Former IBM president and vice chairman Jack Kuehler passed away on Dec. 20 in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif. at the age of 76. The cause of death was Parkinson's disease.

Kuehler is credited for guiding IBM into the open standards PC workstation business, and he also helped to create alliances for IBM to strengthen the company's American technology competitiveness. He started at IBM as an associate engineer all the way back in 1958, and obviously had a long and distinguished career with the company. He held a number of executive positions through the 1980s, and was elected president in 1989.

So I was taken aback when I called an IBM public relations representative trying to find out information on Kuehler, only to have the said representative not know who Jack Kuehler was! This was not an outside representative from Text 100 or another PR agency, this was an IBM employee: I will refrain from mentioning their name.

How is it that you work for one of the biggest technology companies in the world and not know the name of a person who helped bring the company to where it is today? It's like if someone working for the New York Yankees didn't know who Mickey Mantle was. It reminds me a bit of when Sarah Palin was asked by Charles Gibson what she thought of the Bush Doctrine, and she clearly didn't know (although I'm not sure George W. would know either).

Always make sure to know your execs. Rest in peace, Jack Kuehler.