Remembering Don Rosenfield

I knew Don Rosenfield for almost 53 years from the time he joined the Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity as a freshman at MIT in 1965. I was a sophomore. I have enjoyed reading the tributes to Don from students and colleagues on the website, and looking at the photos that have been posted. The stories speak to the generosity of his spirit and brilliance, and his broad smile (we referred to them as “SEG’s”) are a window to his joy. I challenge anyone, anywhere to find a photo of Don when he isn’t smiling!

Don possessed an “unusual” sense of humor. He would create quirky scenarios, and smile just as vigorously 50 years after the first telling, for what would might be the 500th time. One out of a dozen examples comes to mind. Don was convinced that the Red Sox had mislabeled Carl Yastrzemski’s uniform during his playing career. Yaz’s actual number, according to Don was 6.02 x 10^23. And of course, Avogadro’s number was “8”. When I visited the Baseball Hall of Fame in the mid 1970’s, I sadly reported back to him that they had still retired the wrong number for Yaz, Don laughed and took it in stride. Just this past summer, when I saw Don, I told him that I looked forward to taking my grandsons to the Hall of Fame in the next year or two. His comment: “Well, I certainly hope they’ve finally got the correct uniform for Yaz.”

Shortly after Don’s tragic death, I told Roy Shapiro, whom Don loved and revered, that Don was such a giving individual, that if you asked for the proverbial shirt off of his back, Don would refuse, making sure that the shirt he gave you was of the right size and to your liking. He led a full life, with humor, intellect and concern for everyone in his sphere- EACH AND EVERY DAY.. We all wish there were more days.

Despite his remarkable intellect, wit, and accomplishments, Don used his gifts to serve others versus himself. MIT and the LFM/LGO program changed my career and my life and Don is the single person most responsible for creating such an amazing opportunity for me and many others. From the first interview in 1995 to our last recent email exchange, his exceptional character, patience, and kindness had a big impact on me. I am ever grateful and indebted.

I want to thank Don for the immense contribution he made to LGO and thank him for being the person he was. As a student at MIT from 1991-1993, Don was the primary interface for me and my classmates. He was the consummate professional and truly cared about us and positively influenced us on our journey to help reclaim the Big M (as we called it back then). Don has truly helped influence every person that has stepped through LGO. The impact he made on me and others is felt around the world. Thank you Don.

I will always remember the way Don had to make people feel special. In group settings he would turn to me and share some piece of information. It was usually something simple like an observation about yesterday’s Red Sox game or an update on a classmate but the excitement in his voice and the smile on his face made it seem like he was sharing an inside joke that only the two of us knew. I was fortunate to connect with Don each year when I returned to campus to help him deliver the Harrison Smith Award. This is a scholarship given each year in remembrance of our LFM ’99 classmate who died shortly after graduation. Don was Harrison’s thesis advisor and each year he began the presentation by welcoming the Smith family and sharing his memory of Harrison. Afterwards we would all go out to dinner with the awardee, past awardees and the Smith family. Over the past almost 20 years, Don has never missed a year. Observing how happy he was, surrounded by his students and the Smith family, it was clear to me how much Don loved not only Harrison, but each and every one of us.

Don had the innate ability to make you feel welcome and at home. From the moment Haley and I set foot on the MIT campus, Don made us feel like a part of the LGO family. He also had a tremendous memory. Don would ask about your family, friends and hobbies in a great bit of detail as an old family friend would. Even though, it may have been a couple of years since you last spoke. Finally, he was genuinely concerned about how you were doing. He understood that successful leaders needed balance so your personal well-being was of the upmost importance to him. Don will be truly missed.

Lots of great memories of Don but the one I always remember first was on October 28, 2004. Don had an extra bounce in his step that day because the night before the Red Sox finally broke the curse and won the World Series! Don proudly kicked off the Alumni Conference sharing the front page of the Boston Globe. As a diehard NY Yankee fan that day was difficult but it brings a smile to my face every time I remember the joy it brought to Don to not only have the Red Sox win but to be able to share it with the LGO alumni at the conference. Thanks Don for all the Yankees-Red Sox debates we had during my time at LGO and after. I will forever think of you every time the Yankees play the Red Sox!

There is a small group of us from the class of ‘93 that gets together once a year somewhere in the U.S., and has every year for the last 10 years. During one of our first trips, we were headed from Seattle to eastern Washington on a small bus. Someone had the great idea to call Don and include him in our experience. So we did – we called him. He picked up the phone immediately, recognizing that it was a former LGO student, and proceeded to talk to us about the trip, some things going on in our lives – always asking terrific questions, of course – and shared a little bit about his own experiences.

Only later in the call did we learn that he was actually in Asia, that we’d woken him, and that he was perfectly willing to engage in a few minute long conversation with us, because he enjoyed it so much. That epitomizes the kind of friend Don was to all of us.

He was selfless with his time, always willing to help, and always asking questions about what was happening in our lives first. From then on, every year, we would call Don wherever we were. And he would always answer the phone.

View Jeff’s tribute video.

More than any professor, Don made me want to do my best. His positive attitude was contagious, as his friendship was genuine. I will miss him.

When it comes to professors, Don was in a class of his own. Don had a superhuman power of helping others thrive — it went far beyond teaching and research. He embodied all the wonderful qualities of a professor, mentor, citizen, and friend. More than any one particular instance, it was all the interactions together that made Don so special. Whether it was a serious conversation, shooting the breeze, commiserating, joking around, consulting, collaborating, sympathizing, mischief making, (occasional 🙂 admonishing, or advice giving — Don had a gift for giving people the confidence to be themselves. I feel extremely lucky to have been one of Don’s students, and even luckier to have enjoyed his friendship.

I will always vividly remember the moment when Don called me over 20 years ago to tell me, personally, that I had been admitted to the then-LFM program. During my two years in the program, it was always evident how much Don cared about his students, their lives, and their success. He continued demonstrating this every time I saw him in Cambridge or at an alumni event. He never asked a generic, “How are you?” question; it was always something concrete that demonstrated his ability to remember details about my life and career, amongst all of the lives he touched during his career. His teaching, his leadership, and his advocacy will be missed.

When my phone rang it was 2am in Israel, everyone at the house was sleeping. On the phone was Don, with his famous “Don Call” to let me know I got into LFM. When I told him it was 2am in Israel, he just said “well, I know, but I thought this call with these great news was the one you would want to wake up to anytime.” And he was 100% correct !

Of all of the many great memories of Don, I will never forget receiving a phone call from him on a Sunday afternoon at my house in Virginia, sometime in the Spring of 2004. I just never expected to get a phone call…an email, a letter – yes. But a personal phone call from the Director! As I would learn, it was a window into Don’s mix of professionalism, personal attention to his students, and sincerity. A phone call most of us will never forget…

It was early April 2016 – a sunny day in Gloucester, MA. We had just wrapped up a good presentation to our Operations Action Lab host company, Gorton’s Seafood, for which Don had decided to join me and my project teammates. As we got ready to leave, Don turned to us and, with his heartwarming smile, said, “there’s a very good seafood restaurant next door – let’s go.” Don’s lunch treat at Seaport Grille is one of my fondest memories of him. As we waited for our delicious local fish and chips orders, Don pulled out a napkin and wrote down some operations management principles and equations to guide the next steps of our project. But, of course, in true Don style, he quickly made time to ask us how things were going outside of class. I remember thinking to myself how lucky I was – there I was sitting with, and learning from, one of the world’s best operations researchers, who also happened to be the father of the LGO program – all while enjoying some great New England haddock!

Don took genuine interest in people on a personal level – and that was one of his strongest leadership qualities. He always took the time to know our names and stories – and then somehow remembered all of them. I’ll never forget the number of times he stopped me after Ops-Lab class or just while passing by in E62 to ask how I was doing away from home, what Qatar is like, and what I wanted to do following graduation. I will always miss Don, but I feel so grateful to have met him during my time at LGO and learned from him. While LGO will not be the same without him, I am certain that the values he carried will continue to live through the many students he taught and mentored.

I co-supervised several LFM/LGO students with Don over the years and remember several trips, e.g. to UTC in Connecticut and great discussions during the long drives. Don had an uncanny ability to spot weaknesses in a project plan and see opportunities to make a difference in companies’ operations; he had a truly global perspective. He loved good food and to live life to its fullest. It was a privilege to work with Don, I will miss him.

I had just gotten home from dinner at my future in-laws’ house and I noticed I had a voicemail on my phone. I must have missed it during the dinner. When I clicked on the voicemail, my phone informed me that the caller was from Boston. “I don’t know anyone in Boston,” I said to myself. Then as I listened to the voicemail and heard Don’s voice everything came together. I felt obligated to return Don’s call and over the next week we played phone tag, only to eventually have him leave me a final message saying “Dave, no need to call me back. You’re in!” I remember the night of that call so vividly because it changed my life in so many amazing ways. I didn’t take as many courses with Don as some of the other students, but I took enough to understand just how amazing a teacher he was. LGO certainly won’t be the same without him, but I take some solace in knowing that his memory and values will live on in all of his students who passed through the program.

Don was my LFM thesis advisor back in 1991 but I remember him much more as a mentor than as an academic advisor. He was jovial and warm and enjoyed spending time with students even outside the classroom. I remember going to Nashville with him and several other students in 1991 to present some manufacturing research we had done together at an Operations Research conference. I was nervous. The day before the presentations, we all went to the Grand Ole Opry for a night of country music. As music acts alternated with on-stage ads for snake-skin boots and cheap charcoal on sale down at the local Piggly Wiggly, the anxiety melted away. It was all too funny to take the next day too seriously. A wonderful memory of a wonderful man.

In May 2013 when I arrived in Cambridge for the alum reunion it had been a few years since I had seen Don. Coming from the airport I was arriving a bit late and the panel discussion regarding the origins of the Leaders For Manufacturing program had already started in E51-115. I decided to sneak in through the small door at the back of the very packed auditorium. I went up the stairs and gently opened the door just enough to slide in. Don was speaking but the movement caught his eye, he looked up and without hesitation said ‘Brian, great to see you, welcome’ and resumed whatever he had been saying. It could have been me or any one of us thousand alums, Don had a place for each one of us. He committed himself heart and soul to a vision he cared deeply about and he will always be an inspiration for a life well lived.

In 1990, David Weber must have been in charge of making what is now known as the “Don call,” because I vividly remember receiving the call from Dave while sitting at work one Friday afternoon. He congratulated me and said I had been accepted to Sloan and the Leaders for Manufacturing Program (LFM), and that they had sent my letter and information via FedEx. The next morning, I received a large overstuffed envelope with my acceptance letter to the Sloan School and the Materials Science Department. The only catch was that I had applied to Sloan and the Mechanical Engineering Department. The envelope was filled with brochures about studying diamonds and carbon and I remember thinking that this was all well and good, but I had absolutely no interest in studying this. I looked through the degree requirements, read and re-read the letters, and hoped upon hope that there had just been a mix-up in the mailing. On the other hand, I was concerned that maybe if there had been a mix-up, I hadn’t really been accepted to the LFM program at all. I couldn’t imagine that I had been accepted to a different department by mistake.

Because it was Saturday, I had to wait until Monday until I could reach anyone at MIT; that was a long weekend. Monday morning, I called Don and explained that I had been accepted to a department to which I hadn’t applied and that I thought there had been a mistake. I remember Don kind of laughing and saying that there had not been a mistake… Unfortunately, I had been rejected from the Mechanical Engineering Department. BUT, he had thought I would be a good addition to the LFM program and that my application might be interesting to Materials Science. So, he had taken it upon himself to ask Materials Science if he could send my application to them. They had agreed to accept me, and he thought I should come to MIT and LFM. He suggested I speak with Prof. Tom Eager, Chair of Materials Science. Prof. Eager was fabulous and encouraged me to enroll and join LFM. And, while he loved Materials Science, explained that if I wanted to transfer once I was at MIT, if my grades were good enough, I could do so.

I decided to take everyone’s advice and began at MIT as a Materials Science student. Eventually, I transferred to Mechanical Engineering, and ironically and in large part because of those initial conversations, ended up working with Prof. Eager on my thesis. In the end, I graduated with a Mechanical Engineering degree and a Materials Science advisor. If it were not for Don and his enthusiasm for the program and students like me, I don’t think I would ever have gotten into MIT, and definitely not into Mechanical Engineering! Don and I laughed about this for a long time.

It was on one of our trips to Shanghai to visit the China Leaders for Global Operations program. Don and I found ourselves without anything to do one evening, and he suggested that we go out for dumplings at his favorite dumpling shop. Don ALWAYS knew great restaurants, so if he said this was the best dumpling shop in Shanghai, I believed him. We started out trying to find a taxi. It was lightly misting, and any rain makes it difficult to get a cab in Shanghai. Of course, Don knew Shanghai really well, and he suggested that we take off walking and see if we could get a cab along the way. No luck on the cab. But for over an hour, we wound our way toward the dumpling shop, just talking and enjoying the time together. We did get to the shop, and there was a line, but we patiently waited, and then enjoyed some really great dumplings. There was a gentle side to Don, and that’s what I experienced that night. It was my favorite time with him and the one I remember with a smile.

I think many people at MIT had a similar experience with Don – direct, unassuming, brilliant. I had the privilege of co-advising 5 projects with Don at Pratt & Whitney, Dell, and Caterpillar, and in my first years of teaching at MIT, Don was very much a mentor to me. I ran into Don for the last time a couple months ago at the symphony, and he was as personable as ever – inquiring how work at MIT was going, how often we go to the BSO, and then jetting off. For someone as senior as Don, I always felt I had his undivided attention, and I suspect that’s part of what made him such a great leader and advisor to many at MIT. My favorite Don story is his cafeteria stock price predictions. We were on a trip to visit a partner company, and he wasn’t particularly happy with the food. He argued that you could predict a company’s stock price based on the quality of its cafeteria food, as a proxy for its investment in people. I never saw a spreadsheet, but I never doubted that the calculation existed somewhere on a yellow legal pad.

Don was the faculty adviser on China Trip in early ’94. One of our visits was to Beijing Jeep, one of the oldest JVs (even by then) between China and a US company. It was not a well-run manufacturing site to say the least and – no surprise – the poor operations bothered Don. A lot. I have this clear memory of him pointing to a pile of rusting parts in the middle of the floor saying, “You want to know what Work in Process inventory looks like? THAT is Work in Process inventory.” In 1999, I was consulting to an electric motor manufacturer in the South. They had a pile of rejects near the front door – a (rather ineffectual) tactic of the general manager to shame workers into producing higher quality. It bothered me – a lot – and I heard Don’s voice in my head: THAT is Work in Process inventory.

When I think about Don, it always makes me smile. What I carry from our frequent interactions over 10+ years, he as LFM/LGO director and I as Sloan career director, is Don’s perspective making things better…often by reminding me to find the humor in everyday (work) life. His smile and the twinkle in his eye will stay with me for the rest of my life.

For many of us, Don Rosenfield was and is LFM/LGO. Don made a profound impact on a university, an industry, and a community of people dedicated to and passionate about making the world a better place. We are part of his legacy. On a personal level, I am grateful for Don’s coaching and gentle guidance. I am a better leader and a better person because of what I learned from Don.

I don’t think that I have a story that comes to mind, like others have. However, what I remember about Don is that he embodied, for me, all that was LGO, and to an extent, all that is MIT. Many professors come and go; many administrators come and go. However, certain people are part of the very fabric of the program, and those people are few and special. Don Rosenfield was in that group. Don WAS LGO – in the classroom, in his office, on the plant tours, and in the many alumni events and conferences afterwards. I’m glad that, during his retirement, I felt that there was an “O Captain, my captain” moment, when those of us who were there could let him know how important he was.

I have the fondest memory of Don. He has been a great colleague a great asset to Sloan and MIT in general. He always went above and beyond what was asked of him. I remember particularly well when I taught an LGO course for the first time and how Don was supporting me in every possible way. I also loved running into him at ski slopes. He was an avid skier. I always admired his physical fitness and I could only wish to have that level of fitness and skiing ability at his age! We will miss him greatly!

In March of 2000, Don and I accompanied a group of MBA students on a study tour to Japan and Korea. Touring factories with Don there to ask questions is a treat, but I had the extra privilege of accompanying Don on a quest for some new headphones in Tokyo. He was the proverbial kid in a candy store, leading me through all the cutting edge electronics stores of Akihabara where he must have tried on a dozen different headphones. By the end of our whirlwind tour I was overwhelmed with product knowledge and points of comparison – and Don had found the PERFECT pair of headphones. This experience became the foundation of a friendship that lasted almost two decades, and just last year when I saw Don he reminded me of that Tokyo adventure when he pulled up the picture of our travel group from his lovingly curated and enormous gallery of memories.

Don had an incredible memory that always astounded me. Every time I saw him at an alumni gathering, he remembered unbelievable details about my family or work or internship, the year I graduated, even some facts that I had forgotten. And, then he’d turn to the next person and ask about a very specific event or relationship in their life. It was like that for every alum without exception. I was always amazed…

My first exposure to Don was very different than most. I was in the Navy and applied to the LFM (the name back then) program and selected aerospace engineering as my engineering major even though my undergraduate degree was in electrical engineering because I was flying for the Navy and thought I wanted to work for a defense contractor after graduating. I was admitted to Sloan and was called by a student encouraging me attend Sloan. The person didn’t make it clear they were a student and I asked if I had also been accepted to the LFM program and they said I had been. I was so excited!

The next day I called my superiors in the Navy to tell them I wanted to get out early to attend MIT. Despite the fact that the military was in the middle of a major reduction in force and they had paid many friends of mine to get out early, I was told I could not get out one year early. I was crushed and called the LFM office to see if I could defer my acceptance for one year. It was a very awkward call and I was told Don would call me back (I had never spoken to him before). He called later that day and I asked me who had told me I was admitted to the LFM program? I explained that I wasn’t sure of the person’s name, but they had called me the day before. Don was incredibly gracious and informed me I actually hadn’t been accepted to the program because I had applied to the aerospace engineering department. He encouraged me to defer my Sloan acceptance and reapply to the LFM program as an electrical engineer. Fortunately, I followed his advice and was thrilled one year later when I received the “Don call” most people remember so vividly.