Wealth manager Glenn Kautt remembers his friend and mentor Lynn Hopewell. Glenn Kautt is president and CIO of the Monitor Group, a McLean, Va.-based wealth-management and financial-planning company.

It is with great sadness I announce the passing of Lynn Hopewell, colleague, mentor and good friend. People have grown tired of hearing overblown superlatives and hackneyed clichés describing people. Even so, I think most who knew Lynn would say he was a very special man.

Born into a genteel Virginia family, his mother an elementary school principal and father an entrepreneur and restaurateur, Lynn was educated at William & Mary, Virginia Tech and Harvard. He was an Eagle Scout.

As a high school senior, his football team won the state championship, and although he won several football scholarships, he turned them all down because he wanted to concentrate on his engineering studies. Lynn received not only a broad and diversified education but a deep grounding in life’s principles that would anchor him as a financial planner.

Like all who entered the financial planning industry in the 1970s and 1980s, Lynn came from “somewhere else.” Lynn had a successful career in the CIA and in the communication and technology sectors. He was a vice president of Network Analysis Corporation, a firm that helped develop the Internet for the Advanced Research Projects Agency. Even so, like so many other successful professionals, he felt an inexorable tug to help people better their lives. He became a financial planner in 1980.

After a successful collaboration with his mentor Don Rembert, Lynn struck out on his own in 1990 and established a thriving practice, while at the same time leading the industry’s intellectual growth as the editor of the Journal of Financial Planning.

Even in those early days, Lynn showed his remarkable talents as an entrepreneur, intellectual and visionary. I quote at length from his JFP column on practice management, written in January 1989.

A Harvard Business School marketing professor of mine, Graiser – "the Razor”– once said: "I could wish you success in applying your newly learned skills in your career. Instead, I wish that you will find yourself in the right business at the right time. That’s the most important ingredient of success.”

He was right. Anyone could make money in financial planning in the first half of the eighties. Even now, post-tax-shelter death, demand for financial planning is strong.

Flushed with success, it is somewhat forgivable if one does not look too far ahead. However, at some point you begin to wonder if you are going to have to work until you drop. Would someone ever want to buy your business? If it was worth enough, you could stop working; yes, retire…

I see only one way to create value: institutionalize the service of the firm. Clients must come to see the services they receive as flowing from a well-organized group of people with differentiated skills, managed coherently, and applied to their problems. Firms that depend on the luminous personality of the founder and his personal relationships with clients do not build institutional value…

Will the above advice work? I don’t know. Check with me in ten years. If you can find me easily, it probably didn’t work.

Call it luck or skill given those prescient comments, but on April 30 1999, Lynn sold his business for cash in an amount that still dwarfs most of our industry’s transactions today. Even so, that’s not the most interesting part of his remarkable life. In 1987, Lynn authored a seminal professional paper entitled “Making Decisions Under the Conditions of Uncertainty.”

Propelled by his intellect and sense of adventure, and buoyed by his academic and professional experiences in mathematics, statistics and probability, this paper was a wake-up call for planners, and it reverberates today. Almost single-handedly he led a movement to change deterministic planning software to what it does today—generating Monte Carlo simulations for every aspect of the planning engagement.

Young planners reading this today might think: “No big deal. I studied that in school.” Well, neither was E = MC2 a big deal – until you realize the idea was published decades before proof or practical application.

As Einstein said, “In light of knowledge attained, the happy achievement seems almost a matter of course, and any intelligent student can grasp it without too much trouble. But the years of anxious searching in the dark, with their intense longing, their alterations of confidence and exhaustion and the final emergence into the light – only those who have experienced it can understand it.”

Those who have struggled in our industry can truly appreciate his vision and efforts in those early years.

After Lynn sold his business, he could have stepped back and retired in every sense of the word. Instead, Lynn continued to serve his state, his community and his profession.

He served on the board of governors for the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards. He was a member of a state commission that recommended improvements to Virginia’s public schools. He served on a committee dedicated to preserving the historical heritage of Fauquier Co., Va. He served on the Town of Warrenton’s redistricting committee. He was a board member of the Virginia Institute for Public Policy, and a founder of the Fauquier Institute.

In October 2004 Lynn was given a Distinguished Alumni award by Old Dominion University for his professional and community accomplishments. In September, 2005 he published Sprinting Past Our Lives as Boys the high school football team Lynn helped lead to statewide victory in 1954.

In retirement, Lynn’s personal, community and political projects kept several personal assistants employed to handle the increasing administrative responsibilities. Most important, he did not divorce himself from the financial planning community. He served on the board of the firm he sold, serving as my mentor and sounding board. In a most genteel way, he prodded and pushed, helping me become a better planner and business manager. He was proud of what he had built, deeply concerned for the welfare of clients and staff up until the very end.

In the fall of 2005, Lynn received a lifetime achievement award from the Financial Planning Association’s National Capital Area chapter. His words on that occasion reveal his heart:

One day, at age 42, I realized I was tired of working for government contractors. I wanted to find something I could do by myself. Somehow I came across a 1978 Money Magazine issue that featured financial planning as a ‘new career with a future.’ And guess whose picture I saw? That’s right, Alex Armstrong. I read about her with great interest. So my first thank-you is to Alex: thanks for the inspiration. Your success gave me the courage to leap into uncharted waters.

I started doing my homework about financial planning. In the Yellow Pages I saw a name I recognized: Don Rembert. I had met Don a few years earlier during a political campaign. Maybe he would help me? I well remember the day I walked into Don’s office just a few blocks from here. I said to him: “I want to become a financial planner.” Don was very encouraging and gave me a stack of magazines to read.

I took them home and devoured them. I returned to Don’s office. “I definitely want to do this. How do you suggest I start?” Don replied: “You see that office over there. It’s empty. My partner just quit and I’m overwhelmed. From now on we split the new business 50–50. Now, I was overwhelmed! Don’s offer was one of the most generous acts I have ever experienced.

So, a big thank-you to Don. I came to learn that sharing was one of the hallmarks of our profession. In hundreds of conference and meetings, I learned so much from the experience of others, so willingly shared. So thank you to an uncounted number of my fellow planners…

Finally, I want to say this. Nick Murray has said it best: ‘financial planning is all about love.’ It is love for a spouse that makes you want to be sure you have enough money to last for both your lifetimes. It is love of your children that drives you to launch them into life with a good education, make sure you do not become a financial burden for them and enter the no-fun world of estate planning.

Love is what drives people to your office. The financial and investing world is a jungle full of danger, and they need a competent guide. How fortunate I was to have found a way to earn a living that was so rewarding—helping people to love.

Thank you for this honor. My best wishes to you all.

That was December 2, 2005. On March 28, 2006 Lynn went home to be with his Father in heaven.

Neither frail of heart or faint in deed, Lynn Hopewell exemplified the best qualities of our business. May you be blessed to have such a friend and exemplar professional to help you. I miss him like crazy. –FWR