Ed Feldmanis and I have been sharing our gratitude for the roles Frank Knutson and Jack Gilles played in making the Archives accessible over the years. Frank, among other things, organized 40,000 photos of the ICA’s global work, which is now available to all. Ed has known Jack for many years, including before Jack’s work with the Archives. After Ed wrote the following words about Jack, I suggested they should be shared on the list serve and he asked me to send them to you.
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I first encountered Jack in 1971. Once I met Jack I found the encounter unforgettable. Several times he was a guest at our religious house dinners, every time my impression was the same. First, here was a guy whose life was turned upside down by the Gospel. Second, there was no question that when you met Jack you met intensity. Even in those early days there was something wild about him. Thirdly, it was easy to grasp, that this was a guy gifted with an impactful big brain.
When in later years, Jack found himself in the Cleveland Religious House, next to Case Western University, Jack discovered that Kenneth Boulding, the author of The Image paper which fundamentally changed how we all understood education, was lecturing. Afterwards, Jack approached him, introduced himself, and said, “Whatever you have planned for the rest of the evening, I have a better offer for you.” Many of Jack's Order colleagues have commented the Jack had brass balls. This is certainly an instance of that. Boulding agreed to come for refreshments with members of the House. According to Jack, Boulding was astonished by the concept of Imaginal Education; his response was, "But it only took me a couple of hours to put this on paper."
Jack once shared with me that his greatest satisfaction was his work in India. It was more than undertaking of the Human Development Projects in one of the toughest places in the world. What Jack understood was that the very mindset and operations of how businesses worked had to fundamentally change. So Jack promoted, recruited, and presented the LENS course with every opportunity. Jack's passion was in the belief that India could not move ahead without the transformation of business from its' heavy-handed top-down operations to one which was more egalitarian and human. Jack was fully on board with Peter Drucker's idea, "Work no longer can just make a living, it must make a life."
Whenever, over the years, students approached Jack for career advice, he would share with them an unusual perspective. "The first thing to do," he would say, "is to ask yourself if there is anything you would want to experience or undertake that if you missed the opportunity, you would regret it for the rest of your life."
The one thing that was true for Jack was that you could take the man out of the religious order, but you could not take the religious out of the man. Whether the Order went out of being or not Jack always understood himself to be the religious.
In Jack's later life his ambitions were twofold. One was to make a go of the Litibu Ecovillage which he helped found and second to share with the world our Institute colleagues' knowledge, experience and works. Jack helped formulate the framework of the archives collections and shared his vision about its values and direction.
Jack was entranced by water, and yearned to be around it. In this case the Pacific Ocean. When he died he was exactly where he wanted to be.
From Ed Feldmanis and Karen Snyder
