Frank Burns – Into The Light“Let’s go watch planes!” he would say … and we would head out of the office and over to the parking lot off the GW parkway that is right under the flight path to National airport.
When the planes come over you can feel the roar in your body … Frank loved loud noises that take over your whole body … noises you can feel in your heart and your pulse and your being – fireworks .. and drums … and rock and roll …and thunder …
Sitting in the car feeling the planes coming over we’d get into the right ‘state’ and talk about politics and leadership and woo woo things and crazy people we knew and relationships and books we were reading and things we should write and business we might be able to do and what needed to be fixed in the world and how we could start fixing it and what would be really cool if we could pull it off and how great it was to let your body be taken over by loud noises. We’d make outrageous and audacious plans – and we carried out a fair number of them…
The car in the parking lot was maybe the best classroom i was ever in.Frank Burns was a green beret and hippie, an online communication, organization development and OpenSpaceTech pioneer. He died last week, and the story above is from Lisa Kimball in the online memorial service at MetaNet, the online space Frank created. He was renowned for his vision, generosity and for living life on his own terms. If you’re not familiar with them, MetaNet and Frank’s story are worth a look. A call to do and be and live who we really are.