GRANDSON HAS GOOD ROLE MODELS WHO MAKE A DIFFERENCE
One of my favorite things in the whole wide world is my regular
telephone conversations with grandson, Brian. He is just getting his
feet wet in the business world and is trying to adequately provide for a
wife and child during these fragile economic times. He is finding that
it isn’t as easy as it looks in the movies.
Somewhere along the way Brian has discerned that his grandfather
survived and even prospered after living through the same kind of times
in which he now lives and he seems to tolerate if not enjoy my
unsolicited advice. Perhaps deep down in the recesses of his brain he
figures, “If Pa did it, surely I can, too.” All my grandsons love me
and respect me but none of them have ever mistaken me for a rocket
scientist.
In a recent discussion, we were talking about career choices and how to
define success. What I told him was totally counter to what I would
have defined as success in my earlier days. I suggested that whatever
he does, he does with passion and to be sure that he has the potential
to make this a better world. Money is important – you have to have it
to pay the bills – but it is more about doing something worthwhile.
Growing up with parents who had survived the Great Depression, it was
drilled in me to have the security of working for a big company.
Therefore, I defined my success as a nice climb up the corporate ladder,
a decent paycheck and a better-than-average pension.
I told Brian that his mom and dad and his aunt and uncle are successful
in ways that don’t involve a corner office or a company car. My son and
son-in-law are public school teachers – a sometimes thankless and oft
times unappreciated job. They deal daily with disinterested parents who
view them as baby-sitters, federal, state and local bureaucracies,
dysfunctional boards of education, uptight administrators and kids who
are winding their watch until they can quit. And yet these two boys and
thousands of teachers just like them put up with all this crap because
they know they are impacting young lives in a positive and perhaps
permanent way. Not many of us have that opportunity.
My daughter-in-law, Jackie Yarbrough, is a registered nurse at WellStar
Kennestone in Marietta where she has worked for the past 25 years or
so. Actually, she is a manager now. She is in a department that has
something to do with birthing babies but I’m not sure what. Some things
I don’t need to know. All I know is that she is helping people at a
time when they need it. That is good enough for me.
My daughter, Maribeth, is the heart and soul and executive director of
the Cochran Mill Nature Center in Fairburn. This is a facility that
specializes in environmental education and the rehabilitation of injured
and orphaned wildlife. Thousands of young children go through the
center each year and learn how to take care of an environment that many
of us have ignored, not understanding it is the only one we have.
The point I am trying to make to grandson Brian is that success is not
necessarily how much money you have in the bank or the title on your
business card. It is better defined by what my mentor and Marietta
native the late Jasper Dorsey drilled in my head. “We are put on this
earth for only one reason: To leave it better than we found it.”
I truly believe my son and son-in-law and my daughter and
daughter-in-law are doing just that. There is not a day that goes by
that one or all of them don’t have a positive impact on someone, whether
it is showing a young mother how to care for her newborn or teaching a
child how and why to recycle or inspiring a teenager to experience the
joy of learning – these four will certainly leave this world better than
they found it.
I have no idea what Brian will end up doing with his life but he had
some terrific role models to emulate. He is a lucky man. I am, too.
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