Not Going to Jinx It

Do you know Luke Hladek? Have you heard his FDR voice? Have you received a 10:00 p.m. text to go outside and see the northern lights or a meteor shower? Have you seen the way he looks at his wife and children? He will tell you how much he adores “my Liz” and is equally adored by her …to say nothing of how they cherish their clever and curious children, but he doesn’t want to jinx it. 

Luke: [Liz and I] worked together for 10 years, and a lot of people would comment, “My God, how do you do that?” Meanwhile, we’re texting each other all day long, “Hey, I’m above ground, or, Hey, I’m over here. Just come out and say what’s up.”

And if you passed by them in one of those moments, you would witness the bliss of their marriage. They respect each other. Indeed, they make each other better people and quite frankly they can’t get enough of each other. 

Luke: Yeah, I wish we were awake more.

While I wasn’t around when he was teaching her to drive a car when they were students at Bethany College or aware of the bird mites that drove them from their New York City apartment back to the Ohio Valley, I have heard the stories. I feel like I lived through it with them because Luke knows how to pull you in with his words.

I was around when he proposed. Luke was my colleague at Wheeling Country Day School at the time. Being in that ecosystem also meant he was in my mother’s orbit. Ginny Dulany volunteered for lunch and came to truly admire Luke. That’s not accurate. She held court in the Dulany kitchen at WCDS – telling stories, listening, cracking jokes, offering advice all while (wo)manning the dishwasher. I venture to say she barely saw her granddaughters and rarely stopped to see me, but she loved joking around with Luke. In fact, she created an elaborate tale that she moved back to Wheeling for him and was giddy when she heard he was getting engaged – her prince charming had arrived – only to have her heart broken that he had proposed to Liz. It was all in good fun. 

People are drawn to Luke. He offers a safe space to be yourself and brings out the fun in every person and situation. He doesn’t take himself too seriously in the best and worst of ways. He elevates an experience with his creative vision yet keeps you grounded with his moral code. Trust him with the space and time and he will curate an inclusive mission-driven experience building community, deepening culture and amplifying your brand. He is a genuine leader although he would never define himself that way.

Luke: I honestly think what I probably brought most to that position was one, a willingness to laugh at ourselves, to recognize I’m trying to take myself super seriously when I recognize that 90% of the most serious problems are not at my doorstep. You know what I mean? So let’s have some fun. If we have an opportunity to have some fun, let’s laugh. We’re teaching kids, we’re in an elementary school, which means we’re all basically a bunch of big kids. So let’s embrace that part of it. And really encouraging, not following a set anything, just allow yourself to try and not succeed or fail. I know we talked about failure a lot. But, yeah, just to try cool things because they’re cool things. Who cares? Do events because they’re fun and they can be something and do this weird part of the event because it sounds funny. 

That instinct made us a better school and a stronger community. He lives and breathes school and personal advancement. He personifies, “What if we…”

Luke: Even that second year of my internship, I think you were like, hey, I can see that you want to do this, this, and this. What I want you to do is improve any project you’re a part of. And so it would be. Instead of presenting a book report and passing the mic, let’s create an interactive, you know, walkthrough of something. And then you can still have that small presentation piece, but it’s not as rote, … It’s not something you did 10 years ago. 

We did not have the finances for me to hire Luke when his graduate internship ended, so he took a job with the local county and worked at the high school where he had been a smart ass student himself.

I missed him. I missed his spark. I missed the way he made a project or event better while simultaneously respecting the teachers involved. I missed the way he elevated other people. 

Luke: I like being a person that people can come up to and say, I know I should know how to plug this in, but can you help me out? Even if I’m stressed and I’m like, done. I’ll drop whatever, for better or worse, sometimes, but I’ll drop it and come do it because that means something to me. 

His absence taught me that people were more important than profit or policy. I never courted anyone like I did Luke. The guy who sweats through his suit during our first summer interview was now the force I knew I wanted on faculty. I reminded him how strong our work family was by having him play Santa (Ginger Claus) for the faculty Christmas party… give him a costume and he is smitten. Later, we met for coffee and he made it clear, “I don’t want to be in the same place for 40 years.” He wasn’t “a school man” as they say. I persisted and in time he was sitting in that same office – dressed much more casually under much cooler temperature and he told me he was coming back. I asked two colleagues, Bridget Rutherford and IJ Kalcum, to come join us. The four of us in the room could feel the energy – it was one of those electric moments when you are aware that something extraordinary is about to unfold—a convergence of individual potential and collective purpose so genuine that it bordered on lightning in a bottle.

Luke: Thankfully you were like, come talk to me if you have an idea. And I don’t know how many people do that, but I was like, I got 10.

I trusted him and those ideas. Luke rose quickly from intern to administrator. How did he do it?

Luke: I was given an opportunity to. I wasn’t annoying. I don’t try to be “knock on your door” annoying, but if you say, hey, I really want you to come and talk to me, I’m probably going to show up.

Liz: I just want you to know, in all the years we worked together, I never thought you were knock on the door annoying. It was much more like, does anybody know where the hell Luke is? Because you were always somewhere taking a picture, helping somebody…doing a video, setting something up.

Luke: I don’t know, I’m sure it’s some kind of ego, you know? But I like to be the guy that people come to. You know what I mean? Because I like to be. Not to be important. I don’t mean it like that. I mean it more that I like knowing that someone else knows they can come up to me without concern that I’m going to sh!# on them for asking a question, you know?

Add that quality to the list that makes him an effective albeit humble leader. People seek him out. He asks, “How are you?” and he means it …and he listens. At his core he understands your story, empathizes with your pain and offers that safe arena to be authentic with him and with yourself. I cannot count the hours we spent in the office after hours talking through personal or professional challenges. I would try to push him out the door to get home to his beautiful family, but he wouldn’t leave until he knew I was ok. They say being a Head of School is a lonely position. I never felt that way. I had Luke. 

The man who masterfully weaves narratives in text, audio and video that are captivating and fun has very few words when I ask him about being a dad. He doesn’t want to jinx it. He worries that they have been too lucky. It’s the hardest part of being a dad for him. He doesn’t want his worry to affect them. When he isn’t feeling at his best, he knows they don’t deserve for him to be struggling in their presence.

Like all good polarities in life, within that very worry is what he sees as the best part of being a dad.

Luke: When I feel my worst, I recognize that I have a responsibility to not just dump that on somebody else, and especially not on somebody else that just wants me to pick them up and hug them.

Liz: And pretty soon you don’t feel your worst anymore.

Luke: Yeah. You know, you trick yourself into maybe being your best, you know? And again, I don’t love saying that because it’s… It just feels like the best part of being a dad is my kids can mask my, you know, unhappiness sometimes, but it, you know, it’s a beautiful thing. It helps. And it’s not me hiding it necessarily. I mean, sometimes it could be, but most of the time it’s me forcing a new perspective on myself, you know?

Liz: They give you that?

Luke: Yeah, they give me that. 

His children bring him back into the present. They get him out of his worry and land him in the middle of the moment at hand. He loves it. He is in it to win it. 

A fan of Modern Family, he reminds me, “You never know when it is the last time you are going to pick up your kid.”

So he picks them up and as he throws them into the air, he looks up at them. Luke looks up. That is his trademark. For over a decade through the death of a student, a pandemic and a passion for space, he has made us all turn our faces to the skies. He lifts us individually and collectively.

If Barb Buchwach suggested I make more Liz Hofreuters, I have to ask, How do we make more Luke Hladeks? How do we develop leaders who share their vision with a compelling story, who support your potential as well as your failures, who balance family and work, and who do it with a sense of humor that builds community and culture? 

I would venture to say it started with his grandmother who truly “saw” Luke. It is thanks to Mimi, Ginnie Benedett. 

Luke: My grandma thought I was smart when no one did.

Liz: Really?

Luke: Not that nobody did. My parents do. My parents are great. But she was like, “you’re different about stuff.” And not just in a… Maybe it was… And maybe I just bought into it. Maybe it was a standard. You’re special, you know, and can do no wrong and stuff. But it wasn’t, it was very much like, “No, I want you to help me with this, because I like how you talk to me, and I like how you think” …and so as I kind of came into my own, she was the one who I felt actively saw me the way that I was hoping, you know, or at least in the way…maybe not the way I was hoping. That’s probably not the way I want to say it…

Liz: For who you are.

Luke: Yeah. Or the best that I could be.

I left his words just as he spoke them with his humility tripping over his ideas and his self-effacing bias downplaying his genius.  As someone who has worked by his side in good times and in bad, I can tell you Luke has a spectacular gift. He makes you a better person. There is simply no one else I would have as my creative partner. Like Mimi, I want Luke to help me with this, because I like how he talks to me, and I like how he thinks. I also like that there is nothing about this walking project that has to be perfect. There is always a 2.0 version we can work toward. Then a 3.0 and so on. With that mentality, we are both dropping pieces of our imposter syndrome – and focusing on incremental steps of growth and improvement.

I like to think that Mimi and my mom, the two Ginnies who were neighbors in the final years of their lives, are damn pleased by the partnership Luke and I have and the work we have done. I am sure they inspired this platform for people to know that they are actively seen as the best that they are… and are compelled to be the best that they could be… but I don’t want to jinx it.

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