Value of the Lifetime CEO Club Membership

An article by the Washington, DC, Lifetime Member, Chris Walker

One of the winning decisions in establishing the CEO Clubs 20 years ago was to offer lifetime memberships. Thus far, about 100 CEOs have joined this elite club. But this story of the value of lifetime membership has little to do with the one-time $7,000 fee. As you’ll read, this is cheap when compared to the value of your life.

Lifetime Washington, DC, CEO Club and PAC member Chris Walker relates a tale that touches your heart. Chris heads the largest private development firm in Reston, VA. Among his real estate holdings are seven office buildings, with 50 tenants and 700,000 square feet. In addition, he has broken ground on a new 205,000-square-foot office building.

Aside from real estate, Chris is a major investor in several high-tech entrepreneurial ventures. He is too bright for his own good but so likable that he’d be a dynamite political leader.

He is 52 years old and working on a 30-inch waist at his own health club. He is an independent thinker who marches (or climbs) to his own drum beat. Once he flew with his bicycle from Washington, DC, to Burlington, VT, for a one-week solo bike ride down Route 7. The trip ended in Manhattan, and he stayed with us for a few days before shuttling back to Washington with his bicycle. He has walked through rainforests all over the world and is an expert mountain climber.

Add all that to a Harvard MBA and Harvard law degree and you’ll see why he is the CEO cat who has nine lives.

Now for the punch line.

Chris decided to go to Argentina the last two weeks of January 1998 and climb the highest mountain in the Western Hemisphere, Aconcagua, which is 22,800 feet above sea level. He looked forward to it with excitement.

But he made a classic mistake. When he was ready to begin the hike, all the guides were busy so he foolishly tackled it alone. The good news is that he reached the summit and has the photos of the Pacific Ocean to prove it. The problems developed when he descended the mountain.

The temperature was about -10° F and the wind was about 100 miles per hour—not a friendly CEO-type environment. He became dehydrated and collapsed at about 19,000 feet. He fell face down into a little crevice and was semiconscious. His water container had frozen and he was deprived of liquid and that sapped his strength. He says one out of every five days is normally a good climbing day at that time of the year, while the other four are not suitable for climbing.

Because Chris leads a good life, the Lord made the next day a good climbing day and other climbers found and rescued him. They carried him off the mountain in a stretcher, estimating he’d been in the snow for over nine hours.

He has severe frostbite on all his fingers and several toes. It’s too early to say, but the odds are he will lose several tips of his fingers and toes. He wears bandages now in hopes of rejuvenating his extremities.

Now for the lifetime lesson.

Chris recalls reading in an old Jack London short story ("To Build a Fire") that you mustn’t fall asleep when you are in such a predicament. Falling asleep spells sure death. He also says you have to have lots of topics to keep your mind awake in -10° weather and 100-mile-per-hour wind while lying face down in the snow. Those thoughts have to last nine hours.

The one saving thought, he recalls, was that "I just paid $7,000 for a CEO Club lifetime membership and I’ll be damned if that Mancuso will outlive me." He repeated that thought process millions of times to keep himself awake. He says it was the one that gave him desire.

Remember a fairy tale starts out with "Once upon a time" and an entrepreneurial tale starts out "You ain’t gonna believe this." Mr. Chris Walker told this story about two weeks after his return to the U.S.A. at his Washington PAC meeting. It’s a very moving and touching story. What he forgot to mention is that CEO Club lifetime membership depends more on Mancuso’s life than his own!

Chris is an inspiration to so many, so we felt it necessary to tell you this CEO story.

As with all great CEOs and entrepreneurs, they have a way to turn lemons into lemonade. Chris is now constructing a shelter with heat and water at the location where he collapsed. He figures it will save a couple of lives annually and be a gift to other mountain climbers. The Washington, DC, PAC all wanted to go to Argentina to see the shelter but no one was willing to climb 20,000 feet to go inside. We agreed to settle for photographs.