A few years ago on this Truly Human Leadership podcast, Garrett Potts, a professor at the University of Florida, asked Barry Wehmiller, chairman Bob Chapman, this question.
What does it look like for you to think about this exercise as you consider your own eulogy? How would you like to be remembered, I may ask?
I think Thank you for asking that, Garrett. The way I would answer that is number one, I came to a vision for a company that I think reflects my life that I want to measure success by the way I touch the lives of people. Okay? And my family, the people I work with, people like you that I influence. So, I want to look back on my life with people whose life I have touched that caused them to rise to a higher level of purpose in life. And that we create a movement of caring that will live well beyond our time. So, that's my purpose, to make sure that I'm totally focused on in my calling today to make sure that this blessing we've been given of empathetic listening and caring becomes foundational to society. Because there is not one ounce of doubt in my mind that that is the key to the society where we have civil discourse, we can live in harmony with the unique differences and beauties. But until we teach these skills that we were blessed with, we will not live that society. We'll continue to blame others, blame government. It's everybody's fault but ours, but it's ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. Until we individualize caring, until we institutionalize the skills. We have learned that you can teach people; you can't ask people to care. You have to teach them how. You can't ask people to live as God intended us to. We have to teach them how to do that, okay?
This episode of the Truly Human Leadership podcast is a very special one. We pay tribute to Bob Chapman, CEO of Barry-Wehmiller for 50 years, chairman of the board, the inspiration for what is now called Truly Human Leadership, and co-author of the book Everybody Matters with his friend Raj Sisodia. I'm Brent Stewart, your host. Thanks for listening. Let me read a little bit from an email that Kyle Chapman, Barry-Wehmiller's president and CEO and Bob Chapman's son, sent to Barry-Wehmiller team members. Kyle said, 'It is with a heavy heart that I share the news that my father, best friend, mentor, and our beloved Barry-Wehmiller chairman, Bob Chapman, passed away on Thursday, March 19th, 2026 surrounded by his loving family. For the past 16 months, he's battled leukemia with the same optimism, humor, and resilience that defined his leadership. He was fortunate to receive extraordinary care which gave him time to continue pursuing his passion, redefining what success looks like in business, and he continued to lead, listen, and care for the team members he held dear, while reminding the world what caring leadership looks like. Even as his body grew tired, his commitment to people never wavered. My dad was an eternal optimist. His ability to see what's possible was rooted in a deep belief in others. He often said that he was not most proud of the equipment we built or services we provided at Barry-Wehmiller, but instead the people who built and provided them. He measured success by the lives he touched. That belief shaped this company. It shaped all of us. His passing is an immeasurable loss and yet what he created does not leave with him. It was never meant to. He gave us all a greater purpose. A clear enduring belief that business can be the most powerful force for good. That was his life's work. And now it becomes ours to steward, to strengthen, and to bring to life in ways that reach far beyond where we are today.' That was Kyle's note to team members which applies not only to us at Barry-Wehmiller, but to all of you in this audience who also work toward building the better world that Bob dreamed of. Those of you who felt a kinship with Bob and whose words resonated with because you also knew that there was a better way to do business. There's no way that we can encapsulate the whole of Bob and what he has meant to so many on this episode but we want to try to pay tribute to Bob through clips from a number of interviews we've featured with Bob over the duration of the podcast. Clips that we selected that not only pay tribute to his ideas and insight, but hopefully showcase the person he was. I want to start off with Bob talking about what heaven would look like for him in an answer to a question I asked about his dad, William Chapman, whose untimely death in 1975 led to Bob becoming the leader of Barry-Wehmiller. [Clip begins] You know, you came in to the business, your dad wanted somebody who he could trust in the business. And then you were kind of thrust into the leadership role when your dad passed. What do you think that he'd think of the company now and all the different parts of the company, the leadership message, the way our people feel, and the way people feel about our company?
Well, the way I'd like to answer that question is, 5 or 6 years ago I was at dinner and some lady, a very nice lady, sat next to me and we had... I was saying I'm too old for trivial conversations. So I was challenging her about what she was going to do with her life and she looked at me and threw an equally good challenge and she said, 'What do you think heaven looks like?' I've never had anybody ask me that. So I hadn't really thought about it. And so I thought a minute and I said, 'You know what? To answer your question, I think heaven would look like sitting down with my dad and explaining to him what happened to this company that he tried for 23 years to give a future to, but struggled to keep it alive when he joined the company. And when I was thinking about that, people will say to me, 'Well, I'm sure he knows.' People with faith would say, 'Well, he knows.' So yeah, but I want to see his face. I want to see him say, 'You got to be kidding me.' Because A, I was not a kid that he thought had turned out too well, which he was probably more right than wrong given my high schooling and early college experience. And B, that he'd spent 23 years trying to keep this company alive and give it a future and just couldn't break it out of the kind of historic rut it was in. And so I use the analogy, it'd be like us sitting here and seeing the moon and say, 'Wouldn't it be amazing to be like the original astronauts to land on the moon?' I mean, just can you imagine even landing on the moon, sitting on the moon, and when you see it up there? And then the next evening we're sitting around having a beer together and we look around, 'Why is it so dusty here?' And we look around and say, 'Wait a second, we're on the moon. How in the hell did we get on the moon?' And that's the way I honestly feel. And when you understand kind of what we talked about in the brokenness of the '80s where we couldn't pay a bill, that we're in an old industry with old technology, and we sit here today with people putting their faith in us and believing in us, and the story's being written about us, and amazing opportunity to share it through the book, through the TEDx Talk, through the speeches we get to give today. It is a joy beyond words, but clearly I would love to see my dad's face because there's no way he would imagine it. Since he's already dead, I can't kill him twice, but it would kill him. He'd think you know, he'd say, 'Oh my god.' He wouldn't even imagine because he spent 23 years trying to get it out of this rut. He kept it alive but he couldn't break the pattern. To think it's a $3 billion company today with the caliber of investors we have today and the faith people put in us and the talks and the way it's helped his family and other people. It would be like landing on the moon to him. Beyond your imagination. This is beyond my wildest. We had a goal to get it to 100 million in 1988 to get to 100 million. And that plan that we had to get 100 million got us to this year we'll be about 3 billion.
So, and then if he looked at you and said, 'Okay, how'd you do it? How'd you do it? Give us your elevator pitch on how'd you make that happen?'
Oh, I asked my mom. I used to ask my mom when before she had Alzheimer's, 'Hey Mom, what do you think you did with me?' And she said, 'I have no idea.' She didn't because she was like me as a kid, but she had no feeling I had any potential. And the simple answer is that I would say to you, to my dad, that somehow I was blessed with the ability. I'm an eternal optimist. In the worst of times, I never gave up. I could always see tomorrow. I come in every day enthusiastic go to the next day. And I was able to see value where other people were not because there was no elements of traditional value left to see. So if I didn't find some nuances of value that nobody else had seen. So I would say to you that is what has driven our company to today. I'd say that I was given not intellectual intelligence, but common sense. I just have the ability to see things other people can't see and come up with creative solutions. I personally don't think you can be a great leader without being an optimist. I think a great leader gives the people in their care a grounded sense of hope, a grounded sense of hope for a better future. That is our responsibility. And I don't think people understand that. We don't teach that, but that's our responsibility is to give the people in our care a grounded sense of hope for a better future, be able to articulate it. And because people put their faith in us, do they decide to have a child? Do they have enough job stability to financially afford a child? Can they buy a home? Can they buy a car? When you hear the stories in our book where somebody lost their job, couldn't afford their child, was collecting cop ins. It really takes seriously that every time you hire somebody, they're putting their faith in you.
Bob was an unshakable optimist. And he brought an overwhelming enthusiasm to everything he did every day. In this clip, we were talking about holidays and it kind of gives you a little glimpse into how Bob approached every single day with purpose and meaning.
I for probably most of my life have never been much of a holiday person because I don't want to wait until holiday to enjoy my family or my life. So I've been blessed with this attitude that I want every day to be special, because you can never go back and say, 'Let's go back tomorrow and really enjoy it tomorrow.' Or yesterday. So I don't really reflect on the holiday season any differently than any others. I just feel every day is an opportunity to live life fully and enjoy it and contribute to hopefully leave lives better than you found them. So I think it's nice to be with family, but I don't wait for holidays to be with my family. I work on quality time all year long every day.
