"Glimpses of an Uncharted Life," Richard H. Shriver

 Today is Juneteenth, the day we celebrate the end of slavery in the United States.

 

As I write in the first paragraph, Dick Shriver is a friend. I met him several years ago when he and his wife Barbara moved to Old Lyme. Through his invitation, I sat on the board of MCCD for seven years, an organization he created in 2012, whose mission is to help those in need.

 

Dick is a modest and selfless man. His generosity can be measured in the time he has taken with two of my grandchildren, one who lives here and another in the form of a pen pal. Those facts and my friendship certainly influenced my purchase of his book. However, I have finally read “Glimpses” after sitting on my desk for the past five years, reluctant to pick it up less it compared poorly with others that I have read. I needn’t have been concerned. 

 

The photo is of the cover of the book – not a good one, as I am the photographer.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Burrowing into Books

Glimpses of an Uncharted Life, Richard H. Shriver

June 19, 2024

 

“After a few decades of foreign development experience late in the last century, I became

increasingly convinced that it was foolish for the United States to provide foreign assistance

without understanding beforehand substantially more than it did about local cultures and histories.”

                                                                                                                                Richard Shriver (1934 -)

                                                                                                                              Glimpses of an Uncharted Life, 2017

 

We are comprised of inherited genes, but we are also formed by experiences. It is the latter that is the subject of this autobiographical sketch from a remarkable individual I am privileged to call a friend. 

 

This book offers brief looks into the author’s varied careers. Trained at Cornell (where he was an all-American lacrosse player) as an engineer and mathematician/statistician and following four years in the U.S. Airforce (where he trained on the T-38), in 1960 Dick Shriver began work with Standard Oil of New Jersey (now Exxon). Six years later he opened his own consulting firm. In 1976, he accepted a position with the U.S. Department of Defense. In 1985, after a stint at the U.S. Treasury Department, Dick was asked to chair the first world conference on counterterrorism, which followed the 1983 suicide bombing of the marine barracks in Lebanon. Endowed with a generous dosage of curiosity, he had always wanted to understand how companies work, how government works, and how the world works.   

 

This book follows his odyssey – though not in chronological order – to satisfy that curiosity. Even before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 – from a life dependent on the State to a life in freedom – Dick had been interested in how such a change would affect people. It was dramatic and, initially, difficult. He writes: “The life expectancy of males in Russia (I assume the same was true for Ukraine) dropped from sixty-four in 1990 to fifty-eight by 1995, almost a statistical impossibility.” Learning to live in a market economy (which, in time, brings higher living standards and better health), after having lived in a command economy for three generations, required learning new skills. That is where Dick saw opportunity.

 

To help Eastern Europeans learn the benefits of free-market capitalism (and how to cope with change), Dick joined the International Executive Service Corps (IESC) in 1992; they opened twenty offices in ten former Soviet republics. Then, concerned as to whether the money raised was getting to the right people or whether it was aiding future oligarchs, in 1995 he applied for a grant from the Christian A Johnson Endeavor Foundation, so that he and his wife could re-locate to and open an office in Ukraine, which he did, in Lviv where he and Barbara lived for eight years. As well, he spent time in Moscow and in the Baltic states.

 

In his mission to help understand and improve lives of those from the former Soviet Union, in 2003 Dick served as provost of Berlin’s European College of Liberal Arts (now called Bard College Berlin). It is a small college – forty-nine students from twenty-two countries studying in English for one year. He writes: “We may offer the richest multicultural experience of any institution in the world.”

 

These few words of mine hardly give justice to this book or its author, whose curiosity and drive continue. In 2012, in retirement in Old Lyme, he founded MCCD (Mentoring Corps for Community Development). In 2019 he became publisher of a new magazine about the Connecticut River, Estuary. And last year, at age 90, he coached the Old Saybrook High School’s girl’s lacrosse team. Dick Shriver has indeed led an uncharted (and remarkable) life. This book provides more than a glimpse.