been smarter to send him out to another architectural firm, but we were small. We felt like we needed him, and he wanted to stay with the business. What type of projects did he work on? Jeff: Residential, office, hotels, a lot of retail, medical, industrial – Lynn was involved in every type of project we did. He had a unique way of thinking threedimensionally. He had a vision of how even complicated sites and complicated projects could happen. Most of Woodbury projects are built for tenants and companies; we don’t do a lot of spec space. Up until even a few months ago, Lynn had a way of coming up with an initial concept on a site that was very practical, very economical, very insightful. Even though he couldn’t draw in his later years, he was instructing other people to draw his vision. Lynn would save us a lot of money just because he could see by looking at the topo map and looking at the site how he could balance a site. That vision is really the talent that made him so valuable throughout his career, both before and after the accident. Did he do the detailing as well? Rick: In the early years, he did a lot of the detailing. He worked with Fred Babcock on the Holiday Inn in St. George, which was a fairly extensive project. And he did so much of the detailing that after the project was essentially completed, I went to him and said, “Lynn, we need you more on supervision and we need to hire other people to do that.” And it was a week later that he had his accident and kind of was forced into that anyway. But he’d always check the details throughout his career. Jeff: Yes, of course, but the problem was we became too big. Ultimately, he was head of our construction and design department, and he had a series of architects and draftsmen underneath him. We did many projects where we did all the plans in-house. Then we did other projects where we hired an outside architecture firm, and there’d be a weekly, or a couple design meetings a week, on projects, and Lynn would be involved in those meetings. But as head of that department, he would also manage construction management. An architect is very important as a project is being built to make sure that the plans are being interpreted correctly by the contractor. I’ve had multiple contractors say he saw things that they didn’t see. Can we talk about his accident, and how that changed his trajectory? Jeff: The accident occurred on a trampoline at his sister-in-law’s home. He got distracted as he was jumping and came off the trampoline and landed on the back of his neck. When I arrived at the hospital, he still felt like he was in the position he was in when he hit the ground, even though he was laying out flat. Obviously, it was a major shock to him. It took a significant amount of time and a lot of effort on a lot of people’s part to help him overcome that accident. I had an accident a few years ago and was in the hospital. Lynn and I were talking on the phone, and he said, “Yeah, I wasted too much time thinking about the mistake. As soon as I could just look forward rather than look back on the mistake, then I started being really productive again, and I started realizing how important and how wonderful life is.” Literally, he never complained. It was actually amazing how fast he came back and was really productive for us as an organization. He overcame so much because of his attitude that there is much more to life than worrying about what you can’t do. You should be focusing on what you can do. Rick: I recall he used to talk with his pencil. He would say, “I think we should do something like this.” And he would draw it real fast. He had to learn to describe things verbally rather than draw them, because in those days, you didn’t have the type of computer capabilities we have today. He learned quickly and made a quick adjustment. Just before his accident, we had designed a substance abuse center in St. George. The design had been done before his accident, but he’d been in the hospital for maybe five months or so. When he finally could get around, one of the first things he wanted to do was go down there because it was final inspection time and he had never seen the project. We went there in his van. The project was, in effect, near complete and as he would go into rooms, he would say, “Oh, this is wrong. We need to change this. This is not how it was designed.” Our construction supervisor and the contractor would say, 14 REFLEXION
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