This past week I went to Canastota, New York for my cousin Craig's funeral.  Canastota is a small village off the New York Thruway.  For many years its claim to fame was Rocky Gracciano's Restaurant and the Boxing Hall of Fame.  Over the past couple of years they gained a Best Western Hotel, a McDonalds and a large gas station.  As you travel past these monuments of today you enter Main Street where the speed limit is twenty-five miles per hour.  There are no apartment buildings and no large office buildings.  Everything is for the most part as it was for many years.  On the surface there appeared not much change had taken place in this sleepy village and yet there was a major transformational shift that took fifty-one years to take place.

After graduation from college Craig went back to Canastota and went into business with his long time friend Arny.  Craig's Kegs was a place to buy your beer and soda.  Craig also started a catering business that supported the local college in addition to private parties.  He also opened a delicatessen in another town and was quite the entrepreneur.

At Craig's funeral there was not one mention of his business accomplishments.  Not that they were not important, they were.  The focus was on something different.  The focus was on a transformation that had been taking place for fifty-one years which is how old Craig was when he passed away.

At the church the priest who conducted the service and Craig's best friend, Jim Stokes spoke about Craig's generosity, his caring, and his ability to share of himself in every way.  Craig was there for people when they where in most need.  They told how Craig brought boys into his business while they were still in school and then saw them off to start their own businesses and careers.  They spoke about his love for animals and all the charitable work he did to protect animals.  They also talked about how he would find boys in trouble with the law and help them back to the correct way to live their lives.

Stories will not be told about how many kegs of beer he sold or how his sandwiches were made.  Not about how many parties he catered but how he changed and influenced so many lives.  Here is a man that made a difference in people's lives that will live on from generation to generation. People will remember Craig Turrisi and how he changed people's lives.

Craig was a wealthy man.  I cannot speak of his financial wealth but of a different type of wealth.  The line at his funeral went on forever.  The line was made up of young children to older senior citizens.  Friends had come to say thank you for being in my life, thank you for demonstrating your values, principles and ethics, and for one last time, good-bye.

Craig's wealth is in the friends he has and the memories he left them with which will never be affected by the economy, Wall Street or any other world condition.

Now what is this is really about?  I believe we are in the financial mess we are in because of a breakdown in the values and principles of some companies and their leaders.  We need to run our businesses based on respect for the people we have working with us, our customers and our vendors.  We must be driven by principles of honesty and fair play. We need to go back to the highest of values and principles that must never be violated. We know how we got here, now the process must be reversed.  Greed must be replaced with generosity, dishonesty with honesty, and falsehood with truthfulness.