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Abstract
This past March 20, mankind tolled the bell as the publication lost a preeminent scholar, Dr. Ralph P. Hummel, professor emeritus of public administration. He was born in Karlsruhe, Germany, on Aug 9, 1937. Hummel leaves a legacy of scholarly publications, including one of the seminal books on organizational theory, The Bureaucratic Experience, now in its fifth edition. He was an extraordinary human being who spent a good portion of his life trying to get everyone to understand that being in the world was an honorable endeavor no matter whether you were working on an assembly line, changing a car tire, teaching a class, administering policy, landing a space shuttle, commanding an army, or sailing a boat. To Hummel there was beauty in the moment - the awe of the situation: an experience when time and space merge into one, and everything seems to fit perfectly.