efforts on behalf of so many... I will miss him terribly. John was a true Champion of the working men and women of not only Ohio, but of this nation as well, and his loss will be felt nationwide.
My Deepest Condolences Go Out To John's Family and Friends. I am glad to be able to say that I was Fortunate enough to be considered one as well.
May God Bless You All During These Trying and Difficult Times.
-Dave McCune-
Patrick G. Coy said...
ReplyDeleteI am fortunate to have been John's colleague in Political Science for 14 years. He was among the most principled people I've ever known. If he bent a principle, it was only on behalf of those for whom adhering to the principle was oppressive or patently unfair.
Unfailing honesty and humor were his watchwords. He had a quick wit and an easy laugh, often preceded by his trademark wry smile. He was a joy to be around.
Most of all he was that too rare academic who could produce respected, important scholarship year after year after year--even while applying it in consequential ways in the workplace on behalf of economic justice and working people.
Many people earn our respect, far fewer our admiration; I admired John and his engaged scholarship. He was the best we had in that regard, and he will long be a model for the rest of us.
I am beyond sadness, beyond grief, hoping again for the inspiration that John so often provided...
--Patrick G. Coy
I first met John at a small, private gathering in Minneapolis in 2000 that was focused on tackling the "legacy" problem for companies that were facing a transistion moment in their ownership and where a company's values might be compromised or the business might be forced to fold. From that time on I never ceased to be impressed by how much he and the OEOC were accomplishing and how much good they were doing for working people across Ohio. Often I found myself wishing there were 49 more John Logues and OEOCs for the rest of the U.S.
ReplyDeleteJohn was also a good friend to those of us in the worker cooperative movement and we'll miss his support and example.
Dr. John Logue was not only a treasure for Ohio, but for the rest of the nation as well.
ReplyDeleteA friend/colleague just called who was also touched by John Logue. Sue Noble is an economic developer in a rural Wisconsin. Last January, a multi-national corporation announced they were closing their printing plant and 81 people would lose their jobs. Ten of those people approached Sue and asked about starting their own print shop. Sue asked if they had considered a worker co-op. Sue called me. I called John Logue. John graciously spent six hours by phone the next two days, coaching us through the next steps and putting us in contact with a seasoned managerial consultant (John Baramack, who also recently passed away). In the end, the printing plant couldn’t be salvaged. But John and John planted the seed of asking the multi-national to donate the 100,000 square foot facility to the community. They did. So now we are going headlong into an incubator of various food processing businesses – some of which may incorporate as co-ops. As Sue just said, let’s do this right in honor of John and John. They’ll be watching over us.
Margaret Bau
USDA Rural Development
Wisconsin
Because of a friendship with one of his childhood buddies, the first time I met John I said "Hello, John Allen!" He was stunned that I knew his middle name but his eyes twinkled and we then spent some time talking about our experiences in Denton, TX. What a lovely man he was. Every time I saw him on campus, his smile and attention to our conversations never failed to brighten my day. I worked with his wife on a visit from some Russian librarians and it was a fabulous experience. Something John could do, that is a rare gift, is bring people together in very simple but amazingly wonderful ways. Such a loss that so many of us feel. My heart goes out to his family.
ReplyDeleteMary Stansbury
I have known John professionally for over 15 years through my involvement with the Ohio Employee Ownership Center and the Business Succession Planning Program. I always felt John was the ultimate purveyor of curious questioning, as a means of enlightenment. Anyone who had any contact with John at all, left with substance,vision and generally a smile. John was an academic at heart, but was able to cross that chasm between academia and the "private sector" to apply the theoretical to the practical. He touched thousands of people and in many cases profoundly changed their lives. He has left this world a substantially better place than the one he entered,and his legacy lives on through the people he touched, the words he both wrote and spoke, and the programs he was instrumental in developing.
ReplyDeleteMy thoughts and prayers are with John's family, those whom he loved, and those who love him.
Neil R. Waxman, Managing Parter
Capital Advisors, Ltd.
It was with both shock and sadness that I heard today of John's passing. John Logue was a wonderful professor of mine, a steadfast and wise mentor, and most importantly a friend. He wrote the letter that most likely secured my admission to a top Ph.D. program, and was always there with wisdom and friendship and praise when it was needed. He was such a great part of the team at Kent, and also introduced me to my dear friend and mentor Eric Einhorn. The team of Einhorn and Logue - few could beat them in the study of Scandinavia. And one could search the world and still not find better people.
ReplyDeleteJohn cared so deeply about the lives he touched. I'm just sorry that I didn't take enough time to share with him how truly grateful and indebted I am to him.
There isn't enough that could truly be said - but it is comforting to read the posts here. My deepest respect, gratitude and appreciation are with John and my thoughts and well wishes are with him and his family.
Sean Kay
Chair, International Studies and Professor
Ohio Wesleyan University
Mershon Associate
Mershon Center for International Security Studies
The Ohio State University
My heart breaks for John’s family in this difficult time. I hope it will be some comfort to hear stories about the tremendous impact John brought the world.
ReplyDeleteJohn multiplied his impact in the way he inspired others. More than twenty years ago I was a graduate student studying ESOPs. He asked me to explain employee ownership to a group of 300 workers on the back lawn of their factory. With a bull horn in hand and my high heels sinking into the wet grass, I seriously doubted whether I should be the one doing this. John Logue knew I could do it. He insisted.
A few decades later and I’m still making presentations and building strong employee owned businesses in my consulting work. As the first full-time employee of the OEOC, I never would have imagined that I would have stayed for nine years to build the Center with John and then continue my life’s work serving ESOP companies. I thank John for the benefits I have enjoyed because he inspired me. Because of his inspiration, I have been able to serve hundreds of companies and thousands of employee owners.
As I remember John called this act of unleashing the talents of others “leverage.” He was a master of leveraging. I am sure that there are many people throughout the world who will continue to enjoy the blessings of what John Logue was able to leverage in them. The legacy of his leverage lives on.
Cathy Ivancic, Workplace Development Inc.
On behalf of The ESOP Association, I share our community's sadness with John's untimely, and unexpected passing. He was highly respected by all who knew him. To add my personal thoughts to the many above that are poignant, I can say that John's championing of employee ownership, and ESOPs as well, was in many ways unique. He never lost faith, as many have in the ESOP world that having employees be owners could move a business entity from the cusp of closing down, to keeping fair, equitable, and good jobs for the men and women working in the company under stress. Yes, it is easier to convert a thriving, money making business to employee ownership when current shareholders exit the business compared to having the employees come together in common effort when others have given up hope. John never lost hope in these situations. Furthermore, John, unlike many in the ESOP world, never gave up hope that organized labor could, and would, embrace employee ownership over time, as he believed in his heart that the most powerful status given to an employee, or worker if you wish, was to create the "owner". No question that others will come forward with the same resolve and belief that time will overcome the cynics about the power of the average pay man and woman being owners; but those who go first, who go without tiring, and who do so in good spirit, will always be special in the memories of those blessed to work with such a person. And John Logue was such a person. Michael Keeling, ESOP Association
ReplyDeleteRest In Peace, Dr.Logue.
ReplyDeleteAskat Dukenbaev,
graduate student (2005 - present).
Many in the employee ownership community are smart and well-informed. Many engage deeply in the "real world" and change institutions, communities, companies and lives. Many are intellectually curious and wrestle with the deep principles underlying our work lives.
ReplyDeleteAs is abundantly clear from the diversity of the posts here, John Logue was a rare individual who did all three. He was a sweet, humble, thoughtful man who accomplished things that others had assumed impossible. I already miss him.
About 25 years ago, John came to our office in Arlington, Virginia, a few years before we moved to California. We went to Attila's Pizza Parlor to talk about life and employee ownership. John asked what he could do to move the idea forward. I suggested to him what I suggested to everyone who asked that--start a state employee ownership center. No one actually did it, of course. It took far too much work. No one except John. He went back to Ohio and lifted the idea onto his shoulders of optimism, passion, determination, insight, and exceptional skill.
ReplyDeleteOver the years, the work he did changed the lives of tens of thousands of people or more. There are countless people who now have jobs they would not have had otherwise. There are many more who have, or have retired on, large ESOP accounts. And there are even more who now are treated at work as valued partners, not cogs in a machine. John made that happen. Very, very few people can have claimed to have changed so many lives in such a positive way.
John was equally passionate about his research and telling the whole story, good and bad, about employee ownership. That made it all the easier to move the idea forward.
John was a friend, mentor, and inspiration. The greatest tribute to John I can think of is that I am but one of an endless number of people who would legitmately make that claim as well. I was blessed to know him. We all have been.
John was a colleague of substance and wit, a morally serious man who maintained a sense of humor, including about himself, as he went about his important work. He was indeed, as Wendy Patton calls him, “A Great Ohioan.” But he sure was Texas too. Who can forget that warm and ironic drawl, most often accompanied by a pleasing smile. John was a pioneer, a leader and an architect of an idea that will one day take its place alongside other great and necessary reforms. The idea is economic democracy through employee ownership. That work will go on. My condolences to Olga and Katherine.
ReplyDeleteI have been honored to learn from John and enjoy his incisive insight and humor during the few years I've known him. In learning of his loss, I am only beginning to realize how much he has taught me, and how much he will be missed. His new visionary effort with the Evergree Cooperative Laundry will be just one of his many legacies. Little Katherine is another, and I send her and Olga my love and condolences.
ReplyDeleteMy friends from the world of employee ownership have already said it well: John’s death is a terrible loss, to his family, of course, and to his friends, but also to everyone working on economic justice through the means of worker ownership. John was one of a kind, not only because of a Texas drawl and dry sense of humor relocated to the midwest, but also because of all the skills he brought together in his person, and in the program he helped create at Kent State. He was an academic and a technical assistance provider and a skilled tactician who was also a visionary – and who went to the places in the world where that vision was closest to reality, and wrote to tell the rest of us about it. What he did at the OEOC has been an inspiration to everyone who shares his fundamental values. I am very sorry to see John go. He will be sorely missed.
ReplyDeleteJohn's sudden passing brought an end to a life of remarkable achievement. In the time I knew him, he traversed a great arc from a young political science professor working on European social democracy to a tireless advocate of democratic worker ownership and a pragmatic builder of organizations and networks. Along the way, he worked to promote these ideas in the post-socialist countries (particularly Russia) as a better way to make the transition to a market economy. And all along the way, he projected that even keel and unflappable good humor of a solid midwesterner who put people at ease wherever he was and who usually persuaded them that his ideas were just damn good common sense. He was one of a kind and will be sorely missed.
ReplyDeleteI cannot work out how to post as my name, David Erdal).
ReplyDeleteA story John told me last spring, which captures for me the caring and the thoughtfulness and the steady eye and the sense of humour. It should be read in his Texan drawl that made the most of every syllable:
US Gypsum had shut the Marlite plant in Dover, Ohio, in their effort to break the union. We helped them put together an ESOP. A man phoned me after one of the meetings and said,
'John, isn't this communism?'
And I said, 'Well if you mean by communism the state ownership of the means of production and a centrally directed economy run by bureaucrats, then the answer is 'No'. If you mean by communism the workers of Marlite owning the Marlite plant and running it, and getting the rewards of that production, being able to pay their mortgages and get health insurance for their families, if that’'s what you mean by communism then this is communism.'
He said, 'Oh.'
So I said, 'How do you think that kind of communism i’s going to play in Dover?'
And he said. ‘'O I think it'’s going to play real well’.'
Truly sad news. My heartfelt condolences to his family. I saw him in Mondragon in mid-November with the Cleveland-Evergreen group and he was so much himself... intellectually AND practically insightful, to-the-point, good-humored, committed.
ReplyDeleteHe was an exemplary scholar-activist. A deep idealist with his feet firmly on the ground. He will be very sorely missed.
December 13, 2009
ReplyDeleteIt’s been a few days, sifting on the passing of John. Incomprehensible yet real and a reminder to the rest of us to savor every moment that’s important in life—whether professional, political, or personal. That’s what he did. Among all the practitioners in the field of worker ownership, economic democracy, and transformative politics, John was the most skilled of us in identifying and securing the practical application as a link to something broader. Not only a firm converted to worker ownership, but a network of employee-owned firms that increased their leverage exponentially. Not just a start-up of a company that created jobs but intentionally creating a symbol that might be inspirational to a movement for broader social change.
What made him so much more effective than the rest of us committed to a transformative vision with a huge range of people was that mix of characteristics that was so appealing. It was that Texan drawl and cadence that all of us recall with the mention of him. It was that commanding academic posture that would emerge in the most informal gatherings. It was that patient twinkle in his eye as both of us/you struggled with a complex problem. And it was his obvious intelligence and command of so much information.
These were the characteristics that made him effective after the fall of the Soviet Union in working to convert state-owned enterprises to employee owned companies with what must have been communists, ex-communists, capitalists, bureaucrats, mafia-like personalities, and the financial community. That’s what made him effective in working with the employee-buyout that emerged from a occupation of the factory at Sharpsville Quality Products—still an unprecedented project in American history. These are some of the qualities that prevailed in the scores of buy-outs and near-misses of the Ohio Employee Ownership Center. These qualities are what made him such a great colleague at a visit to Mondragon or Emilia Romagna with the Cooperative Charitable Trust Forum—a network of colleagues in the field who love John Logue. And these were the qualities that would have been so effective in our upcoming meeting with the United Steelworkers Union to discuss the programmatic possibilities that may emerge from their new relationship with the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation.
Very few people like John Logue pass our way. We are so much better for knowing him. He set a high standard for what we all strive to do…and he was always praiseworthy of the effort we made.
17 December 2009
ReplyDeleteBob Giel & Suellen Hershman-Tcherepnin from CCT said:
John's excitement at learning, his eagerness to understand,
the patience to network and bring people together,
his willingness to share what he had discovered with others,
his sense of fairness and purpose,
his joy in his family, and playfulness with young Katherine
all of this we admired and appreciated,
John Logue we already miss.
www.sangambayard-c-m.com
ReplyDelete