{"id":452,"date":"2012-12-04T08:17:18","date_gmt":"2012-12-04T13:17:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/?p=452"},"modified":"2012-12-04T08:17:18","modified_gmt":"2012-12-04T13:17:18","slug":"beer-is-proof-that-god-loves-us-and-wants-us-to-be-happy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/?p=452","title":{"rendered":"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"\"<\/a>Albert Cramer – Warsteiner<\/p>\n

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Some years ago a colleague of mine who had been in the beer industry for 20 years, left the profession to go into real estate.\u00a0 He had been employed in his new trade for about 12 months when he called me.\u00a0 We talked for a while and he said he really enjoyed his new life. \u00a0I asked if he missed anything about the beer business.\u00a0 His comment, \u201cOnly one thing\u2026 the people!\u201d\u00a0 How true!<\/p>\n

I’ve met and worked with hundreds of great people over the decades, many have stayed in touch with me, many haven’t and I wish we had done so.\u00a0 During the week of Thanksgiving, however,\u00a0two longtime colleagues and friends passed away.<\/p>\n

During my time at Glazer’s I worked with Bill Saul.\u00a0 Bill was in charge of training and development of the Glazer\u2019s staff.\u00a0 He was employed by the family for\u00a0over 20\u00a0years.\u00a0 I had the pleasure of working closely with Bill on the development of a malt training program because the sales people did not have adequate education in the malt beverage field.\u00a0 For years, Bill and I officed next to each other and shared the same administration support.\u00a0 Bill was eventually promoted to\u00a0a VP, and created the e-training programs, which were implemented during my last year at Glazer\u2019s.\u00a0 About a year or so after I left, in a “cost cutting umbrella,” Bill\u2019s position was eliminated and he was escorted out the door without even a thank you.\u00a0 After all those years with Glazer\u2019s, Bill had a very difficult time accepting what had happened to him.\u00a0 Eventually, he and his wife decided to leave Dallas and relocated to North Carolina to build a new home.\u00a0 It was there that Bill passed away.\u00a0 Bill was a true \u00a0professional and friend and he truly loved what he did and the company for which he worked.<\/p>\n

That same week, Albert Cramer, the owner of Warsteiner Brewery in Germany, and the 8th generation Cramer to run the brewery, also passed away.\u00a0 As President of Warsteiner Importers Agency, I had the pleasure of getting to know Albert well.\u00a0 There is\u00a0very little I can say about what Albert accomplished, as head of the brewery, because so much of what he achieved is well documented in the press.\u00a0 He was quite the leader.\u00a0 On a couple of occasions I visited with him at his US home in Florida.\u00a0 I remember once driving to meet a long-time Warsteiner draft account in Orlando when Albert and I \u00a0got into an argument regarding the correct turn to make to reach our destination.\u00a0 Being the hard-headed German he was, Albert stopped the SUV right in the middle of the highway and started speaking to me in German. I was in \u00a0the front seat thinking I was following along!\u00a0 After a couple of seconds, I reminded him that while this wasn’t the German autobahn, it\u00a0still was a US interstate highway, and\u00a0unless we all wanted to be road-kill, we had better get moving.\u00a0 He did, we found the location of the account, and we all had a wonderful dinner.<\/p>\n

We’ve all lost friends who have made great impacts on our lives, both personally and professionally. I will truly miss Bill and Albert, however, my life is much better because I did<\/em> have that chance to know them well.\u00a0 As Ben Franklin said “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.” You can bet someday I’ll join my friends over a cold one.\u00a0 Until then, these two friends and leaders will be missed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Albert Cramer – Warsteiner       Some years ago a colleague of mine who had been in the beer industry for 20 years, left the profession to go into real estate.\u00a0 He had been employed in his new trade for about 12 months when he called me.\u00a0 We talked for a while and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2xRTi-7i","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=452"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":471,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452\/revisions\/471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}