Kind Ambition

He once met ambitious goals as a traveling salesman. Now Dave Fleming ’70 aims for nothing less than reforming our health care system and curing rare diseases.

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Packed in and around his workday are meetings with any of the ten boards on which Fleming serves (including Wooster’s Board of Trustees, since 1999). Fleming says that Henri Termeer, chairman and CEO of Genzyme, encourages Genzyme employees to give back to the community. But Termeer knows his right-hand man well enough to know that Fleming’s social conscience is unusually strong and genuine.

"Dave was made from an unusual mold that kind of broke after him," Termeer says. "I haven’t found many people with his extraordinary combination of tenacity, integrity, and compassion. He’s very humanistic, and that’s been completely consistent over the years."

Termeer describes how Fleming co-founded the Massachusetts Medical Device Industry Council, MassMEDIC. The group brings together some three hundred medical device manufacturers in the state along with Senator Edward Kennedy (D, Mass.) and his staff to work on modernizing federal regulations.

"It’s an idea that is easy to develop, but doing it is a different issue," notes Termeer. "You’re trying to get a lot of people to sit in a room together and cooperate. Today it’s a thriving organization doing important work."

A few years ago, Termeer assigned Fleming the job of creating the New England Healthcare Institute, a think-tank allowing some thirty business and medical leaders to address health care issues. Fleming formed the organization and hired the executive director.

"Don’t underestimate Dave," Termeer notes. "He is not a pushover. He is very persistent. He isn’t afraid to walk into anyone’s office and ask for something."

goal-getter

His goals may be eclectic, but Dave Fleming has always been driven. Addressing a recognition dinner at the College three years ago, he advised the students to develop a life list where they can record their goals, dreams, achievements, and activities most important to them and those they care about.

"My life list has 101 entries," Fleming said that night. "It’s a combination of what I treasure from the past and a wish list for the future. It helps me set and shift priorities as I strive for balance between family and career." Among his entries are:

#42: Volunteer for Habitat for Humanity International’s home-building program overseas.

#21: Walk the Great Wall of China with my son, Brian (done, in 1997).

"Many items involve my wife, Peggy (Adams, also Class of 1970). Number nine has to do with Wooster," he said. "Some take a week to accomplish, others a lifetime. My list has changed little since I wrote it initially. Forty-two items have been accomplished, fifty-nine still to go."

Fleming has always sought challenges and always believed he was up to them. He comes by this can-do optimism honestly. His mother, Elberta "Bert" Wagner Fleming ’42, H’73, convinced the College to tailor a course of study, based on a biology major, to fulfill her dream of developing a museum for children. She founded what is now the Lake Erie Nature and Science Center on the west side of Cleveland, beginning with a menagerie of animals in the family’s basement.

Following his mother’s example, Fleming – a history major – petitioned Wooster to let him stay in Europe past the first semester of his senior year to conduct research for an Independent Study on the reform movement in Europe’s colleges and universities. "I had a ninety-day Eurail pass. I went from university to university, interviewing administrators and students. Then I’d head back to the train station and take the first overnight train, wherever it was going, and find the next school wherever I stopped. I wrote the I.S. as I traveled through the Alps."

After graduation, Fleming tried his hand at teaching for two years in nearby Smithville, Ohio. Then, dragging a four-by-six trailer, he and Peggy headed west for California to seek their fortune.

"Teaching was good grounding, but I wanted some kind of work where I could measure my impact."

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