No excuses...just keep trying. How my grandmother taught me about perseverance.

My maternal grandmother was an amazing woman. She was born in Northeast Philadelphia in 1901. Her parents had immigrated here, and she was their eldest child. For whatever reason –whether their Old World traditions or just the necessity of another set of hands to help in the kitchen- she never attended school beyond the third grade.

This bothered her terribly and she saw herself as not much more than illiterate for a large portion of her life. She married and had two children. She never learned to drive, never ventured anywhere that my grandfather couldn’t take her…when he was sober enough to drive.

She possessed one of the most beautiful singing voices I have ever heard. It was angelic. It was sweet, clear and perfect in pitch. She had an encyclopedic knowledge of music and could sing songs of virtually any style or genre.

Her life was limited. She didn’t accomplish a lot as you and I might view it. To me she was a saint. She kept me alive when I was a little boy and my unmarried mother was working and still trying to have something of the social life that nineteen year old young women have.

Her lack of reading skills and vocabulary bothered her greatly and finally one day she decided to do something about it. Long before I was born…sometime after WWII, she bought herself a Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. It was almost 3 inches thick. It had a hard cover and print as tiny as the font in a phone book. She kept it on a table next to the chair in the little window-box that bumped out from the dining room. It was her favorite place to sit and read. She had a table radio, tuned to the local Christian radio station sitting on a doily on that same table.

Sometime in the late 40’s she decided that the only way she could address the lack of a vocabulary was to read the dictionary. So she did. The whole thing. Cover to cover.

She wrote down any word she didn’t know and memorized the word and the definition.

As with anyone with natural intelligence, once she finished the dictionary, she thirsted for more. In 1953, at a time when encyclopedia salesmen still sold their products door-to-door, (In a time when we actually used an encyclopedia) she saw another opportunity. She couldn’t get to the library because she couldn’t drive. But this man showed up at the door one day, selling what, to her, was a ticket to a world of knowledge she might never have entered. She bought the entire set.

It came in several boxes, along with a very modern-looking glass bookcase. My grandmother dove into volume one, page one of the Funk and Wagnall’s New World Encyclopedia. It took her over two years, during which she raised two children, took care of her ailing elderly mother who had moved in with her, took in laundry and ironing to make up for the money that an alcoholic husband was losing at the bar, and did her best to keep the lights lit and belly’s full. She read every volume. Every word of every article about topics that she had never heard of before.

I can’t imagine what that must have felt like. Her world had seemed so small until that point. Not much existed beyond the distance she could walk from her house on the outskirts of Philadelphia, or the odd occasion when my grandfather would drive her. Suddenly that world expanded into the infinite.  The encyclopedia expanded her mind and her imagination. Her vocabulary exploded to the point that, by the time I was born in 1963 I would venture a guess that she had a Master’s level education. She was a fountain of knowledge. She remembered everything she read. Her mind drank it in like a sponge and stored it like a bank vault. I don’t remember the woman who only had a third grade education and the vocabulary to match. I only knew the woman who would dazzle me with her lexicon when we played Scrabble for hours at the dining room table. She’d come up with a “Twenty Point word” and I would challenge her “Mom-mom…that’s not a word!” and she would break out that trusty Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary and show me the word and make me read it to her and remember the definition. She was a champion at Scrabble and at crossword puzzles as well. It was her only outlet for the vast knowledge she’d gained.

I marvel at this still. She read an entire encyclopedia.

That’s 32 volumes, each over 500 pages. Because it’s all she could do.

Well it’s not really all she could have done. She could have decided it was just her lot in life. She could have decided that there just wasn’t any opportunity for a woman in her time. That it took money and certain social standing to get an education. That this life was all she had and so why try to improve it? She could have descended into bitterness and hopelessness, and the shame and embarrassment of illiteracy. She could have reacted to the situation of her life. Instead she responded.

She saw what was available. What she could do. And then she did it.

I have no doubt it saved her life. And years later, it saved mine.

In 2009, after the first year of homelessness, (almost four more would follow) I decided that the only hope I had to improve my situation was to finish my degree. So I enrolled at my alma mater, in their distance learning program and I set about fixing my life.

I studied at the library. I studied at the local Panera restaurant because they had free wifi. I studied at the Fed-Ex office because they were open 24 hours. I studied by flashlight in the torn-up front seat of that 1995 Volvo 850, where I also slept. My studies were the only good thing I had going on in my life at the time. The only measurable success I had at a dark, difficult time. Each semester I could look at my final grades and see progress toward a goal that was literally giving me a reason to go on.

In May of 2012, I completed my bachelor’s degree and walked with my class. I was still homeless, but for the first time in four years I had succeeded at something.

Four years further on and I am working at that same alma mater, where my daughter is now a freshman. I have just a little more invested in my job here than most, because of what this place provided for me when my life was so bad.

I did what I could do to improve myself. I could have resorted to section 8 housing, foodstamps, and a lifetime of entitlements. Instead I played on the one string that was still holding a tune.

I gained more than an education…much more. I gained resilience, strength, vision. I gained the ability to tell my daughter that when the going gets tough, you put your head down, tighten your grip and try harder. I cried. I shivered in the cold. I thought, at times, that it wasn’t worth it or that it wouldn’t make any difference. But I never gave in to the urge to quit.

I can look back on that difficult walk with pride and self-respect. I did it when the world said I could not.

We see evidence everywhere that this generation demands people to cater to them. To give them “safe spaces” and tolerance and diversity mandates and quotas. What they need is grit. What they need is to tighten those laces, wipe the sweat from their brow, and spit in the eye of whatever is resisting their success and say “I don’t care who you are or what you say or how you try to stop me…I will not quit!”

Instead they want us to pass laws to make the world treat them with kid gloves. They have no stories like mine or my grandmother’s to draw from when the world comes to kick their butt –and it will. They have no archetype of success in the midst of failure from which to build their plan for rebuilding.

This world is hard and tough. It’s tougher if you aren’t tough on yourself. Victory that comes easy is not really a victory. When things get you down and the world has dealt you a crappy hand, play it anyway!

Buy yourself a set of encyclopedias, turn your car into a study hall, and kick those obstacles in the teeth!

Perseverance will take you anywhere…quitting leaves you right where you are.

                                          High Hopes!

                                              Craig

                                                   

Get that bat off your shoulder!

You hear it a million times, the admonition not to quit.  

“If you quit, you’ll have gone as far as you can go, but if you don’t quit, you never know what might happen.”

Doc Falwell used to always tell us: “A man is not measured by what it takes to knock him down, but by what it takes to keep him down.”

I’ve never been a quitter, this much is for certain. I refused to quit on my daughter even though it meant living in my car for several years. I refused to quit on finishing my degree even though I completed it during those homeless years and studying was infinitely more difficult because of my situation.

I refused to quit on my dreams of being a writer, and I have written five books now with three more in various stages of completion. My daughter is a college freshman and that is an expensive undertaking, even with her tuition paid as part of my job. There are still books to buy and fees and clothes and shoes and next fall she’ll move on campus and there will be room and board that I have to pay. So I push myself and have a side business doing carpentry in just about every available free moment

I’m not complaining. In fact…I’m enormously thankful for the skill I have that lets me earn a lot more than if I was delivering pizza or stocking shelves. I am thankful for the huge tuition check that I don’t have to write each year.

Quitting has never really been in my DNA.

I only ever really quit on myself once. One summer, when I was 13, I was cut by the baseball team I had tried out for. I grew up a pretty good ball player and that was the only year in my life that I was ever cut.

I sat out that long, miserable summer and missed the game terribly. I missed my team mates. I missed the uniforms and the way the glove felt. I missed crouching behind the plate and calling the game.

For the first time in my entire life, I wasn’t good enough and it broke my heart. It also shattered my confidence.

The following summer I was drafted by a different team and I made the cut. I was the same guy on the outside but inside I was broken and frightened. I lived in the horrible shadow of that one baseball -free summer and the thought of ever being cut again haunted me so badly that I did the unthinkable…I lost confidence and froze.

I had been a feared hitter, capable of hitting for average as well as power. I hit prodigious home runs only two years before, but that one summer off after getting cut, tore my brimming confidence from my soul. I spent two seasons, playing for “Lafayette Radio” and Coach Russ Staats, and never swung my bat even once.

Somewhere in my mind I had reasoned that if I didn’t fail I wouldn’t get cut and if I  never struck out, then I would never fail.

So I never tried.

In the middle of that second season of standing like a statue at home plate, game after game, Coach Staats must have figured out what was going on. Before one particular at-bat, he grabbed me, put a hand on each shoulder, looked me in the eye and said in exasperation: “Swing the damned bat!”

But I couldn’t.

I finished my “Senior League” eligibility without even having garnered a batting average. I went 0-for-two-summers. I was afraid of failing, and I quit.

The next year, I didn’t play any baseball except for pickup games at school. And a funny thing happened. I got my groove back.

Without anyone depending on my talent, or keeping score, I discovered my ability to hit a baseball again. The next year, in twelfth grade, my small private school started a baseball team. We drew from all over the area and so we had a ton of talent. I was the starting catcher and a devastating hitter. I batted .280 with multiple HR’s, lead the team in RBI’s and hits with runners in scoring position. I found my power too, hitting several tape-measure bombs. Once I realized that I still could hit the ball, I lost the fear of failure. Once I lost the fear of failure, I could not possibly quit. I enjoyed the best final season of all the baseball I played in my youth.

I drew a lot of lessons from that part of my life. I’ve seen a lot of good friends walk through life with that bat stuck to their shoulder because they were afraid to strike out. Nobody told them it was okay to fail, but it was never okay to fail to try.  

It is never, ever okay to quit.

I know it was hard studying by flashlight in my car. But I feel an attachment to, and a sense of accomplishment from my education that maybe I would not have otherwise.

I know sleeping in my car and feeling shame and embarrassment was painful. But my daughter saw how much her daddy loved her and how devoted he was to simply being her dad.

I know working 80-90 hours a week sometimes is tough, but it makes every small financial victory that much sweeter. If I had quit on any of these things, who knows if I would ever have recovered my confidence?

I was driving in the middle of a fourteen hour road trip, about five years ago. I had just started listening to Zig Zigler’s wonderful “Qualities of Success” seminar, and Zig made a statement for which he had become quite famous. He said “Failure is an event…not a person.”

I had to steer my truck onto the shoulder of the road, because the tears were making it hard to see.

I was homeless. I was broken. I had lost my home, my career, most of the time I could spend with my precious little girl, even our two dogs were gone. I was doubting God and losing hope. I felt like a failure. I was ready to quit. Zig’s kind, encouraging, fatherly declaration that I was not what I thought I was, literally saved my life. I began the long road back.

I have won many hard-fought victories, these last seven years. Had I quit, I never would have won any of them. I’d be stuck someplace, with that bat still riveted to my shoulder, afraid of the pain of being cut, and fearing failure so bad that I stopped trying.

Wherever you are in life right now, this does not have to be the final stop. If you are doing well…think of how much better tomorrow is going to be! If you have failed, remember…you are not a failure. You merely failed at something.

Your best is just around the bend. You haven’t peaked yet.

The one and only way to become a quitter is to quit. So never quit.

When people speak of you, let it be with a hint of awe for all the things you chose to endure in order to be the winner you were put here to be. Live lessons of endurance, integrity, and determination for your kids and grand kids and coworkers and friends to learn from. Be a walking example of never giving up. Encourage someone else, and in that, you will find the encouragement that you need to complete the day’s tasks.

Get that bat off your shoulder, and swing for those fences.

And never ever quit!

                                                             High Hopes!

                                                                            Craig