In my late twenties, I had the good fortune to meet and work with a gentleman by the improbable name of Hubert Priest. Mr. Priest, as he was known by all, was a master of just about every construction trade, and I worked with him to build a house out of native white pine and fieldstone, a barn, and sundry other projects. Mr. Priest was 78 at the time—and he worked as hard—maybe a bit harder than I did. He arrived every day at precisely 8am, went home for ‘supper’ at noon when the whistle blew in the nearby town of Marlboro, NH, and stopped whatever he was doing at exactly 4:30pm. He neither drank, nor swore, except once on a bitter cold November day when he mashed his thumb with a big framing hammer. I was surprised to hear him say anything at all. A typically taciturn New Englander, Mr. Priest seldom had much to say with words but he said a lot in the way he worked and how he lived.

As I got to know him, I found out that he had never gotten past the eighth grade, having quit school to help keep the family fed when his father unexpectedly passed away. He learned on the job and eventually became a general contractor in the bigger town of Keene, NH nearby, where he built homes for a lot of folks over the years.

I learned a lot from Mr. Priest and to this day credit my ability to build and fix things to two men, my Dad and Mr. Priest. But what I also learned from them both was something far more valuable than how to build things. I learned about character.

Both men took enormous pride in what they did—both were inordinately humble; quiet and brilliantly competent at whatever they turned their hand to, but neither would think twice about bragging about it. Their work spoke for them. I remember the only time Mr. Priest ever worked on a Saturday. We had finished building a very complicated winding staircase just in time for the concrete delivery that would form the floor it would rest on. If you have ever had to do the math to figure out how to make this come out exactly right you’d understand that Mr. Priest would likely have been an A student if he had been able to finish school. Unfortunately, the concrete finisher did not possess the same ethic as Mr. Priest. Tolerances were not his forte. He allowed the final floor to sit about an inch lower than it was designed to and as a result, the last riser of the last step when we came back Monday morning would have to be just a little higher than all the others. It wasn’t a calamity, but it was awkward to walk down those steps and at the last step have it just a tiny bit off gait.

It bothered me, though not enough to tear apart what we had built. But it bothered Mr. Priest even more. Over the next weekend he came in all by himself—unbeknownst to me, and he rebuilt those stairs, averaging out the inch difference on each riser until it was right. I could not believe it when I came in on Monday morning.

So why tell you this story? Character is about doing the right thing, no matter what—even, in fact especially when no one is looking, or cares very much. Mr. Priest could no more allow those stairs to tell his story then he could go to the hospital when he mashed his thumb. He had me drive him home first so he could change into his good clothes before he went to the emergency room to have it stitched up.

Mr. Priest went to Church on Sunday—every Sunday no matter what, but he was not a religious person to my knowledge. He found his God in the woods, the fields and in the perfection of a board planed until it was smooth as a baby’s bottom. That higher being that dwelt in him gave him many gifts but most of all, the gift of a stubborn, unyielding Yankee determination to do everything he did as well as it could be done. That was his worship service.

When I think about the kind of people we put into elected office or choose to follow in the workplace or in life, I hold up men like Mr. Priest and my Dad as the people I want to follow and the kind of men I hope to be worthy of in my own life. When we are long gone, the only things that will stand, are not what we built or made in this world, but our story—how we lived our lives. And to me, the greatest epitaph is to say of someone, “that was a person of character”.