Unknowingly Becoming Like My Parents

It's one of the most clichéd observations in human experience: we become like our parents. We roll our eyes at the predictability of it all, convinced we're different, that we've consciously chosen which traits to embrace and which to reject. Yet here I am, decades into my coaching career, realizing I've inherited both the gifts I admired and the patterns I swore I'd never repeat.

Several years before her passing in 1997, I asked my mom if she had any regrets. Her response was somewhat startling. She said she wished she had done less of what was expected of her. Here was a woman who had attended all the right schools—boarding school at Northfield Mt. Hermon, undergrad at Pembroke (when women at Brown officially attended Pembroke), even dropping out of law school at Georgetown to attend the school of education at Radcliffe (when women at Harvard officially attended Radcliffe) so she could eventually have the same vacation schedule as her children. If I accomplished anything, it was not doing what others expected. I am almost a contrarian—so much so that one parent in North Carolina actually nicknamed me "Doubting Duey" because I was always wondering "is there a better way to do this?"

What I did take away from my mother was her heart to be there for youth when they need it. She was a middle school guidance counselor at Concord Middle School, where there were three guidance counselors who each had their own class of incoming 6th graders, staying with that group through 8th grade before starting with a new group of 6th graders the following year. She told me she had come to dread the 8th grade year because it was so tough to let the group go. When she passed away, I was overwhelmed at the number of people who approached me at her wake expressing gratitude, saying they wouldn't have made it through middle school if not for her. I remember many of those individuals sleeping on our couch while my mom acted as a mediator for their families during the kinds of crises experienced by middle schoolers.

My mother also had an entrepreneurial spirit, inherited from her father who owned cabs, gas stations, and real estate in Washington DC. She did some real estate investing herself and enjoyed it immensely. Looking back, I can see I got the entrepreneurial bug from both sides—my maternal grandfather's diverse business ventures and my paternal grandfather's lumber business. This dual inheritance perhaps planted the seeds of my own journey to disrupt the junior tennis development industry.

I believe I am a coach who lives under the motto "Changing lives—one ball at a time" because of who my mom was.

My dad, on the other hand, came from a remarkable lineage shaping his approach to communication and problem-solving. His father—my grandfather Jim Evans—was brilliant, having integrated Harvard in 1921 after being valedictorian of his class at Somerville High School. Beyond his academic achievements, he owned Evans & Rossi Lumber. My grandfather was a man of few words who processed everything internally before speaking. When he finally did speak, you could take it to the bank—his words carried the weight of careful consideration and certainty. Yet Jim found ways to connect with the contractors who patronized Evans & Rossi. He was a bit of a linguist, and since many of the tradespeople who frequented the lumberyard were first-generation Italian immigrants, Jim learned enough Italian to communicate with them in their native tongue, which they greatly appreciated.

My dad inherited this thoughtful, measured approach. He was an only child who attended Putney, an elite New England boarding school, then went on to BU and eventually earned his MEd at Harvard School of Education. When he left Evans & Rossi, he went to work in Personnel (now referred to as Human Resources), eventually moving into management consulting and ultimately teaching Organizational Behavior at the university level. When I was young, I was in awe of my dad's ability to attract other people. It seemed everywhere we went, whether to the mall or driving through the Callahan Tunnel on the way to the airport, there was always someone rolling down a car window or shouting in a crowded space to get his attention. I thought he knew everyone. What I realized later was it was always someone else seeking him out rather than the other way around.

While my dad and I were never estranged, for most of my adult life our relationship felt like a consulting one to me. When I was in my 40s, I finally reached the point many of us get to where we're not only willing to listen to our parents, but want the benefit of their experience and wisdom. It was then that I felt something was missing from our dynamic—the warmth I was seeking seemed filtered through a professional lens. I don't know what his relationship was like with his management consulting clients, so I'm only guessing based on what our relationship felt like, but unfortunately, it wasn't until the latter part of my dad's life that I was aware enough to recognize this pattern and understand how it had developed across generations.

I can recall discussing this dynamic with my sister, who's two and a half years younger. I told her I was thinking about addressing it with him. Her take was along the lines of "he's older, set in his ways, and confrontation would likely just add more friction to the relationship." So I let it go, probably forgetting the details because I didn't get what I wanted from the interaction.

The wake-up call came during my time at Samuell Grand Tennis Center. After a parent meeting, Kim Kurth made a specific comment to me that hit like a lightning bolt: "Do you realize they wanted you to just tell them what to do?" In that moment, I saw myself clearly—I had become my father, and he had become his father before him. We were all expert consultants, dispensing wisdom from a professional distance rather than connecting with the warmth relationships truly need.

Since that day, I examine my interactions almost constantly. Sometimes I have to check mid-conversation to make sure I actually understood what others are saying during those moments of real-time introspection. It's exhausting, but necessary.

Living by myself the past four years and being confronted with my own mortality in 2020 after my heart attack has led to even more introspection. I'm someone who stays in my own head when left alone, and isolation has a way of forcing you to reckon with patterns you've spent decades avoiding.

I've improved in this area immeasurably, though I wish I had the wisdom to realize this at an earlier age. I was too busy to really take stock of my own life. Now, when my kids ask for advice, I try to present my view as "here's what I would do, but I'm not you. I will support you the best I know how in whatever you decide. Thanks for asking my opinion!"

It's not perfect. The consulting instinct still kicks in—that desire to solve rather than simply support. But awareness is the first step toward change, and recognition of these inherited patterns has become part of my ongoing development as both a coach and a father.

The irony isn't lost on me that this three-generation pattern of careful, considered communication—while producing wisdom worth having—sometimes came at the cost of the emotional connection people were actually seeking. But unlike previous generations who seemed more set in their ways, I'm determined to keep evolving. Because if there's one thing "Doubting Duey" knows for certain, there's always a better way to do this—even when "this" is being human.

The cliché stands: we do become our parents. But we also have the power to consciously choose which parts of this inheritance we want to keep, and which patterns deserve to evolve with us.