It started with a rather modest desire: To find a bust of William Shakespeare for my Roman Garden (located down a small ridge in our backyard). The garden already had bronze statues (including Rodin’s The Thinker), marble columns, an impressive terra cotta amphora, and various other items intended to conjure the romance and history of the Eternal City.

I have spent almost 40 years reading, teaching, thinking about, and writing on Shakespeare, so a hagiographic bust seemed like an obvious choice. Shakespeare offers valuable insights into the human condition and topics such as leadership, communication, management, industry, leisure, and the graceful evolution from youth to old age. These issues, and many others, helped inform my work at Ethikos with hundreds and hundreds of clients.

Little did I know that the exquisite $500 marble sculpture (previously displayed in the Paterno Library at Penn State University) would require a massive effort to relocate and display. The epic journey of 767 miles did not get interesting (and expensively complicated) until two crates weighing over 1500 pounds in total landed on my driveway. I had no idea that it was the largest marble bust of Shakespeare in the world; I had less than no idea of how I would move this colossus.

It’s been quite an epic adventure, but now the depth of this relationship—open and public for everyone to see—sits proudly in my Roman Garden.