I just learned that Putman Media has very suddenly lost our vice-president, Julie Cappelletti Lange, to a very uncommon disease that affects fewer than 1.25 people out of a million.
I recently wrote an editorial called The League of Competent People, and quoted in it the Kipling poem "the Sons of Martha." The Sons of Martha are the people who get things done, who do their jobs and do them to the best of their ability. The Sons of Martha make homes, companies, cities, in fact all of civilization work.
Well, there are "Daughters of Martha" too. One of them was Julie Lange.
You readers, and even those of you who advertise with us, mostly have no idea how important she was to my ability to pontificate here and in the magazine, and to the getting of the magazine to you every month on time. She wasn't customer facing, much.
She was our very own "Daughter of Martha," who was in charge of "most everything else." In fact, she seemed to be the one to whom everybody went to be "fixed." Julie was always there for her family, her friends, her co-workers...so much so that she often didn't give enough to herself. "Daughters of Martha" are like that, yes they are.
She ran facilities and provided us the very roof over our heads. She was in charge of HR, and did everything from hiring (and sometimes firing, which she hated) to promotions, benefit packages, scheduling barbeques and other things for employee welfare, and she kept her brother, John, our president, sane by doing those things so he could concentrate on the bigger picture for the company, just as a true Daughter of Martha should.
Our company will not be the same without her. The Cappelletti and Lange families will not be the same without her. There is a Julie-sized hole in each of our hearts.
But because she was a "Daughter of Martha," Julie surrounded herself with a whole horde of "Sons and Daughters of Martha,"-- all of us.
And now we will do, as Sons and Daughters of Martha always do, our jobs. Julie would like that.
And we will do it in her memory. May she be at peace, hearing the words, "Come, O good and faithful servant, and I will give you rest."
