Duane was friends with my parents before they were married, so I have known him my whole life. It is only in the last 6 years that I began to cultivate a close friendship with him. He was instrumental in guiding me into my first contract job, an area that both my family and I were completely ignorant. What would have likely been a job that I declined, Duane transformed into a 5 year job that was both satisfying, profitable and a valuable new line to my work history.
He was able to articulate how the contract environment ran which in turn, gave me the confidence to negotiate my relations with the companies that hired me and to cut my ties when conditions were not favorable.
Since then Duane has been a weekly part of my life in almost any area that he and I talk. He has a keen problem solving mind and a knack for thinking through the details that I overlook in my haste to complete a project. He jokingly calls calls himself a troublemaker for pointing out potential problems, but he and I both know that, if anything, he is preventing problems.
He carries a wide range of wisdom compiled from a lifetime of work all over the globe and the confidence that comes from having done most of it with his own hands, rather than attending a class on the subject. Once you recognize a person like that, you hold onto them and learn from them all that they will tell you.