I’m preparing to step down from a position soon and was thinking about my goodbye. It’s not quitting a job; I don’t even have traditional employment to even “quit.” I’ll admit that there’s a huge temptation to take a “you’re gonna miss me when I’m gone” approach.
A couple of years ago I left a dysfunctional, unappreciative charity board and surprised myself by taking the high road. Go figure.
It got me thinking about farewell addresses over time.
Generic advice from Toastmasters or the Kiwanis Club about retirement speeches has a basic template: 1) Acknowledge the room and situation, 2) Share a memory or two, 3) Express gratitude, 4) Look to the future, 5) Bring it home with warm wishes or a toast. That’s all fine for a boilerplate retirement. But some situations where important people are stepping down have bigger things to say.
In reality, there are a lot of different ways famous people have gotten something off their chest as parting comments. Sometimes it’s a noble warning about the future, and sometimes it’s basically the middle finger on their way out the door. Let’s take a look.
The Parting Shot
I don’t normally empathize or identify with Richard Nixon, but he made one hell of a pissed-off departure that I admire.
No, it wasn’t when he resigned the presidency after Watergate. At that one he was in pure spin mode, pretending he was a statesman after being busted and revealed as a petty, paranoid political operator (“But as President, I must put the interests of America first.”)
The angry departure I have to tip my cap to, and we all might relate to was in 1962 after Nixon was soundly defeated in the California gubernatorial election. Losing hurts and it’s natural to turn on the public.
“You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.”
Who can’t relate to that one? If only he had kept to his word and not resurfaced six years later.
Biblical Goodbye
Characters from the Bible can get petty, too.
There’s Moses, who might have the most justified list of grievances in the history of farewell addresses. After 40 years of leading the ungrateful Israelites through seemingly endless travails and wandering, he finally got them to the precipice of the Promised Land, despite how they ignored him at just about every turn. The catch: he’s not going with them.
In the opening chapters of Deuteronomy, Moses takes the opportunity to review the journey, reminding his people of their repeated disobedience, their lack of faith, their endless bitching, and the various ways they’ve made his divine job considerably harder than it needed to be. He even asks, “How can I bear your problems and your burdens and your disputes all by myself?”
To be fair, his address has a helpful purpose. Moses knows he’s leaving them in Joshua’s hands, and he wants this generation to learn from the mistakes of the last one. Moses warns about what happens when they make empty promises and lose faith.
But there’s also something deeply satisfying about watching a leader finally get to tell his awful people exactly what he’s been putting up with for four decades. He’s got a lot to say, and they’ve got to sit there and take it. By the way, Moses never gets to the Promised Land himself. I’d be pissed too.
The Real Statesmen
When it comes to a “farewell address”, one stands out above the rest: George Washington stepping down as President.
Here in the era of “No Kings” protests, it could be easy to forget that the yielding of presidential power was not something the Founding Fathers thought of or put in the Constitution. If Washington wanted to, he could have stayed on and run for, and won, the presidency til the day he died.
Instead, he voluntarily relinquished power and warned the country about political factions and permanent foreign entanglements.
“It serves always to distract the Public Councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the Community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another.”
Yup, that was pretty right on about the danger of political parties. Lesson not learned.
Another president, Dwight Eisenhower, had a farewell address with an important lesson to teach the nation in his last speech in office. His predecessor, Harry Truman, started the tradition once television was in more homes.
Eisenhower, in his farewell address, famously warned about the military-industrial complex.
“Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”
When are we gonna start actually listening to great speeches when they happen?
If this piques your interest in presidential farewell addresses, check out this great archive.
Late-Night Emotional Goodbyes
Strangely enough, three late-night TV hosts had goodbyes mixed with emotion and a real message for the audience.
Conan O’Brien: At the end of the Jay Leno vs. Conan O’Brien dustup, Conan was leaving the Tonight Show. The last run of shows featured incredible lineups, it seemed like every big or cool star in show business was on Team Coco. But his final Tonight Show episode showed an incredible amount of gratitude, affection, dignity, plus a refusal to let NBC’s treatment of him define his farewell.
“Please don’t be cynical. I hate cynicism. For the record, it’s my least favorite quality. It doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen. I’m telling you, amazing things will happen.”
Jon Stewart: The Daily Show was a comedy show which covered the news. They did it either so well, or the news media was doing their job so poorly that The Daily Show became strangely important. His departure from The Daily Show was partly dealing with the difficulty of leaving something. But his farewell was a warning to news consumers and fellow citizens:
“Now, the good news is this: Bullshitters have gotten pretty lazy, and their work is easily detected. And looking for it is kind of a pleasant way to pass the time. Like an ‘I Spy’ of bullshit. I say to you tonight, friends, the best defense against bullshit is vigilance. So if you smell something, say something.”
Jack Paar: The second Tonight Show host back in the early 60s. He got to make two farewell speeches. The first was in 1960 when he hastily walked off after an incredibly benign joke was censored. A perfect example of the ticked off, you-know-what-you-can-do-with-this-job exit:
“I’m leaving The Tonight Show. There must be a better way of making a living than this.”
He came back, then his real retirement in 1962 was not only about gratitude, but graceful about how the older generation should make room for the new:
“There are great opportunities for new talent in television. I know from my own beginnings in radio how important that first break can be, and I’ve tried to offer such a beginning to new performers on this program. Having run out of fresh, exciting, new ideas to bring you myself, I feel I should give somebody else a turn.”
THE Sports Farewell
Retirement announcements for athletes and coaches are well and good. But there’s really one end of career speech that stands out above the rest: Lou Gehrig’s “luckiest man on the face of the earth” fan address at Yankee Stadium.
If we are talking about gratitude, it’s a first-ballot Hall of Famer. Gehrig was diagnosed with ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, aka “Lou Gehrig’s Disease”), and went from being a 36-year-old superstar first baseman one day to facing a terminal diagnosis the next. At the end of any playing career, time runs out and retirement is forced; as they say, “Father Time is undefeated.” But Gehrig’s case was orders of magnitude more extreme. It was a death sentence.
So, for him to show this level of gratitude is simply amazing:
“For the past two weeks you have been reading about a bad break. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. So, I close in saying that I might have been given a bad break, but I’ve got an awful lot to live for. Thank you.”
His number 4 was the first to be retired in Major League Baseball.
Fictional Characters “Controlling the Narrative”
In Jerry Maguire, the character Jerry Maguire is let go from his high-paying, high-powered sports agency job. It’s underhanded the way it all went down and on the way out, he gives a very particular farewell address – saving face. He tries to turn an embarrassment into a triumphant departure which turns into more embarrassment:
“Don’t worry. I’m not gonna do what you all think I’m gonna do, which is just flip out! Let me just say, as I ease out of the office I helped build, I’m sorry, but it’s a fact that there’s such a thing as manners. A way of treating people.
“These fish have manners. These fish have manners. In fact, I’m starting a new company, and the fish will come with me. Call me sentimental, but the fish are coming with me.
“But if anybody else wants to come with me, this moment will be the ground floor of something real and fun and inspiring and true in this godforsaken business, and we will do it together. Who’s coming with me? Who’s coming with me? Who’s coming with me besides… Flipper here? [silence] This is embarrassing.”
That was a terrific enough of a scene. But then came the 1998 stoner movie Half Baked, a fun and sometimes hilarious misfire of a comedy. In it, we get a two-fer of saving face retirement scenes.
But then the movie features the greatest walkout in the history of employment, when Scarface quits his burger job. It’s the mic drop we all secretly wish we could pull off after being let go.
Fictional Hard Feelings
On just about every best episodes of TV list that you’ll ever see, the Season 2 hour, “Two Cathedrals” from The West Wing appears.
President Bartlet (Martin Sheen) is in the middle of a presidency-threatening scandal about not disclosing his medical condition, then his secretary dies tragically. He’s getting hit by all sides and trying to decide if he wants to seek reelection or let his vice president, John Hoynes, get the party nomination instead. After the funeral, he addresses God by himself in the National Cathedral (just make sure to get to the end)
It’s not a farewell address, but that is how I want my spiteful side to emerge on my angry way out the door. “You get Hoynes” (meaning: you don’t deserve me, I’m leaving, enjoy my hacky successor).
My Exit
In case you were wondering, my departure day has come and there was easily an opportunity for me to make a farewell address. But I didn’t.
Maybe a president has the gravitas or the interested audience to take well-meaning advice. I didn’t try to take the bait on face-saving or sounding pompous with words of wisdom. Just a more standard appreciation and thanks, then that was it.
But I’ll tell you now, if they had understood the reference, all I would have said was, “You get Hoynes.”
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