Toward the end of his life [Buckminster Fuller], made his heirs promise to engrave on his cemetery marker, under his name and birth date and death date, four words: Call me trim tab.
A trim tab is a small rudder that is attached to the large rudder of a ship or airplane. The tiny trim tab does very little. All it can do is nudge the rudder a little. But it does move the rudder, and the rudder in turn changes the course of a giant ocean liner or jumbo jet.
— R. Wayne Willis, Hope Notes