In many ways, Fred Smith – entrepreneur extraordinaire, innovator, and super patriot – at a time when we so needed patriots – was the Ben Franklin of our time.

He was rightfully proud of his time served as a United States Marine, serving in combat in Vietnam.

His FedEx revolution defied all the odds and expectations.  We all know the story that at the Yale Business school he wrote a paper on how to build a global overnight package service and the professor laughed him out of the room.

The financing, the logistical expertise, the grit and gumption, audacity and stick-to-it-ism of pulling this off and building the mightiest transportation company across the globe is unimaginable.

Who else could have pulled it off?

He “absolutely, positively” masterminded one of the most memorable advertising slogans and campaigns in TV history.

He had a healthy contempt for big and bureaucratic government and often only half-joked that he was blessed with competing against one of the most incompetent bureaucracies ever invented: the U.S. Postal Service. FedEx’s on time arrival record was far superior to the Postal Service or any airline.

FedEx has more planes than any other enterprise in the world, other than the U.S. Air Force.  It takes over scores of airports throughout the night. He used his own weather service, own air traffic control system, and his own security system because “the government isn’t reliable.”

He employed half a million Americans and made multi-millionaires out of many thousands of investors.

On a point of personal privilege: He was one of the very first donors to Unleash Prosperity and was always the first to send an unsolicited generous donation at the start of every year – always with an inspiring note of approval.

Even to the very end he hid from us all how sick he was. Just a few weeks ago he called us up bitching about the amount of money the Postal Service was losing and urging us to “get on this” with all the gusto of someone who was going to live 20 more years not 20 more days.

Every president since Reagan called on “Fred-ex” – as some of his friends called him – for expert advice in times of crisis.

Among his many patriotic acts to the nation, he kept FedEx running during those turbulent first six months of Covid when most every other business closed its doors. The nation panicked. Fred didn’t. He helped keep the U.S. economy from imploding and FedEx employees, of course, maintained an exemplary health record.

The nation and the planet seem somehow diminished.