By BIll Hoke

If you’ve never thought about a bucket list or are too young or too engaged in your career, you may want to come back to this article in a year, or 10.

But for those who are in their twilight years, or have seen their ranks diminished by the timely, or untimely, loss of friends, making a bucket list may have crossed your mind. If so, let me share an experience gained while drifting into my 70s.

I made a conventional bucket list a few years ago, from taking my grandchildren to Washington, D.C., to getting to the base camp of Mt. Everest, to hiking in the Alps to publishing a book of poems. In deference to my age, I took off a climb of Mt. McKinley, but maintain a hike of Bailey Range. My bucket list, like most, includes going places, seeing things, collecting a few more experiences.

But this past year, my old friend Peter Lewis (Audisee, Car Tours and hundreds of audio triumphs) mentioned to me a name from our past, George Toles. If you don’t know George, I can sum him up in a word: gentleman. In a business where we were sometimes not at our best, George is, still, a good and decent man.

I recalled to Peter a very shameful incident in my life in advertising where I participated in a scheme that resulted in George being summarily fired from the Kaye-Smith studios in Seattle. Spend much time in advertising management, work in New York, L.A. or be a Mad Man graduate and you may find you’ve sullied yourself by letting ambition override common decency and good sense.

When I told Peter I’d never talked to George since that awful event, he said he was going to hang up and told me to sit down right then and write George what I had just confessed: I was a jerk, and I am sorry for it.

George’s reply to my email was, of course, loving and forgiving and we engaged in a nice exchange of emails and we began to discuss the idea of making amends—trying to make things right, apologizing, praising, admitting and asking for forgiveness. Our dialogue leads to George completing a wonderful song lyric and then a recorded piece of music.

OK, Bill, there are others out there who need to hear from you. And they take precedence over the terrestrial destinations on my traditional bucket list. I’ve got work to do.  A new bucket list, this one with the names of people I need to make an effort to say, I’m sorry to, or thank you for being my friend, or I wish I didn’t have to fire you like that.

You can’t run an advertising agency, be in the media business or work in a creative industry that lives and dies by unfathomable client vagaries and not have gotten your hands dirty. It can be a tough, mean and nasty business and you may have some amends to make. Who’s on your list?

This doesn’t necessarily lead to redemption or excuses from those bad behaviors, but I can report that from George Toles I have gone to others. And, while most were genuinely glad to hear from me, one said, “It’s too late for that, Bill.” I had waited too long.

Metaphysics wasn’t exactly running rampant on Madison Avenue in my day and I’m sure the same was true on Wall Street and Fleet Street and Wilshire Boulevard, where the intense competition caused unintended consequences. And, if we‘re honest, some were intended.

I also tracked down some former teachers, an ex-boss who taught me some life lessons, a mentor and three college roommates and all of those contacts were poignant.

So, thank you to Peter for pointing me in a new direction, to George for being so graceful and to Larry Coffman, who said this might make an interesting article. I hope he’s correct.

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Bill Hoke is a former advertising agency creative director and lives in Kitsap, where he is semi-retired. Contact him at hoke@creativeconsulting.com and check out his entertaining and informative commentary at www.marketingimmortals.com.