Old Friends, Red Dirt & Cherry Pepsi: January 2009

Running Against the Wind

A book of personal reflections about leadership, ethics, and the ability to find one’s niche in a world of possibilities written sometime between 1990 and 2005

Beginnings

Newton, North Carolina is the county seat of the western foothills county of Catawba and draws some importance from that fact. It is also a mill town dominated by textile mills and furniture factories. Today, the large silos of Midstate Mills, manufacturers of flour and wheat products, dominate its skyline. Two hundred years before it was the site of a large German settlement of Lutherans and the German Reform, who Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians gradually infiltrated. In the 1950s, Newton was a town of about 4,000 people, some learned but most your average citizen with a high school education or less. It had a town square built around an old courthouse and surrounded by retail stores, grocery stores, a few doctor offices, several movie theaters, barbershops, cafes, drug stores, and a pool hall. Newton was normal by most measures. This is where I was born and grew to manhood.

From an early age I idolized my teachers, especially the male teachers, and the ministers who passed through our community. They were my connection to the outside world—a world I longed to experience for myself. They all seemed to know what they were doing, where they were going, and how to get there. They were educated—that seemed to be the one thing they had in common—and respected. Education and respect became goals worthy of my personal pursuit. I thought of them as one—in my mind education was the key to respect. My mother had gone to business school for a year, and my dad abandoned school after the 8th grade. No one in my immediate family had graduated from college and I didn’t think many thought I would either. Most of my kin were businessmen or housewives. Many had started their careers in a furniture factory or a textile mill (My mother called them “silk mills” but they actually used nylon and cotton to make their hose and socks). My dad was grooming me to work with him at a local electric construction company. When I was in high school I had worked with him in the summers and knew becoming an electrician was a dead end for me.

Of course, as a young boy I could not burrow into my teacher’s or parent’s inter-most thoughts, get in touch with their hopes and dreams, or their fears. I listened. I learned from them. Later on I understood my dad’s frustrations from having quit his education so early and his hostility toward me as my education increased. Holding many part time jobs as a youth, I came in touch with many different people and often wondered how they got where they are. Sometimes I would pick one out and imagine I was that person—with a store-bought suit and a leather briefcase, off to an office, talking on a single-line telephone, and traveling to far away places. From the time I was eleven or twelve years old I knew I would leave Newton and graduate from some great university and become famous—that was a boyhood dream—a fantasy—and it kept me focused.

As a working teenager, I began to understand our family’s continual poverty and its cause—my dad’s difficult struggle with alcoholism and his own manhood. The bars, the women, the loss of a driver’s license, the coming in late, and the rage were all a pattern that I knew too well by the time I was sixteen. I knew his mother, who lived in our house much of the time, was the culprit. My mother and I were close. She encouraged my studies and my work. I remember the old push lawnmower she bought me so I could mow the neighbors’ lawns—always for a fair price. She told me to never remain idle, “An idle mind is the devil’s workshop,” she would say. And I listened. I later paid mother back the $20 she fronted me for that lawnmower. At age eleven I began working outside the home and mom taught me to save 85 percent of what I made. I had to give ten percent to our local Baptist church and could keep 5 percent for myself. The rest was for the future and I now begin to believe a wonderful and exciting future was waiting just for me. Working hard and saving my money was a lesson well learned and would help me pay my way through fourteen years of college by holding multiple jobs at the same time and juggling work, study, and a growing family. As a young man, I knew I would have to face becoming an adult and making career choices alone. I was going where no one in my family had ever gone. I knew then that my life would be defined as “running against the wind.”

By the time I graduated from high school, I had become a motivated self-learner and never looked back at what I didn’t have or spend time envying what others did have. Our small town was normal by most standards, a good place in which to grow up. The schools were adequate. I watched as the seniors left for college, the military, or work. Many had come back from college as doctors and dentists, teachers, and engineers. I knew and accepted the fact that I too would someday go to college and come back home to make a contribution. I don’t know how I knew it—it was the work of intuition, experience, or maybe a dream, but for me it was a guiding light.

My street sense was a bonus to my growing family. While I was at the University of Georgia I continued to study and hold several other jobs without the department of philosophy becoming aware of it. I worked part time for the Georgia Studies of Creative Behavior (Torrance Center) and had an office there about a mile across campus from Peabody Hall where the philosophy department was housed. I worked part time at the First Baptist Church, taught a course each quarter as a teaching fellow, and attended my classes without missing a beat. I also helped my wife at Parkview Play School with groceries and bookkeeping. I parked there and so I helped her open in the mornings and close the school late in the evenings. This school was a joint venture of the First Baptist Church and Federal Housing Authority. There I met E. Paul and Pansy Torrance, a couple who would change my life forever.

In 1995, my mentor at the University of Georgia and professor of religion, Bob Ayers, attended my main lecture at the Torrance Center. My subject was infusing gifted education with creative problem solving and ethical decision making and an overview of the critical thinking skills program, which I had published under the title of Teaching for Thinking. Bob was curious. After my lecture he came down to where I was standing, offered his congratulations, and then asked, “How did you get connected with these people and the Torrance Center while at the university? I never knew anything about it.” He was my tutor and major professor to whom I was assigned in 1969. I told him how I had met Torrance at my wife’s nursery school/kindergarten and at the First Baptist Church where I was the fill-in assistant minister during my first year in Athens. He just grinned and scratched his head. “Are you telling me that Torrance offered you a job in the Educational Psychology Department?” I told him that was true and that I took it for two reasons: for the extra income and because Torrance offered me a graduate teaching assistant position if I didn’t make it in the philosophy department. I also told Ayers that I used my wife’s social security number and name for payroll purposes so the university wouldn’t suspect me of violating departmental rules about taking a full load of classes and working. He just shook his head and said, “Let me get this straight, you were working three part time jobs, teaching for us, and taking a full load. How did you do it? Most students have difficulty just taking one or two classes a quarter.” My only answer was that “you do what you have to do, when you have to do it.” We had a good laugh about it and he left just shaking his head. Today, what kids like my wife and I were doing naturally is called “multitasking” and when I came to work in Catawba County Schools, this ability drove my staff crazy trying to keep up with the different aspects of curriculum development that I was introducing and my personal work ethic.

Understanding

Special attention is given to the men and women who are able to withstand the pressures to conform and maintain their creativity and creative instincts throughout their lives. These are more often than not men and women of ambition, aspiration, and tenacity. For people of purpose, to put it plainly, it all adds up to a life well-lived with a fully operational sense of perspective. Although daily pressures may cause us to lose our focus as stress and anxiety creep in, with time, dealing with pressure becomes a normal way of life and the ability to sustain purpose strengthens; nothing seems to perplex those who understand the meaning and direction of their lives; their behavior conveys reassurance. The creative and intuitional qualities speak of this gift; how we discover it, and how we maintain a steady path over a lifetime. As a youth I studied the role models in my hometown and began to get a glimpse of the vision and purpose that would sustain me through a lifetime of work and personal growth.

Following a path of purpose, defined early in our lives, and consummating in middle age, gives life depth and meaning. I never envisioned myself as especially creative—only a persistent hard worker—but I did discover my purpose early, and have followed it, perhaps inconsistently, during my 65 years. Once one’s creative impulse is engaged, even as a teenager, there is no turning back. You can’t un-ring a bell someone said, and I believe it’s true. My path has zigzagged, but it has been recognizable nonetheless. Now that others have recognized some of the fruits of my work, I feel some comfort in the way my life has unfolded. I still question some decisions made early in my career, but questioning, inconsistency, changing one’s mind, and restarting seem to be a natural part of growth and longevity. Since 1995, and my honor by the Torrance Center of Creative Research at the University of Georgia, I have reached some tentative conclusions about the reasons for my selection—of course, all conclusions are tentative. There have been struggles and mistakes, restarts and missed opportunities—a normal life.

My objective is to share my story. Just maybe I will become a role model for others seeking purpose; just maybe my life will illustrate how they too can recognize the gift of purpose and not be frozen where they are by misunderstanding, fear, or the dictates of others. Discovery is important! Self-understanding is where I began. I have found that purpose is unique to each person; it is not a recipe parents, teachers, or friends impart to you intact. The recognition of your purpose requires the courage to develop your own ideas and abilities, the creative directions your life may take, and giving yourself permission to change—in midstream if need be—and move off in new and different directions. Life can be frustrating, but its all we have so why not make it an exciting adventure.

Awakening

In 1995, the Torrance Center honored my work for the Philosophy for Young Thinkers series, a seventeen-volume work that took over ten years to research and complete. Although there is nothing new in the PYT series other than the way I chose to adapt philosophical thinking to stories and build a systematic k-12 curriculum around it, others saw it as a unique contribution, the culmination of many years of thinking, teaching, and writing. The curriculum emerged just like I cook—a little dab of this and a little pinch of that. No other work defines my life, my purpose, like this one. I was unaware at the time that others were working on the same idea, but the path I chose was unique to me and continued to unfold my purpose, even after its completion. For example, the skills I developed for students in this series led to Teaching for Thinking and Bridges: Building Relationships and Resolving Conflicts, two books that added meaning and depth to my work with teachers and students. Another thing this series brought me were new friends such as Don Killian and Phil Vincent, the opportunity to teach in different universities, and speak to teachers throughout the United States and Canada.

Writing and publishing opened my small world to many new friends, opportunities to work with many other highly successful educators, and contacts with an array of some amazingly creative people. One of these is H. Darrell Young, an Atlanta, Georgia businessman. In Leadership Under Construction Darrell gives five reasons why we need to discover, recognize, and understand the gift of purpose. He says,

1. It forces us to make a choice.
2. It lets others know where we stand and sets the stage
for the demands of external influences.
3. It helps us to better determine what is important
4. It releases our power of conviction, commitment, and
determination.
5. It is the foundation of our vision, our single most
important motivator.

I learned from Darrell that there is a defining purpose for each one of us, but we can’t put limits around it; that purpose, when discovered and accepted, can be expanding. If accepting the gift of purpose has meant anything to me, it has meant accepting the reality of change. Being forced to change puts one in a different place, in different circumstances, and under unusual pressures—things that were unknown before. It’s like running against the wind, something an old long-distance runner life me always dreaded. Adapting and surviving are really what its all about at first; that is, until you figure it out—not all of it; just enough to get a handle on things and begin to find a comfort zone. But comfort zones are for the faint of heart; one has to be willing to explore and adapt, recognize the jewels of creative effort in the ordinary and commonplace, and to move in and out of comfort zones at will.

From an early age, I was searching for purpose and meaning in my life. At the age of fourteen, under the influence of parents and the church, I decided to become a minister. I was not coerced by anyone to make that choice—it was my decision alone. Looking back, I have never doubted the importance of that decision—it caught part of my purpose, a purpose that was beginning to unfold before me and still is. At fourteen, I never told anyone about my “calling.” I told God if he were serious to contact me when I was a high school senior and we would discuss it. He did and I made my decision. My four years in college and five years in divinity school gave me the courage, the confidence, to move beyond my parent’s vision and begin developing a vision of my own. It eventually led me into college teaching, studying for the doctorate in philosophy, and then into public education. Life unfolds, if we let it, in some wonderfully creative and amazing ways. The key, I think, is not closing down, but staying open to all emerging possibilities—accepting the gifts that you have and continually developing others. It’s just a matter of turning weaknesses into strengths or as the New Zealand whole language specialist Leanna Trail said, “Highlight my strengths and my weaknesses will disappear."

By my third year in seminary, I had developed a desire to question and debate the theological motifs that had, in part, defined my early life. The church’s efforts to silence my questions contradicted my most deeply felt commitments—commitments to learning and understanding, to the importance of freedom of speech and intellectual integrity. Although I did serve a small country church while in seminary and became an assistant minister in a large urban church in 1965, I never felt at home in the church. Dogma and tradition were seemingly more important to that institution than the people whom it served. By 1967, I was teaching full time in a community college and was preparing to return to school to pursue the doctorate in philosophy.

Throughout my career—my life—I have found that dictators are the ones who try to silence their adversaries and demand unquestioning obedience. I had worked and studied and was beginning to grasp my purpose and meaning. I was not about to give that up for an institution, especially one founded on shaky premises and held together by lies and deceit.

In 1972, I took a professorship in philosophy at Campbell University, but it too was controlled by the power of dogma and creed. While there I earned a teaching certificate and in 1975, moved back to Newton, North Carolina and began teaching in the public schools. Circumstances brought me into gifted education, the North Carolina’s summer governor’s program for high school juniors, and part time teaching at several colleges and universities in gifted education. I really can’t explain how all of this happened. These were the effects, but the causes escape my understanding. I could never have planned it. And so by happenstance I landed in gifted education; was ask to write a filmstrip series on North Carolina history; and was persuaded to help North Carolina with the development of its second governor’s school in 1978 at St. Andrews College. This last commitment started the Philosophy for Young Thinkers seventeen book series that took ten years to write. Time went by so fast and when I look back, I know I couldn’t have planned such a career. When the PYT idea “hit” me I saw the entire series at once. It was like falling into the ocean, grapping hold of a big fish and holding on for dear life!

I so wanted to return to college teaching, but by the end of the 1980s I had worked fifteen years in the public schools and during that time had had the opportunity to be adjunct at three different universities, all of which kept me extremely busy. Do I have regrets? Sure I do, but doesn’t everyone? My first dream was never actualized in its entirety, but the opportunities and adventures that carried me forth were just too much to let go of. When purpose happens to a person, guided by fate, happenstance, or the hand of God, in faith one follows—kicking and screaming all the way. Actually, 1975 was a kind of turning point in my life. Having left college teaching for the public schools and then curriculum development for gifted students, this was the time that I really began to use my education for the benefit of others. This was a time of highs and lows, of leaving a profession I had worked so hard to begin and start over. It was a time of turning weaknesses into strengths – I earned doctoral certifications in gifted education, curriculum (Specialist III), in supervision, and in peer coaching. This was a time of preparation and of giving to others, of self-assessment and fulfillment, a time where purpose met reality. It was times of hard and difficult work, but watching students succeed.

So, as I look back, I find that my purpose was affected by another gift, the gift of creativity, which enabled me to adapt, survive, and make a difference. It was a little more than this, but not much. Perhaps my training in theology and philosophy caused me to look at the public schools differently than other teachers; after all, I had not been indoctrinated in a college of education like my colleagues. I saw teaching and curricula opportunities where others saw nothing new. Holistic thinking and the ability to synthesize confusing and complex information are gifts that have enabled by capabilities as a leader and writer. I was writing my own curriculum for gifted kids when others were copying textbook notes into their teacher handbooks. Purpose opens us to a wider view of humanity and the many possibilities that lay just ahead, ones we can’t see or understand just now. Of course, courage is required to take the next step. That’s it! Purpose rolled up with creative ability and courage may just be paths to understanding one’s self.

I often dream of a little boy walking in a warm, shallow creek in the summertime who just had to pick up that next rock to see what was under it. Down in Joey’s pasture, in south Newton, the creek is still there, but houses are all around it now taking away from its mystery and destroying a young boy’s sense of adventure. I drove by it the other day and said to myself: “There is where my life was started; playing, running, and having fun in those woods, that pasture, and in that creek. What a childhood!”

Now in my sixties, I still wonder about that creek and those rocks. A lifetime is not enough to turn them all over and explore their mysteries. So, now I turn inward—to my thoughts and my experiences—trying to figure things out: What and why things happen as they do? Did my work, my life, make a difference to one student, one colleague, to my family, to my children? What’s next? Do I have enough left in the tank to think wisely about tomorrow and share my wisdom with the next generation? All of this is a concern for me. I know now that purpose is a gift, perhaps a calling in the sense of providing a direction for one’s life. It doesn’t open up all at once, only gradually, as we are able to understand and accept it. Plato was right! Being older has its advantages one of which is to look back on the events of my life and see purpose in action.

The creative life has been a challenging life. So many times I wanted to make a big splash, a contribution that would draw attention to me—it never happened, thank goodness! What did happen was that I learned to listen to the small voices around me—my children and wife, my teachers, and my own inner voice. Here is where our reality lies and here is where we are able to contribute the most. The Torrance honor was perhaps the highlight of my career, and it started my thinking about who I am. I can admit now that the attention it gave me was a little overwhelming and embarrassing. I am extremely happy that it happened four hours away from my work and my peers. No big splash at home. No recognition at work. I had to get back to North Carolina after the Torrance experience to manage old programs and begin the process of developing new ones. Life goes on—and we must go with it or wither up and die. The gift of purpose sets us on a journey, a never-ending journey, for the challenge of purpose is to pass it on to others, to help others find their own way.

Pushing the Boundaries Outward

The sounds of perfection continue to resonate within me, as they have for over sixty years. These are the voices of my youth, of a father demanding perfection and strength and in work – “Work harder, faster, and no shortcuts,” he would say. Then there was my mother holding me to Biblical perfection – she always said, “No matter what else you do, always be good and treat others fairly.” And I heard it from teachers all the way from the first grade through high school. They seemed to understand that I had some special ability. They also knew my father and my economic circumstances. Therefore, they pushed and challenged me to do more. And I responded.

In the summer of 2006, I happened to attend a fund raiser and share some time with my first grade teacher whom I had not seen in sixty years. She remembered me, a feat which I thought remarkable, and came across the room to talk for a few minutes. She said that she had followed my career from high school to college and graduate school, that she had read the notices in the local paper whenever I had written a new book or spoke at some conference. And she said that she was not surprised by my success because early on she had recognized that I had some special talents. This was news to me, for I never felt special or different and was not the best student in my class. I told her that I could remember every teacher that I had in grades 1-12 and that she was the first. I told her, and I meant it, “You prepared me very well for the future that I was about to enter.”

I can’t blame others for my mistakes or my successes, but the influence of my mentors is unmistakable. My wife, teachers, ministers, friends, and colleagues have had a wonderful effect on me, inspiring me to greater achievement and encouraging me when roadblocks seemed to obstruct my work. Later in life, whenever I faced a challenging situation, I could always call up one of their faces and once again listen as they dispensed their advice to me. Most memories fade with time; some just hang around on one brain synapse or another waiting for an opportunity to be called into action. It seemed to me that the moral authorities of my youth stayed with me longer than I sometimes wished. Whether there is a causal connection between them and me, I don’t know. Maybe it’s just a stimulus, an influence, or nature’s built-in corrective device structuring how I interpret events and how I act and react to situations. All I know is that these memory traces are real and sometimes enter into my decision-making or my responses to others. I perhaps took my elders too seriously and time has just recently provided the perspective to appreciate their concern for my welfare. Today I think of them as an important part of my gift of purpose; without them, there is no telling where and what I might be doing.

Needless to say, at a young age there was growing within me not only a budding intellectual curiosity, but also an awareness—of time, space, and circumstance. I noticed early on that the close friends of childhood gradually gave way to time and situation—most disappeared never to be called back as college, grad school, and work brought new friends and interests. I was a sensitive, trusting youngster—a bit naive about the world and people, but that would soon change. I was developing into a wary veteran of a dysfunctional family. By the age of twelve I knew about my father’s alcoholism, womanizing, growing debt, and had experienced his violent outbursts at home. Whenever dad was frustrated or drinking he took it out on me. As I grew older, my success in school and the athletic field drew his violent outbursts toward me more frequently. My mother used to hold the backdoor open for me and tell me to run to the ballpark just behind our house. She would call me in after dad had gone to sleep. The hours spent alone in that old dark stadium helped me think through situations and plan for the future. This time allowed me to delay responding to dad in anger and would later come into play when I was in a leadership position. “Think before you act” has always been one of my favorite mottos.

My mother made an effort to pay for dad’s misdeeds, but she couldn’t cover what the community and the family witnessed first hand. Examining her loan book soon after her death at age 91, I found a pattern of loans that went on for over three decades. Mom tried to give us a normal, middle class life, like the one she had as a youngster, but it was impossible for her to manage a store in our hometown, a growing family of three children, and shield for a husband who had been pampered by his mother and was unable to take responsibility for his own actions. Drinking was his cure.

The worse day of my life was December 19, 1953. It was my fourteenth birthday. I left school at 3:00 p.m. and as usual and went to work at Smithy’s Grocery Store. We closed the store at 7:00 p.m. and I walked the half mile to my home. I was ashamed of the condition of our old house. My brother and I shared a bedroom, hung our clothes on nails, and used an old bookcase as a dresser for storing our clothes. We slept between blankets, probably because it was cold in our room. I never used a sheet until an overnight trip when a senior in high school. Boy, was that an eye opener. A breakfast nook had been converted into my sister’s bedroom. We cooked on a wood-burning stove, had linoleum floors, an oil-burning heater in the living room warmed the house in cold weather, and our furniture was worn-out early 1930s.

When I opened the front door that evening my classmates shouted out a loud “Happy Birthday.” My parents had given me my first and last birthday party! Having visited in my friends’ homes, I was totally embarrassed by the disparity between the way their homes looked, the furniture they had, and the way I was living. Although bright, popular, a good athlete, and a school leader, I could not separate myself from my economic circumstances. Up until her death, my mother had tried to apologize for the way we had to live. I always gave her reassurance, saying that “you did the best you could and we knew it.”

To add insult to my personal misery, dad could not stay sober during the party. He was a cheap drunk and by eight o’clock he was staggering around the house making a fool out of himself and sending me deeper into depression. It was from that time that I developed a protective shell around myself and began to rely on my own abilities for whatever I needed—food, clothing, or entertainment. My friends would never be invited back to my house again.

High school went by quickly; at least it seemed so at the time. There were some things that happened during those years that probably foretold the person I was becoming. They have definitely colored my outlook on life and the way I approach other people. Perhaps telling these stories will help me keep this journal in order; of course, mine is the only perspective from which I can tell them. Hopefully, my personal reporting doesn’t stray too far a field from the way others saw it. In trying to understand my life and envision my future, to find meaning and purpose, these experiences resonated deep within me for many years and, that I recall them now, means they are still important to the person that I have become.

The Caddie Experience

I believe I came of age in the sixth grade, not sexually, but it was then that my world began to change and expand and I started to become a man. At the ripe old age of twelve I realized that I didn’t have a pot to piss in. Money was a non-entity for me. What others had, I only wished for. I don’t remember how I became acquainted with Eddie Coulter, because he lived closer into town than I and was two years older, but somehow he asked me if I wanted to make some real money. He always had money and was able to buy candy and soft drinks freely. I told him that I did. He told me to find a way out to the country club on Saturday mornings and sign up for caddy duty at the golf course. The only thing about this job was that I knew absolutely nothing about the game of golf—but I would learn!

The country club was about five miles from our house, so my dad took me out there the first morning. He said he would pick me up, but I told him that I would find a way back to town, and I did. It was five a.m. when I got there and Eddie was already there with 30 or 40 other kids—all African Americans. This was 1951 and Eddie and I were the only two white kids signing up for caddy duty. My antennae were on full alert for this was my first contact with both African American kids and the game of golf. It was a first come, first to work deal, and the caddy master played no favorites. On the following Saturday I got there at 4:30 a.m. and was first to tee off.

Why was this job so important to me? Well, it paid very well for 1951. One round of golf paid $3.50 per bag. Being a tall and well built twelve year old meant that as soon as I could learn the game, I could carry two bags and double my income. Also, if I could continue to arrive early at the course and pick up a 7:00 a.m. game, I would be able to go out again after lunch. I discovered that few caddies stayed for afternoon rounds. I saw this as an opportunity. In this way I could quadruple my income per day. Between rounds I ate a hotdog and drank a coke, then headed out to the practice range and shagged balls for those golfers who were practicing. In 1951, golfers had to bring their own practice balls and hire kids like me to picked them up. This job usually paid $2.00. On a typical Saturday I was able to make $16.00 plus a fifty-cent tip. On Sunday afternoons, I could make another seven or eight bucks for a weekly total of twenty-four tax-free dollars. This was half of what my dad or mother was making and they had to work 40 hours to earn it. As I became more proficient at golf, I gave out advice to golfers like I “knew” what I was talking about, and some of the golfers from my hometown hired me as their personal caddy. This meant they would come by the house and pick me up and I wouldn’t have to get up so early and sign-in like everyone else. I still stayed for the afternoon rounds and shagged balls as well. Sometimes I skipped school on Wednesday afternoons and made my way to the course to earn an extra seven or eight bucks.

My caddying career lasted from the spring of the sixth grade through the eighth grade. When I began playing high school football, I was usually short on time and too sore on Saturdays to make it around the golf course. As I look back on those days, I realize that it was then that my attitude toward people of color was developed. Although none of us became close friends due to our housing and schools being totally separated in our small town, this experience was a watershed in my life and influenced my attitude toward people of color from that time forward. That was an unexpected gift and it paid huge dividends as I moved into the sixties and the racial turmoil of that era.

Ethical Foundations

Just a small footnote to this experience will help put my growing up in North Carolina in the 1940s and 1950s and the experience of racial justice in perspective. I have never been one to join large groups or go with others to demonstrate for one cause or another. I have always preferred to work behind the scenes in small groups or in one-on-one encounters. Two examples may partially explain who I am and how my ethical foundations were developed.

(1) During the 1962 governor’s race in North Carolina, Senator I. Beverly Lake was running for the state’s top position and made segregation/integration the primary feature of his platform. He was anti-integration in any way, shape, or form. I was in my second year at Southeastern Seminary just twenty miles north of Raleigh. Lake was a member of the First Baptist Church located on our seminary campus. All students were members of this church by default (because we were students). Our missionaries had sent several African students over to enroll in seminary, as these young Africans wanted to become educated ministers and return to their homes better prepared to minister to their people. This situation posed a problem for Lake. The buzz around campus was that the rules were about to change and that students were no longer going to be accepted in our campus church. They also had to find room and board in the African-American section of the town of Wake Forest. I was working part time at Stevens Book Shop just off campus and the news of unfolding events continually passed through and changed almost hourly. The night of the church business meeting, several hundred of us student-members showed up and defeated their amendment. The African students were automatically members. Later on they were permitted to room on campus like everyone else and use our campus dinning facilities. Lake left the church and started his own in a cement-block building across town. Later, he was defeated in the general election for governor. Twenty-five years later I happened to pass through Wake Forest and noticed that Lake’s old segregated church was unoccupied and in shambles. Time has a way of sifting the good from the bad. This church represented all that I hated about church and politics, and anyone who thought they were better than the rest of us.

(2) In November 1962, on the official opening of Ridgecrest Baptist Church – the small church I pastored just 6 miles from campus, we prepared for four or five hundred people. Seminary and local church officials would be the main speakers. There was dinner on the grounds, as we say in the South. The choir was ready. The church was new and the original 35 members were proud of their achievement. Within a year we would have 150 members with an average attendance swelling to over 200 year Sunday. The Raleigh News and Observer ran a spread on the church opening and word spread that the NAACP would be there in force. I hoped so because we needed new members. I had had a church member who was a lawyer to draw up incorporation papers in which membership was simply a matter of saying, “I am a Christian.” This allowed me to recruit members without saying you have to make a new public confession of your faith and be baptized by immersion. It helped grow the church. When I arrived that Sunday, the men of the church were mulling around in the parking lot talking and smoking. I didn’t think anything was abnormal about this; after all, most were tobacco farmers and I thought they were nervous and just trying to get in that last smoke before entering the church. Before Sunday School, a member came up to me and said that the men of the church had brought guns with them because they were expecting the NAACP at anytime to come in from Raleigh, just 20 miles away. I gathered my wife and told her the story and said, “We’re leaving!” As we walked to our car, I told the chairman of the board of deacons, who was standing with the other men, that I was resigning from the church effective immediately. He wanted to know why. I told him what I had learned and said that what they were about to do was not Christianity and I would have no part in it. They could handle the service and the opening of the church on their own. With that he said, “Give me a minute.” He talked with the other men and they gather their weapons and took them home. Nothing was ever said about this incident again, but I knew it had created some tension between me and some of the male church members. I knew that I would be leaving in about three years, so I just let it ride. I’m sorry to report that the next student-minister of the church and some real problems with similar issues.

(3) When I was teaching at Gaston Community College in 1968, the racial movement was reaching a fevered high. Kennedy was gone. Now his brother and Martin Luther King Jr. had been murdered. Our African-American students were beside themselves. Turmoil was a daily problem on campus. We were counseling students more about ethics and social harmony than about academics. Living in a small southern town where schools and other public facilities had already been integrated, there was little outlet for their frustration and pain. So, small things became big! During the weeks and months that this controversy brewed, teaching was almost impossible with student attention being drawn to the excitement of the pending controversy. Those on the faculty—who took the time to listen and hear what the students were saying, who were open to discussion and differences in points of view—became the favorite student advisors whenever crises hit the campus.

On our campus the issue wasn’t as romantic or as earth shattering as those facing the nation, but for the students in Gaston County, it provided a way of becoming involved in something bigger than the local community. Simply put, our little issue was how many African-American students were represented on standing school committees. When the African-American president of one committee was voted off, there followed a series of class boycotts and demonstrations that spilled over into the African-American communities of Gastonia and Dallas, North Carolina. The President of the college appointed a committee to look into the situation and I was selected as its chair.

With the permission of committee members, I invited each involved student into my office for a sit down discussion. Rather than rumor and innuendo, I wanted to hear what was really going on among them. What I discovered was that even the African-American students on the student committee wanted the African-American president out. He was not a person that anyone seemed to like, a bully and a troublemaker. Given the national climate, when their problems spilled out to the campus at large, these students became afraid to speak up. They reluctantly had joined with their African-American friends in the demonstrations. With their permission we called a meeting of all African-American students on the campus and explained what had occurred. Some of them rose and confirmed what had been said. The problem was diffused. This was an incident that I will never forget. My role was behind the scenes—where I preferred it to be. It was then and there that I learned the power of honest dialogue and the negative effects of group pressure.

Incident at the A&P

Purpose-building starts early in life and, when recognized, it changes a person’s spirit and character. When I turned sixteen, I left Smithy’s Grocery and went to work at the A&P. Smithy’s paid $.50 per hour and the A&P, $.75 per hour, and you had to be sixteen or older to work at the A&P. This was before the first national minimum wage of the early 1960s, which came in at $1.25 per hour. After working there for a year, the manager came to me and offered a part time checker’s position—one that used the cash register to check-out customers. He said it paid $1.00 per hour. I jumped at a chance to get this new job and the extra money; I perhaps jumped too quickly.

The first problem I encountered was that I had to stay after hours and practice—without pay—in order to become a checker. In those days, the cash registers were mechanical and speed was important, especially on Friday evenings and Saturdays. The second problem was that I was to be used as a checker only when the full-time checkers went on break. Instead of getting 20 hours a week, I now could only get seven or eight hours of work per week. On top of that, I had to sit in the break room and wait to be called. This was wasting my time and money and I thought it was unfair. I went back down to Smithy’s and ask the manager for my old job back whenever there was an opening. I was prepared to return to the golf course if I had too.

On one particular Saturday afternoon—Saturday afternoons were usually slow—I was the only checker working and had one bag-boy working with me, Tom Harrill (Tom would later earned the Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from Auburn University the same year I finished the University of Georgia). We got real busy and about ten customers or so were lined up behind my register. One customer forgot to get an item of produce weighed and marked with a price. Tom, my bag boy had left the store carrying a customer’s groceries. I saw the assistant store manager standing next to the produce counter and called to him to come over and pick up the produce and weigh it. His response was something like this, “I don’t work for you, you work for me. If you want the produce weighed, come over here and do it yourself.” I had been told never to leave the cash register when customers were in the store. This was a no-win situation. The incident made me so angry that I just responded automatically. I called back to him, “I don’t work for you anymore!” I then folded my apron, laid it across the cash register, and walked out the front door. Smithy’s hired me back later that summer.

The strange thing about this incident is that the manager called my home and wanted me to come up and sign a statement as to why I left. They had prepared a statement that said the job was too difficult and that I couldn’t learn to use the cash register. I had been a checker for three months at that time and had passed their hands-on test before they hired me. I tore it up and wrote out my own statement, signed it, and left the store. As my girl friend and future wife said, “You know they didn’t submit that statement to their corporate offices.” They probably didn’t, but the whole situation was a lesson well learned and will never be forgotten. When I became a supervisor of others, I remembered how I was treated at the A&P and vowed never to treat others in that way.

The ethical dimensions of life are sometimes set early in life and unfold in some very strange ways. An effective leader will always lead by serving others. Later in life, when I learned that the A&P had closed, I said, “No wonder.”

Riding “White Lightening”

Newton-Conover High School was small compared with today’s larger secondary schools. In grades 9-12 we barely had 400 students. So everyone knew each other. They also knew your family, and if you had brothers or sisters to precede you at the school, the expectations teachers had for your work was evaluated by the standards your siblings had set. I was fortunate or unfortunate depending on one’s perspective. My sister was very smart, a member of the Beta Club, and three years ahead of me in school. I really believed my brother was the unfortunate one as he was three years behind me in school and had a very smart sister and brother to live up to. Because of my sister, the expectations for my performance were set very high. It was the age of Sputnik and the Cold War, so we who were thought of as above average were steered into science and math courses—we took all of them and felt it an obligation to our country.

I was an athlete. I received an email in January 2003 from an old friend who is now an orthopedic surgeon. I had contacted Lew about our 45th high school reunion. In his letter he made mention of his memories and the teams we played on together. Those were great days! The gym we had to play in was the smallest in our conference. It was fondly called the “Cracker Box.” The bus we rode in to away games in football, basketball, and track was painted red and white. It too was small, even by 1955 standards. It was probably a 1946 or ‘47 Chevrolet or Ford, I can’t remember which. It was so slow that we called it “White Lightning.”

During basketball season my girlfriend and future wife Pat and I always sat together. We probably spent more time dating on that bus than we did in her living room. Lew also played basketball and was quite a star, being over 6 feet tall (big for the fifties). His sister was two years younger, but at 5’11”, she was also a varsity player. She was tall, good looking, and “built” in the right places.

On the way back from one of our games, several of my best friends—sitting on the back seat of the bus with her—made an attempt to disrobe her and feel her body. She was screaming, but our two coaches just ignored the entire incident. I kept my eye on Lew and when he was about to blow a fuse, I stood up and told the guys to let her go and then called for the coaches to intervene. As I sat back down in my seat, one of my best friends hit me in the jaw from my blind side. He really rattled my bones! The rest of the trip everyone sat really still. There were only whispers from the players as the bus drew eerily quiet. Damn, my face was really bruised and began to swell.

The next day back at school the team was called into the gym and in front of Lew’s parents told what they had seen or heard. For those of us who were the closest to the incident, the two coaches tried to interrupt and change our story. That is when I stood up in front of the group and laid out the whole incident and told the coaches that they were responsible for this incident and others that had been taking place on the bus rides to and from games. I was angry and a little charged up from getting the crap knocked out of me. As far as we students knew, nothing came of this and no one was disciplined. The entire affair was kept quiet, as you can imagine what a small town would have done to these players and coaches. When I told the coach I was through with basketball and would not return to the team my senior year, he said, “You’re going to miss out on getting your senior letter.” Having earned letters in sports already, I just said, “Who cares,” and never spoke to him again.

Why did I react as I did? Why did I risk losing my closest friends? Why did I give up a sport I truly loved playing? I wasn’t self-righteous, having gotten into fights at school before. I didn’t feel better than these guys and we’re still friends today. But, as I look back, I mark this as one of those events that helped me find and follow an authentic life. Annie Dillard once wrote, “The thing is to stalk your calling in a certain skilled and supple way, to locate the most tender and live spot and plug into the pulse.” Just maybe, in my teenage innocence and intellectual immaturity, I was doing just that. Of course, I have to be reminded of what Nietzsche warned us about; that is, that which doesn’t kill you will probably make you stronger. Maybe the crisis on old White Lightning called on powers I didn’t realize I possessed, but whose time had come—I don’t know. But I do know that we must enter each day with the expectation that the happenings of the day may contain a clandestine message addressed to us personally. We should perhaps expect that through the right lenses, the encounters we have, like the burning bush that spoke to Moses, would teach us something about humanity and living together.

Learning to Dance Together

Collective Thinking

I had to learn, by hook or by crook, how other people lived and got along together. My only experience was my family—dysfunctional as it was—and this model was an imperfect one. Working outside the home from age eleven gave me a handle on evaluating how others lived. I also spent some time with my buddies at their houses and watched how they were treated. One of the things I noticed early on was my family’s lack of material things. Compared to my closest friends, we were shabby poor. Because my mother had a respectable job managing a woman’s apparel store, we were considered middle class, but our house was run down; our furniture was old and beat up, and only our living room floor was covered, and that was with a huge red and white checked linoleum. The rest of our wooden floors were painted a dark brown. Until age 16, we heated with an oil heater in the living room and cooked over a wood-burning stove. Visiting my girlfriend’s home, just down the street from where I lived, I was shocked to see the modern conveniences, the carpet, the electric stove, and an air conditioner. That was the first air conditioner that I had ever seen up close. I learned a lot from her and continued to learn from her during our five years of dating and now (2003), 44 years of marriage.

In my high school I could tell that many of the teachers knew how I had to live. They seemed to respect my intellect, but I knew they thought of me as a second-class citizen. I had been president of my freshman class, vice-president of my sophomore class, president of the school chorus, and was a letterman in three sports, but at the beginning of my junior year I was passed over for membership in the Key Club—the most important social organization for young men who were headed for college. Many under-classmen were picked ahead of me and when I saw who they were, I knew that it was an economic, social, and persona game. I was truly hurt by this. Now that I look back on those days, I often wonder how the kids felt who knew they would never make it into such a club. I guess my high expectation to be included was what brought me down so fast. It was a lesson learned and never forgotten. The price of respectability is higher than most of us are willing or able to pay. Since that time I have tried to avoid clubs and other organizations to this day. The price of membership is usually more than I want to pay in personal integrity.

One application of this lesson came when I was a supervisor of gifted education for the Catawba County School System. I felt early in my career that smart, creative kids ought to get every opportunity to learn and express their creativity in school. If this meant special classes so they would not be held back, so be it. But in other school systems I witnessed the elitist attitudes this could breed, and not only among students, but teachers and parents as well. Before my retirement I had worked with the NC State Department of Public Instruction to ease up on the laws binding school systems to one way of identifying gifted students – IQ. We began to develop programs for the gifted and high functioning students and encouraged parents to allow their children—children who were smart, but maybe not gifted in the strict sense of the word—to enroll in these programs if they wanted a challenge or had an interest in the content that was being taught. I would rather over identify than leave out one child who just wanted a chance at success. I had to fight my staff and the central office administration over this proposal, but eventually got my way. Now that I have retired, I have heard that they have reversed these procedures. It is my belief that a special feature of democracy is that of giving anyone who wants it a chance to activate their ideas, enliven their visions, and strive toward the innate possibilities that lie within. Many people thought I was truly committed to elitist-type gifted programming. I really wasn’t. My commitment was to giving everyone a chance, a shot, to fulfill their purpose and follow their dreams. Running against the wind, whether at home, school, or at work, seemed to be my special calling. I hated it, but found myself in those kinds of situations all my life. I wasn’t an ass-kisser and never went along with what I thought was wrong just to get along. I was outspoken and authority didn’t scare me; neither did losing my job because that had already happened in the past.

President of the Beta Club

At the end of my junior year in high school, the senior members of the Beta Club got together and elected the next year’s club president. This was an established procedure. No campaigning or arm-twisting was involved. It was done entirely in secret. Although I hadn’t been selected to the Key Club, I had earned my way into the Beta Club. Being elected president was a recognition and honor by my peers, an honor that I would not be denied. Even to this day there are some of those who where there and participated in the voting that still hold a grudge. I know this because others have spoken to me about it. You just have to let certain things go and move on. I don’t mean that you ever forget your past, but you don’t let it steer your future in negative ways.

At the next meeting of our Beta Club, the members were informed that I had been selected president. I noticed the face of our faculty sponsor—Ms. Shivers—and she was not a happy camper. Several other members of my class, who had better grade averages than me, were also unhappy. The letter said that I had been a class leader throughout high school, had stood up for my beliefs, and they thought I was the best person for the job—which, when I look back, didn’t amount to “diddly squat.” Later, in private, Ms. Shivers said to me, “I don’t know why they elected you. Your ‘kind’ never attends college and has no family that work for the right people. I’m disappointed.”

Hell, I wasn’t disappointed! I had been selected by my peers and felt honored. What the teacher said was hurtful and led to my staying largely to myself during my senior year in high school. I chose to associate with few a friends and spend more time with my girl friend and future wife, who was now in college. I worked after school as sports would allow and elected to play football and not to finish four years with the basketball or track teams. I continued to run everyday and competed in track meets. I was a miler and worked out alone. Upon graduation from high school, I moved on to college and never looked back. As I have been active in planning every one of our high school reunions since 1958, I feel that old feelings and the bad times have been forgotten; people have moved on and built new lives for themselves. After all, this is only one person’s story—a singular point of view that might look totally different when seen from another’s perspective. I always have to keep this in mind and keep life balanced.

But, I must confess, being elected as president of the Beta Club gave me new confidence in my abilities. I could now hold up my head for who I was and not attach my self-esteem to my father’s misfortune or where I lived. I knew then I could make it in college and was motivated to be the best student I could be. This was a turning point for me, recognition of a purposeful life to be pursued and eventually to be completed. What my friends or teachers thought of me or my family no longer was a concern. I now looked forward to a new life, a life to be created and fulfilled.

But it took some time to overcome the view of my family and me provided by some of my teachers. My confidence had been shaken. Although I graduated from college in three years and went on to seminary where I graduated with honors and languages in 1964, and received a graduate fellowship to teach there for another year and earned the Master of Theology Degree, it took me several more years to gather the confidence to apply at a university to pursue the doctorate of philosophy. Go figure! Some things are deeply ingrained—printed on the brain with permanent ink—and only time and thoughtful reconsideration can expose them for what they are. And what are they? They are socially—perhaps culturally and personally—imposed dispositions to failure. All of us possess them, though they may be unconscious determiners predestining us to certain genetically or culturally contrived behaviors. And we listen to them telling us no, to stop; and it is these small voices that impair our vision as they convince us that here is where we deserve to be.

Pat, my girl friend and future wife, had lost her dad in March of her senior year in high school. She was one year ahead of me in school and was in college now. I would enroll in the fall. She worked part time for my mother, and her mother, sister, and I became real close, as we still are today, some 44 years later. I worked at Smithey’s Grocery and prepared for college. All the while I felt I was growing as a man. I was successful at work. The manager trusted me to drive the store truck, deliver groceries around town, and even pick up supplies in Wilkesboro, some 40 miles away. I was learning. I knew what I didn’t want out of life, but had yet to figure out what I wanted—or needed. Purpose recognized is seldom purpose fulfilled. Understanding that my purpose was unfolding, my years in college and graduate school gave me the time to analyze and embrace it.

Shagging by the Numbers

I was never good at shagging by the numbers. My wife has encouraged me to take dance lessons, but I have always felt that it was our generation who invented the “shag” and modern lessons in what is called “shag” today would just interfere with my creativity—you see, every time I dance the shag, I invent just a little bit more. This is the adventure of it all, but it drives my wife crazy. I can always tell those who have had lessons—they’re all alike doing the same steps at the same time, no creativity and no innovation. When you shag by the numbers you’re apt to become an ineffective follower, a clock-watcher for whom creativity is a foreign concept and work is something you do in between morning and evening television shows. You just can’t stereotype the shag and you can’t pigeonhole a mind in motion. The creative life has been a challenging life. Shagging by the numbers is not an option.

My outward push came when I decided to leave home for college. I was the first in my immediate family to attend college. I had my mother’s encouragement and my father’s skepticism behind me. I couldn’t fail! Failure was not an option. Purpose had infected me with optimism. So, on that Sunday evening, my folks with my fiancé delivered me to a small, conservative, religious-oriented college about 50 miles from my home—it might as well have been 1,000 miles away. Pat was attending Lenoir-Rhyne College and living at home. By year’s end I would soon return home, get married, and complete college at Lenoir-Rhyne College in Hickory, North Carolina.

College was not fun for me – it was work. I held down a full-time job at Bowman’s Drug Store in Conover, NC and made a tidy sum of 63 cents an hour. I got married while working at Doc’s store; Pat worked part time for my mother and then taught school during my last year at L-R. Ironically, we both finished college in three years and then we were off to Wake Forest and Southeastern Seminary. Although moderately conservative for a Southern Baptist seminary in 1961, Southeastern had an amazing level of scholarship among many of its high-profile professors. My own minister had advised me to stay away from certain teachers and even made a list for me. For the most part, these are the men with whom I studied the most.

Before I graduated with the Bachelor of Divinity Degree in 1964, the ultra-conservatives in the Southern Baptist Convention had already removed three of the best teachers at Southeastern. The best of these went to Boston College as a professor of New Testament Theology. Another group of professors were destined to leave Southeastern over the next decade. Among these was my friend and mentor Steward A. Newman. Doc Newman was perhaps more philosophical than theological, and, parenthetically, more cynical than most due to what was occurring in the Southern Baptist Convention. He ended his career teaching at a prestigious four-year college in Raleigh, North Carolina. Before that he had taught at Campbell University for six or seven years and hired me to teach in the philosophy department at Campbell – my first professorship out of the University of Georgia. I taught in the philosophy department at Campbell from 1972 until 1975.

I earned a second graduate degree – the Masters of Theology (Th.M.) – from Southeastern in 1967. I was minister at a small country church from 1962-1965, and worked at Stevens’ Book Store—the first and largest used bookstore in the Southeast. During the school year 1964-1965, I taught Homiletics as a part of my duties as a graduate fellow. These many experiences exposed me to books, professors, and new ideas. They helped to increase my knowledge-base and provided me with a larger picture of reality than did my hometown or the small liberal arts college in Hickory. They assisted my “seeing” and my understanding and daily presented a larger picture of my work than any singular event could hope to have provided. Serving the small church, working in the bookstore, and receiving a teaching fellowship gave me a personal confidence that I had heretofore been unable to develop. As I look back, it was a part of “me” in the making; I couldn’t have scripted it any better!

One enriching experience at Southeastern is worth mentioning. During my second or middler year, I was invited to “coffee” with the professors every day at 10:30 a.m. These discussions, and being at the hub of campus gossip by virtue of working at Stevens’ Bookstore, afforded me a prominent leadership role on campus. I was so busy that I did not realize that I had become a campus leader. It came to me through a dear friend about 38 years later who remarked that I had been looked upon by other students as one of the campus intellectuals, and that students sought me out over at Stevens’ Book Store for advice on courses, books, and professors. This was news to me! School, working at the bookstore, dialogue with professors and students, and study were part of a life that I will cherish forever. In time I would understand that leadership seeks out leaders and not vice versa. My confidence indeed began to grow and I continued to ace every class that I took. I also found a new love during this time – a love for learning and a love for books that has lasted until this day.

Another experience I must mention is agreeing to manage Stevens’ Bookstore during the school year 1964-65. During the summer of 1964, Dick Stevens fell off a ladder painting his house and broke vertebrae in his back. His wife called and told me the situation. They had two small children. She didn’t work, and now she couldn’t work. She had to stay home and take care of Dick and the children. She asked if I could manage the store, which I did for the entire school year, and with Dick at home scheduling orders, sales, and the like, we muddled through. Mrs. Stevens would come up every Friday and take care of the banking chores. I just opened the store between classes, ordered books, and stocked shelves as time would allow. Having worked in retail as a teenager, I had no problem juggling a busy schedule of teaching, attending classes, studying, and serving a small Baptist Church about six miles from campus.

Southeastern expanded my capacity to question—a particular skill that did not sit well within the church or within the schools where I taught. Questions opened a world beyond what I already knew and revealed a world that I was hungry to know more about. Questions welcome purpose, tend to clarify that which is murky, and put one on a path to learning. Knowledge is always in transition and, when learned and embedded, has transforming and self-authenticating power. Questions unearth a capacity in us that requires attention. Out of our blameless ignorance or willfully, we ask questions and seek understanding; we reflect about what we think, probe its truth, dimensions, and try to separate fact from wild guesses, theories, dogmas, or just plain wishes. Following a powerful impulse to grow, to push outward and take in the world of our imaginations and dreams, we are pushed and pulled by our passions, our laziness, selfishness, weaknesses, beliefs and prejudices.

We strive to be ethical, but despite our efforts we choose what we want even when it is not good for us and regardless of how it affects others. We don’t seek purpose; it finds us. We more often than not fight against the purpose that is dragging us forward and compelling us to embrace its energizing force.

While at Southeastern, along about 1964, I made a decision that the ministry was not my bag. During my fellowship year my first child was born and my wife decided to retire from teaching to rear our first son. She would return to teaching when I was a graduate student at the University of Georgia in 1969. Although I had made the decision not to pursue the ministry as a career, and with a child on the way—and wanting to give myself time to experience the ministry in a different setting—I would not leave abruptly. In the summer of 1965, having finished my class work for the Master of Theology Degree, I took a job in Mt. Holly, North Carolina as assistant minister of a rather large urban church.

While in Mt. Holly our second son was born, I completed my master’s thesis and I had an opportunity to teach at Gaston Community College at night, just fourteen miles from my home. This was my opportunity to teach and continue to grow intellectually and to enhance my teaching skills, which were meager at best during this time in my life. Although I met some wonderful people in Mt. Holly, working at the church was intellectually and emotionally stifling.
In the summer of 1967, I was offered a full-time teaching position at Gaston College. One of our church members, Don Killian—who remains to this day one of my best friends and intellectual companions—had recommended me for part time work at the college in 1966. Now, I would share an office with him and later we would attend the University of Georgia together. Don had graduated from Davidson College and Appalachian State University with the Master’s in sociology. He was only a couple of years older than me, but was turning gray at an alarming rate. He had been at Gaston College for a few years and was known for his sense of humor and preppy clothing, and to this day he remains anal about his clothes—always a button-down shirt and usually kaki pants. With Don’s clothing and style and my passion for academic rigor, our office became a hub of student interest and activity. There was always someone waiting for us and studying in that environment was almost impossible, but it was students first—always.

Don and I have been close friends for almost forty years now and have authored two books together—Cartoons for Thinking 1 & 2, which utilized the cartoons of the late Doug Marlette who also designed the cover of the books. Writing those books was an event. I conceived the idea for the books, and contacted Doug Marlette and received permission to use his cartoons. Don and I selected the cartoons around which we created preliminary lessons for middle and high school students. We then decided that we needed a week together to finish the project. We rented a cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains for about a week; Don brought the beer—as always—and I the material. We had a blast brainstorming and putting that material together.

Back in 1969, when I enrolled at the University of Georgia, Don took a leave of absence from the college and enrolled as well—he in social psychology and me in philosophy. I graduated in three years with the Ph.D. in hand, but Don dropped out at the end of his second year needing only one course, his comps, and his dissertation to complete. Pressures at home—he didn’t bring his family with him—got to be too much and he just didn’t see any point in finishing his degree program.

Breaking Out

Three things I value more than my own life are my wife and my two sons. I now add to that equation the wives of my boys and their children. To raise this brood in an emotional and intellectually sound environment meant leaving the church. I would write in 1970 that the church had a choice to make—relevancy or death. I meant this as “relevant to individuals like me.” The “other world” message of the church was unappealing and current social and economic problems seemed more relevant than the world after death. I was young; living was important. Salvation and eternity require an existential connection in ethical living and coherent applications of the moral life.

During the decade of the sixties, for the most part, white Christian churches in the south ignored the civil rights movement and the Vietnam issue. In 1960, after the Greensboro sit-in, an older minister, who was substituting at our church, said, “God made the red birds, the blue birds, the yellow birds, and the black birds, and they don’t mix—this is part of the divine plan; and white people and black people should not mix either.” I was sitting in the middle of our rather large church with my mother and for some reason just stood up and said, “But we’re not birds, preacher!” and then I turned and left the building never to return while he was there.

Apparently I underestimated the church and what was relevant to most people. A church sign in my community reads: “Have you read the Bible today? It will scare the Hell out of you.” I assume that this has meaning to a different type of person than me, because it was that kind of thinking that I just can’t stand. To me the church was, and still is, an archaic and irrelevant institution, a product of our ancient and mythological past that limits reasoning and intellectually ability. It is still, I believe, embedded in mysticism and otherworldliness for which some are willing to give their lives and others cling too for emotional and psychological security and peace of mind.

Leaving the church set me on a voyage of rediscovery and helped me recover my sense of personal identity. I thought I had found my purpose—educating others in the moral life, leading by example, and continuing to grow as a person. The location, I thought, was all-wrong. I felt the need to be in a classroom where honest dialogue could take place; where student and teacher could ask questions, search for answers, and acknowledge the insights and knowledge of others, no matter what path such learning would take. Involvement in developing human potential seemed to be a worthy goal. The church had for some time tried to hold me to a set of assumptions with which I didn’t agree. Its theme was “conformity” and my theme was “growth.” Teaching college full-time was a breath of fresh air for me. It paid better too. But the decision to leave the church and the ministry was perhaps more pragmatic than that.

During my second year as assistant minister in Mount Holly, the minister was afflicted with prostate cancer. He would have surgery and treatments and be out of the pulpit for twelve months. During that time I took over his duties and continued with my own responsibilities. This meant a great deal of travel to nearby hospitals, nursing homes, and to individual homes. My car expenses more than doubled and I was away from home seven nights a week. You have to understand that our minister was provided a new car every two years, a home in which to live, a salary that was triple what I was paid, and a much larger expense account. While out sick, he continued receiving all these benefits. My benefits did not increase.

While our minister was out with his illness, I had taken a job teaching part time during the evenings at Gaston Community College. Without that work my family and I could not have survived. I taught two classes each quarter at $800 per class. This meant $1600 a quarter times four or $6,400 per year. My salary at the church was only $6,000 per year and I received $150 a month for housing and car expenses for a total of $7,800 a year. The college income greatly expanded our quality of life. I planned to keep teaching part time at the college because it was helping our family so much and we wanted to have another baby, one that we could not afford on my church salary.

By the time our minister had returned, the college had offered me a full time associate professor position teaching history and religion. The salary was $9,000 for ten months or three quarters with an option to teach at night and in the summers, which amount to four quarters plus evenings. My salary, I figured, would be about $17,200 overall. I did not tell our minister about this offer, but kept the contract, unsigned, in my desk. I went to the minister the week he returned and asked him for a favor. I asked if he would intercede for me at the next deacons’ meeting and tell them about my economic plight—that is, what it had cost me to do two jobs for a year. I didn’t want any back salary from them, only an increase in salary and car expenses. The minister’s reply was straightforward. He said, “Joe, if God wants you to have more income, God will provide it.” He then said he would not speak to the deacons on my behalf. I asked him for permission to speak to them myself. This he refused as well. I went back to my office, signed the college contract, wrote out my resignation, and placed it in his mailbox with a note, “God has provided. I will be taking a full time position at the college at the end of this month.” He was right!

This decision eventually led me to enroll at the University of Georgia, earn the doctorate in philosophy, become involved with the Torrance Creativity Research Center, teach at Campbell University, and decide to write my children’s philosophy series. If you ask if I could have planned such an eventful career, the answer would be no—it just happened to me. Purpose is a gift and when embraced, takes the lead, pushing and prodding us along the way. Did I forsake religion and my beliefs—not at all? Where I work and what I believe can never be equated. Purpose drives belief and belief fulfills purpose. Hand-in-hand they bring us to understand our talents and our reasons for being. To accept that gift was the greatest challenge of all. There are no regrets. Purpose has rewards only the inner person can perceive. It’s not open for discussion or inspection. Neither is it perfected in us. As we grasp our purpose and work at fulfilling its demands, we are bound to make mistakes, but the influence we have on others is greater than any of these. It’s a wonderful life, a life complete with expectation and joy.

The Paradox of Self-Deception

I was thirty-seven years old when my father died. Well educated though I was, his death marked the end of my innocence and the beginning of my own end. Coming to grips with my own finiteness gave new meaning and, perhaps, a sense of urgency to my life. What had I accomplished? What had I given? Would people remember me as someone who contributed to and not someone who took away from the joy of living? A sense of moral responsibility, implanted in me by my mother, seemed to follow my every endeavor. I was still running against the wind.

This time of “endfulness” would also be a time for reconsideration, a time for adjustment, for throwing off the insignificant and unimportant. In the throws of mid-life I discovered then and there a renewed commitment to certain values and beliefs, strongly held in my youth, neglected in my rise to adulthood, but now—as I sat there looking at my father’s body—begging for reassessment and reevaluation. It took some time, but at age fifty, I began to peel off those layers of insignificance that no longer seemed important. That which once cast a spell over my life and work no longer held its sway over me. That to which I was committed when mentally a primitive thinker, I no longer would give lip service or even recognition.

This was a rebirth for me, but I now felt uneasy about myself. I had spent fourteen years in college, five of which had been in divinity school and three pursuing the doctoral in philosophy, but these studies had not solved the riddle of my “self,” of living and dying, with which I now endlessly struggled. This was my problem and could not be brought to resolution through group counseling, writing, or even in conversation with others. One thing experience had taught me was that I was on a personal quest that had to be resolved from the inside out. Somehow, I had to muster the courage to look deeper than before, to evaluate my personal values and determine the importance of my experiences. The keys to truth, beauty, goodness, eternity, and all the other magnificently created human values were not to be found somewhere “out there” in things, activities, or others. No longer could I look outside my “self” for conceptual security, validity, or understanding. The problem, as well as the solution, lay within.

On that final day we buried my father. I knew, as it were, instantly, that I too was all alone and would some day follow him in that endless sleep. Whatever meaning I could attach to human living and dying I would find in my aloneness. I realized then, as I do today, even in the light of the security blanket of religion and philosophy, that meaning and purpose are to be found in simplicity and that the quest for socio/cultural simplification can be disturbing.

After all, all of us who have named ourselves “human” have created the socio/cultural/ religious context (which we call “reality”) in which we live. We have viewed the nasty, brutish side of life and then shielded ourselves from this “natural” enemy by wrapping ourselves in centuries of myth and tradition. From our beliefs we have inferred our own spirituality and eternalness. I too became steeped in this system of belief and doctrine, sacrament and performance. The initial datum of personal experience provided me a connection with the past through memory and birth. These experiences have enabled me to connect with others through an elaborate system of beliefs and symbols, activities and institutions. Though isolated mentally and spiritually, I readily join with the past, form friendships in the present, and project a life beyond life that is secure and eternal.

But I will die alone, as did my mother on July 27, 2001. Although her only living sister was holding her hand and I was standing touching her shoulder and stroking her hair, she did her own dying. Likewise, trapped as I am in this body, the ability to connect provides for me a delusion of freedom and a hope for eternity. This is a precarious vision set on the teeter-totter of life with little empirical support. My own egocentricity magnifies the belief that all of life intersects through me. And my vision of eternity—that time and tradition, fear and enculturation have embedded within me—causes me to believe in an unseen and untouchable world projected on the screen of my personal religious heritage. Purpose is a gift, but where is it? How is it? And why is it? Am I wrong?

More than two thousand years ago, Plato posited the eternity of “forms” and it was an easy jump for Christians, immersed as they were in Platonic other worldliness and Middle Eastern metaphysics, to heaven and hell, and from “form” to “spirituality.” Time and tradition, and the pressures on a young boy to conform or else, gave me permission to believe in those humanly concocted philosophies and institutions. They support our desire to live forever and are reinforced by our tribal-meta-physicalism, which provides an infinite comfortableness as we face our ultimate destinies.

If, in my sixties, I seem discontented with myself, it is because at an early age I came under the spell of these humanly engineered conceptualizations. Some said, as they so desperately clung to a vision of eternity, that the very fact of the existence of “Man” is a “break” in the natural world and proves that nature cannot be self-sufficient but rests upon a supernatural reality. This assumption remains a part of our mythological past and is a spur to our contemporary existential feeling of desperation. And the new phenomenon of post-modernism has ushered in a new wave of religiosity, of radical orthodoxy, with its claims to truth and meaning. They say, “Now that science and philosophy have recognized the essential relativity of truth and meaning, the way is again open for theology and talk about God.” But, if they were true believers, what prevented their God-talk in the first place? Could have it been their desire for academic recognition? Could it have been their desire for respectability in the marketplace of ideas? The problem again is that this so-called “new wave” has the appearance of just another abstract scheme for philosophical debate and no real-world meaning or application. The people on the street—the real humans among us; the ones I worked for at the A&P, on the golf course, and down at Smithy’s Grocery Store—could give a damn about postmodern theology, for they have enough trouble with present reality, their own lives and those of their children.

And there is no place to hide. Purpose has a way of seeking us out. To take refuge in the existence of conflicting opinions on any matter—that is, to hide behind conflict and claim there are no answers bespeaks of a relativistic copout—is to confuse the problem with the solution. The pursuit of knowledge requires careful examination of conflicting views and the evaluation of them. And what others have to say about my doubts, my reflections on serious matters, doesn’t really count for me. In and of itself, public response to an idea is not a measure of its truth and validity. Truth is not something that can be learned by knowing the right techniques—putting words on a so-called “thinking map” and getting it checked off by a teacher. The learner has to see it for him or herself. It must be apprehended through a process of learning and connecting bits and pieces of information, transforming them by understanding, and applying what is learned in the workaday world.

Thomas Kuhn has argued that in any given era the practitioners of science operate within the accepted paradigms. But every now and again the paradigm proves to be inadequate to cope with the new understanding of reality. It is then that a paradigm shift comes about in order to accommodate the new approach. Living on this growing edge is what makes life worth living. I understand that any new idea has to be assessed in relation to the fabric of beliefs and values that each of us has been weaving from birth; that what we see is always filtered through the twin lenses of our experience and our understanding. But this shouldn’t stop us from living our dreams, trying new things, challenging the accepted and acknowledged, and asking questions in the traditional marketplaces of ideas. Isn’t this what school is all about? Or, do I have it wrong? Is school really about thinking inside the lines and daring not to deviate from tradition and commercially prepared teacher lesson plans?

But, I’m not saying anything new. I am not a departure from nature. I am nature through and through. That I have evolved the ability to think and imagine, conceptualize and believe doesn’t mean that the consequent of my mental meanderings actually exists. I would, like the Apostle Paul, hope that they do, but I can never know this for sure. I can humanize nature through ethical narratives or introduce so-called cosmic principles into my natural world, but it’s a self-deception to believe that I am “apart from,” “over,” or “against” nature. Like it or not, I am what I am and my basic naturalness cannot be changed or altered. All the theologies and philosophies of the past that seemed to struggle with “nature” were constructed on a foundation of misperception and inadequate conceptions. To put forward the essential spirituality of man is not to debunk human naturalness or physicalness. Perhaps this is all semantics — that they are all one and the same — I don’t know for sure, and I don’t know that it’s important. Spiritual, physical—they are what they are no matter how we define them.

My continuity and understanding is this worldly, as if there is an “other-worldly” existence. My nature has evolved as fully as the cellular structure of the willow oak—just outside my window—evolved within it. The power to think – to infer, predict, remember, dream, and create – may be looked upon as a positive or negative adjectival predicate of my life. Positively, I am able to learn and reason. Many have said that reason is not natural, that it is divine; it lies outside of us; it is something that is given to us that we then choose to develop and is tempered by tradition and belief, and by submission to authority. From this view we have come to speak of a “higher order” of reasoning and a “lower order” of reasoning. I doubt if either exists! A logical inference that our culture has made is that reason is the image of God, the “Higher Being,” and through reasoning we too become one with this being. The Greeks, called this being Nous (mind), Logos (reason), and Sophia (wisdom) which our cultural fathers adapted in the New Testament and though centuries of tampering and transliterations have tried to remove the Greek connotations, personalize reason, and recreate it as the Son of God or as the Trinity. My, my, we do tend to set ourselves apart, don’t we? I wonder how other beings feel about this. Are we really a “chosen” people or is this simply the echo of our own self-absorbed narcissism?

The negative view further dichotomizes the concept we hold of ourselves and causes an internal uneasiness. It tells us that the birth of consciousness, reason, and spirit is a biological retrogression, a weakening of life—of our natural instincts. The naked ape, the “that” that we were, has lost most of its survival instincts, they say, and will eventually do us in. With the awakening of human reasoning in our recent past, with its ability to research, think, and speculate, it’s no wonder we have begun to feel uneasy about ourselves. Giving all that science and philosophers have to say, giving the world of religions and their dogmatic truths, I can only respond that the key to my reality—to my living and dying—is my ability to know myself. This seems important, not in a practical sense, but “in-the-search-for-meaning beyond the accepted-given sense.”

The key to my reality will be found within. Purpose penetrates, then uncovers and directs.

Although I am a singular being, I do understand the genetic and cultural structure of the life that is within me. This realization startled me at first, and may startle you, but later I recognized it as the foundation of my connection with others. In my mind’s eye, this was an awakening upon which I have been able to develop an ethical view, the moral sense that allows my communal existence. This, to me was ground zero. I once said, “If this is all there is, who cares and why try?” Later, examining my genetic and cultural relationships, my friends, children and grandchildren, I see that a new foundation could be built, if for no other reason than preserving my own human dignity and the dignity of those with whom I connect. This has adverted by advance toward nihilism and aided in my circumventing the destructive nature of what evolution has provided.

The Precarious Vision

Much has been written in ethics and metaphysics, from Aristotle to computerized “value” statements and their resulting implications, from points of view sprouting from religious convictions, to those that have been filtered through the logical-positivists’ narrows of scientific and statistical smoke screens. In the first half of the 20th century, ethics was buried in the graveyard of insignificant utterances, condemned by science and mocked by philosophy—the science want-a-be. Because ethics represents a subjective intrusion on an otherwise objective and numerically quantifiable world, it is not safe or neat, ordered or predictable. When forced to admit that a “spiritual intelligence” might just exist in human beings, Howard Gardner, from a perspective that lies deep within the scientific point of view, said, “I must be candid and concede that I am somewhat alarmed by the prospect of being assimilated to the many fanatics and frauds who invoke spirituality as if it were a given…” Gardner’s reasoning is as faulty as is the so-called world of cause-and-effect. Nature is not that neat. As human beings our knowledge of “self” has yet to reveal the truth about our naturalness as a spiritual substance. If I define “purpose” as either “spiritual” or “metaphysical,” this in no way implies that it is not natural.

Life isn’t neat and orderly; it can be, but it can also be brutish and ragged. The Atomic Bomb, Cold War, and Vietnam changed life, as we knew it before 1945. Even Jacob Bronowski began dabbling in ethics and spirituality and came to the conclusion that science must be governed by a higher moral authority. By the end of the 20th century, the language of ethics was resurrected from the graveyard of nonsense created by the logical positivists and soon afterward philosophers and educators were talking about normative rules, universal principles, and the life of virtue. But schools of philosophy have tried to kill off ethics even as ethics was being resurrected: postmodernism ushered in relativism and the scientific movement and its quantitative tendencies has tried its best to reduce value to quantifiable utterances and ethics to a foundation of subjective premises—emotive responses that are calculated, sorted, and predicted.

The professional field of ethics remains shaky as it desperately searches for a foundation upon which to validate the dignity and worthiness of human life. But as it looks for validation within the “modern” domain of reason, others are saying that “reason” doesn’t have the final word. So I ask, “Can I find within myself a substantial mooring for morals or must I, like my forefathers, retreat from this world to ‘rediscover’ the value of life in the otherwise unknowable reaches of belief and faith, habit and tradition? Is there a foothold on which to stand? Surely, it is not to be found within the domain of reason, for thinkers from Descartes to Kant used reason to push ethics into an almost otherworldly, nonhuman realism. Must ethics continue to drip and dribble, seep and ooze, from academia’s endless wanderings? Must ethics, to gain respectability and significance, continue to be purified through the so-called sciences of sociology and psychology and then relegated to a bland preponderance of statistically quantifiable speech acts? Is the only choice for ethics the confusing and inconsistent world of religion, the beliefs of which ring with an old-world mysticism? Why can’t we recognize that, like the culture of which it is most assuredly apart, ethics is an essential ingredient of the human ferment—always working, enzymic, catalytic, peptic—disturbing, alleviating, and softening the encrusted mind-set that separates life from life, human from human, and nation from nation?”

Ethics reveals purpose as it challenges us to live for others, to serve, and to give.

Now in retirement, I am continuing to rethink what has been said and what has been taught and remembered by me. I challenge my found purpose as I try to understand it. For over a decade I have been peeling the membrane of tradition off my own ethical beliefs. I am trying to re-think and reconsider their origins, clarify their implications, and openly face what has been heretofore oblique and straighten what has in the past been skewed. The thin veneer of life well lived has under its cultural canopy the answers that support, the reasons that explain. I know but I don’t fully understand. My inward quest is not to reinvent, but to rediscover and relocate what has otherwise been lost. This adventure will have its limits, imposed on me by my own ability and courage. Within these limits I hope to find an ethic of possibility, of human love and cooperation and purpose, and lay to rest my own precarious vision.

As I begin, I remember once again the ancients and the moderns, and in my own day those who said that ethics was laid to rest in the graveyard of sociological and psychological babbling of feelings and emotions. Captured and encapsulated by a frame of reference that eliminates those items of culture and belief that are non-quantifiable, the scientific/statistical adherents of post-industrial society have tried to cleanse from our education any mention of feeling and emotion, of rule and prescription, and of principle that may be founded on conceptual understanding and explanation. Experience has been reduced to sensing and ethics to non-sensing. For these and other reasons, we live and are being educated in an ethical vacuum created in part by our quest for observational objectivity, itself an oxymoron. Even the knowledge that is transferred by teacher to student has been set to the Platonic rhythm of statistical quantification. The bell-shaped curve, like the stars above, provides the cadence of teaching and the measuring rod of wisdom. How can we find purpose in a world that is measured and motivated by statistical probability?

We read the post-moderns and listen to their struggle to set themselves free from Descartes’ dictum that all we are is “a thing that thinks,” a human substance limited by the laws of cause and effect. For educators, thinking is defined by a set of graphic organizers [boxes] and we desperately are trying to think outside these self-imposed boxes. Are we not more than what they say we are? Can we set life and its human behavior on a new path? Can we accept our purpose? The post-moderns seem, at times, to be swimming against the tide as they drag, kicking and screaming, many of the assumptions of the moderns with them, separated into neat Kantian packages which were formed in our analytical past and founded on Boolean, quantifiable efficiency. But life isn’t really like this! There is nothing neat and clean about living. Nothing is really predictable, even within a plus or minus statistical set. Life has limits the greatest of which is death. Of course, death may not be a limit; it just might open us to new possibilities—who knows? Can I find a rock in the stream of uncertainty upon which to stand to gain a new perspective? What is worthy about life? What should I give to my children and grandchildren worth taking with them on their life’s journey? Is there a place for respect and responsibility, for equality and fair play? Is “integrity” a viable adjectival predicate that can be used to describe the ethical point of view? Is knowledge of these ethical ideals limited to sensory motifs or is there room for experience of a different kind, for spirituality, and for moral perspective? Can I use intuition, volition, and the human need and capacity for love to discover the roots of the ethical life? Can I begin here? Is this my foothold on purpose, the mooring I so desperately seek?

Cleaning out the Corner Crud

Look down at your children and grandchildren. View their innocence and the love they have for you. They ask only that you love them, treat them well, and discover within their essence the foundation of all that is important in life. This is our ethical ground zero. Step forward; put your foot in it; experience it; let it talk to you. Get your life straight. Clean out the corner crud. Learn that here you will find the meaning of your life. You now know that life can’t be quantified and it’s not subjective or relative in the philosophical sense. But by god it’s real—the most overwhelming reality that we can ever experience. It defies science. Maybe that’s why we ignore its presence. But, the love of a child—when extended to the entire world—is the foundation of our connection with each other. It is the bridge to tomorrow. It reveals purpose. I can’t explain it, only except it and experience it. I do understand that when I hold my granddaughters or play with my two grandsons, that which transpires between us is not imagined, not relative, not quantifiable, and not justifiable—it just is.

That which I thought important yesterday pales in comparison to the importance of the many friends and family that lie next to my heart. As I write these words I am preparing to visit a young teacher in a neighboring city and assist her with her master’s thesis project. What do I tell her that is “really” important in education? I now know that it’s not politics, smaller classes, or the insane testing programs that defines our times that are important. The human connections with students and faculties, parents and friends define the meaning of “school.” We learn more from our intimacy with others than from books and workshops anyway.

A couple of weeks ago a teacher came up to my wife and me in our local mall. He is a high school math teacher of 20 years and I taught him in the 8th grade. He said, “You made learning fun and that is why I wanted to become a teacher.” He also said, “It was the conversations about life and things that mattered that I remember about your classes, things that are important to me today.” As I stood there talking with him, looking at his two young daughters, I thought, “Maybe, just maybe, I did it right.” I don’t know, but I see many of those kids today and many of them say the same thing.

Early in life I began focusing on the important things in life—I observed others, tried to copy their behaviors, learned by experience, and began to define the values that today characterize my behavior. It’s all a journey defined by our human connections. This is why it’s important to clean out the corner crud (all those selfish inclinations and hidden agendas that turn us away from others and cause us to focus solely on self-centered desires), clarify who we are, and move in positive directions. This is not easy; life is not easy. We all make mistakes. Hopefully, our mistakes don’t hurt others, our values remain intact, and we are always moving in directions defined by our wider moral convictions. As I approach my 65th birthday and survey my personal errors in judgment, I understand now that truly loving others is perhaps our greatest gift and our greatest challenge. Love is what makes life real and worthwhile. Love just may be our overall purpose as human beings.

Managing My Inner Intelligence

In my most challenging times, I have tried to manage my life by my inner intelligence. With the pressures of school, family, and work, this has not been an easy task. A new field of academic research has emerged during the past 15 years, which goes by the name of “Emotional Intelligence.” Fundamentally, it’s the combining—in a practical or functional way—of cognitive intelligence and several of the following: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and social skills. Whether or not this research is tinged by the goal of success in the workplace or just success in building and sustaining relationships, it has much promise.

I have found it difficult to manage my own inner intelligence while teaching, leading, or managing programs and the work of other people. Fifteen years ago, my staff got together and bought me a book. They didn’t give it to me personally, just left in on my desk. The book was about children of alcoholics—their drive for success, work habits, and the demands they put on others. Evidently, I was giving off an effervescence that was straining their ability to keep up. It was nothing that I had said, but what I was doing that was impairing their work or work habits. I thought about this for a long time and then in one of our staff meetings—a month or so after the book had been left for me and when they least expected a response—I said to them that all my life I had modeled my work ethic after certain teachers or businessmen that I admired. I found that the most successful were dedicated, did not hesitate to put in long hours, and were self-learners who were easily motivated and loved their work. They were my models and I had to work hard to keep up with them. They did not demand that I keep up, but I knew they expected it from me. I told them that it was a lesson I am still learning.

They just looked at each other like their goal of slowing me down was not accomplished. And it wasn’t! But I told them that they had to choose a few essential things to focus on in their work, things they thought were the most important, educate themselves in these skills or programs, and then prepare them to teach what they had learned to others—this was their first responsibility. My responsibility is to show them the way, to help them help themselves and others, and to provide the financial means for them to accomplish their goals. Life reminds us not to try to be all things to all people—you will always fail!

There was no turning back, I told them. They must commit themselves to their jobs or look elsewhere for employment. I said that as long as I was their supervisor, I would continue to grow and I would continue to help each one of them grow. To stop growing was not an option! The biggest thing was to manage their emotions, adaptability, achievement orientation, and their commitment to serve the teachers in their care. Emotional intelligence is a type of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ emotions, to discriminate among them, and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions.

Some of this sank in, but my staff had been in their jobs for too long—too long without purpose, guidance, and support. I was new to the job and they thought they could manipulate me into letting them continue as if nothing had changed. They didn’t believe me and hated the fact that I was causing them to change their thinking and chart new courses of action. Their lives would never be the same again. Of the five consultants in my department, I knew the job could be done with two or three who were knowledgeable and committed. That year, two were placed back in the classroom where they should have stayed five years before, and one was shifted to another department where her skills would be more useful. I have found that even people with great skill sometime have trouble finding the best place to use them.

I did not gain the ability to manage my inner intelligence over night. My self-confidence, conscientiousness, adaptability, and innovativeness was built over a lifetime (I was fifty years old when the book was placed on my desk) of work—from the golf course, to the grocery store, and from college, seminary, and church, to earning the doctorate and college teaching. It wasn’t automatic and it didn’t come easily. Maybe I learned much of this from my mother, but it takes a lifetime to build a life. I was recently made aware of this when an old friend asked me to assist a student in a nearby city working on her master’s thesis (I mentioned this a few paragraphs above). Although I was unfamiliar with the procedures in this particular college, I was highly qualified to help her with the content of her thesis, which was the adaptation of critical thinking skills to the special education classroom. With a degree in philosophy, a series of books for students and teachers, which adapted critical thinking to the public school social studies curriculum, and two other books in critical thinking, I was probably over-qualified to help her. I found it difficult to go back to the beginning—as if I had no knowledge of critical thinking and curriculum—and to put myself in her shoes. We talked and talked, and talked some more, until finally I saw a light go off in her head. She had the achievement drive, was committed, had initiative, and now I was optimistic that she could find her way. I showed her what to read and advised her to go easy, not to reach beyond what she knew and could defend, and make her project as simple as she possibly could. She has finished her project and reports that the other graduate students in the class have asked for a copy of her paper. Occam’s Razor seldom fails! Clarity and simplicity are always the best teaching tools.

Because I have been a teacher most of my working life, much of my managing my inner intelligence has been service-oriented—anticipating, recognizing, and meeting the needs of students and teachers. This meant developing others—sensing what they need in order to accomplish their tasks. This also meant cultivating opportunities through diverse people, people with varied backgrounds, and creating an environment where diversity can thrive. Has this been my purpose? Has inspiring and guiding others, initiating and managing change, and negotiating and resolving disagreements been the underlying principle of my work? Has building bonds and nurturing relationships been what its all about? I do know this: anyone who works with others, either as a manager or a co-worker, to be successful, must build positive expectations by showing others that social and emotional competence can be improved and that such improvement will lead to valued outcomes. Building and sustaining relationships creates value for oneself and for the organization of which one is a part. Don’t be confused, developing one’s inner intelligence—cognitive and emotional—offers hope for developing individual and organizational value.

Non-Negotiable Values

Discovery, especially self-discovery, is perhaps one of our most important human functions. It is one of the most difficult as well. Through years of working with students at the college level and in the public schools, working with teachers, and being involved with administrators in developing programs within schools and, more widely, for school systems, I found that self-inspection was a constant variable that kept my personal boat floating amid the turmoil that was going on around me. Don’t get me wrong; work was not always unstable and hectic. More often than not it was routine and methodical. Plans were made, goals were set, and schools, students, and central office personal worked together to accomplish them. While in the classroom, there were lesson plans to develop, committee meetings to attend, classes to meet, and bells, buzzers, and regular interruptions—all normal, workaday situations.

But there were personal agendas that often overrode and conflicted with the class work, committee agendas, and the work of a department or group. Personal agendas, the many quests for power and control, and outright displays of jealousy are a part of the human ferment that is always bubbling up, overflowing, and frothing with disdain for the work of others. Because these human variables seem always to be with us, we tend to consider them natural, but in reality, they are human intentionalities that cut against the grain of our most fundamental ethical values and interrupt the creative processes of dedicated and focused individuals. We were warned from earliest times to always watch our backs. We normally learn the hard way that ethics involves rather unnatural human reactions, something that must constantly be work at for the broader purposes of the group, for the community, and for civility to have a foundation from which it can grow.

It’s April 2004, and just this week I heard from Dr. Phil Vincent who is ready to publish his newest book on civility. Phil too had to learn the results of those whose personal agendas resulted in uncivil actions. When he worked with me in the early 1980s and when he earned his doctorate and came back to work for our school system in the nineties, Phil experienced the unethical behaviors of those who were jealous of his success—“keep him in his place” was the watchword of his day with us. “Too much success and he might become a lose cannon.” Phil went on to work for himself as a private consultant and publisher. He’s much happier, but I know the reasons behind much of his work. He too understands and has a romantic notion that he might make a difference somewhere—hell, that’s what keeps us all working at this “ethical” business.

In 2003 I co-authored Leadership Under Construction with Darrell Young and we preach, teach, and promote an ethical vision in that book, much like the one Phil is promoting, and much like the vision in my own “Manifesto of Ethical Leadership.” Maybe, just maybe, one of us will make a difference to someone and they will carry the message forward. The message is simple: there are some non-negotiable values such as love, trust, friendship, and honesty, to name a few. When our lives consistently display these values, we can be sure that we are people of integrity. This is the bottom line in human relationships, community building, and civility development. Coming to understand this is perhaps a voyage of rediscovery and involves constant and creative dialogue. Through with all we must stay in touch we ourselves—that is, our inner selves, the values and beliefs that define our essential humanity.

The Voyage of Rediscovery

Constant, Creative Dialogue

I don’t know where my voyage of rediscovery began; perhaps it has no beginning. I am certain it has no end. This is what keeps us alive. My life is defined by changes in my family and stops and starts in my career. Getting married at the age of 19 and having two sons and now two grandsons and a granddaughter (and now one grandchild on the way) are experiences that have enriched and added meaning and depth to my life—even ethical understanding. The intimate relations we have in family change us more than we can ever imagine. My brother is an electrician who spent four years in the marine corp. He’s a real hard ass, but the death of his only daughter at the age of 30 and having two grandchildren are events that have softened that hardened crust. The fellows who work with him say that his bark is a lot worse than his bite. He tries to cover this newfound softness, but he can’t.

We’re all like this you know, some more than others. One late spring evening in the early seventies, when I was teaching at Campbell University, I was in charge of getting my two young sons their baths and on to bed. I was sitting outside of our apartment with some neighbors, but in listening distance of the bathroom. I must have yelled at them to quit splashing water, get on with their baths, and get ready for bed, but they paid me no attention. I overheard by oldest son say to his brother, “Don’t pay any attention to dad. He always yells like that but never does anything about it.” Was that I eye opener for me. My son knew me better than I knew myself.
Constant, creative dialogue with one’s “self” and with others is the best avenue to learning. I would later write in Talking It Over, A Workbook for Character Education, “The moral dispositions that define character begin in the home and are refined through an interplay of the child with his or her expanding world… Consistency of behavior is of prime importance. A lack of reliability breeds confusion. Behaviors should be in line with our values, beliefs, and purposes.

Conceptual understanding alone doesn’t produce a moral person. We become moral in our activities with others.”

It was the Jewish theologian/philosopher Martin Buber who concluded that all of human life is at its very foundation, dialogue. He observed that human meaning materializes in what actually occurs between others and us. Here is where value is created. Here is where morality is born. In the creation of relationships and in their maintenance, we give birth to ourselves. Through relationship building we build a network of possibilities.

Staying in Touch With the Inner-Self

Perhaps the most important decision that I have ever made was to give up college teaching and move back to Newton, my hometown. This was not an easy decision. I felt like killing myself. All was lost that was important. For two weeks, while teaching my last semester at Campbell University, I was down and out. I had interviewed for several college teaching positions, but having no inside track and too proud to call my professors at the University of Georgia, I stayed to myself, talked a lot with my wife, and made a decision that has led me in directions which, before that time, I could have never imagined.

If you ask me what about the greatest things in my life, I have to tell you they are my wife and children; now my daughters-in-law and grandchildren. Then there are the great teachers I have had—Stewart Newman, Bob Ayers, and Tony Nemitz—and my friends, too numerous to mention here. Nothing even compares to the importance of the people in my life. It took losing my job at Campbell to understand this. When this primary commitment, this basic value, was clear to me, the decision to seek a job in the public schools was easy. I entered the college of education at Campbell at mid-term—with the permission of the departmental head and his staff—and completed 36 undergraduate hours in education to become certified to teach grades 4-9. This spread gave me the greatest opportunity for work. Besides, the requirements for teaching high school would have taken another semester and I didn’t have time for that. A house had to be purchased and bills paid. Move on; don’t ever look back—this was my motto then and it still is.

Basically, I put family first and career last. Once established back in Catawba County I was able to write, teach part time at the college level, and carve out a niche as an educational consultant. Things happen and sometimes you just have to ride them out. Of course, keeping ones head on straight, searching for opportunities, and using a little creative energy always helps.

One thing that I did not count on in the public schools was the jealousy and backstabbing that goes on there. In my naivety, I thought teachers and administrators would welcome my expertise, but this was never to be. I guess if you are moving in an upward direction there is always someone who wants to get there before you, even without the qualifications. I found out that in the public schools qualifications were subjective and could be interpreted. It all depends I use to say; it all depends whose ass you’re willing to kiss that moves you forward or downward in any organization. Now, if they’re in trouble and you can get them out of their trouble, they’ll come after you and move you into a position to help them. Just remember that when the tide goes out and all is calm again, that you’re expendable—and I was on several occasions. Even your friends and colleagues, the ones you’ve helped the most, will turn on you when you are wounded and they sense you’re ready to be killed off. I should have known all of this having experienced it before, but I was so anxious to learn a new job in a new arena, I forgot to look around, to cover my back—I just looked ahead and kept on moving, teaching, administrating, writing books, and consulting. Before I knew it, I was on top of the pile. I didn’t care and didn’t even acknowledge the fact, so it’s no wonder I didn’t see those who wanted my skin. I was so, so street dumb.

Even so, I kept my self-respect and those who five years ago thought of me as an untouchable, now have tried to be my friend once again. As I said, I never look back, so I’m nice to them but not friendly and they get the message. There are too many important things left to do in my life that I just don’t have time for the past and for those who are not people of quality.

Things That Make Life Great

There are many things that bring joy and meaning to life: old friends, students who are quick to say that you made a difference in their lives, my extended family, and new friends. But the greatest of these is my personal family: Pat, who has put up with a philosopher and liberal for 48 years; my two sons Mike and Chris, their wives and children – Nolan, Christian, Anna, and Morgan. Nothing one can do or say provides the satisfaction than one’s personal family.

Now that I am beginning to close down my professional life of writing (the work and teaching were closed out in 2001), Pat and I concentrate most of our attention on our children and grandchildren. Watching them grow and experience the world reminds us of our own sons when they were young. Nothing else needs to be said. Pat and I will complete our journey through this life in the next 15 to 20 years – We hope it lasts that long. In the end, it has been a life well lived. The values we have shared together we have passed on to our children and now see them at work in our grandchildren. Life goes on and we go on with it through our offspring and the lives that they will live. I end this dialogue on my 67th birthday and my 47 wedding anniversary. There never is a good place to end, but these thoughts need reading before my sons reach my age. Hopefully, they find something that is meaningful.

My journey is not over. My role now is to provide guidance and understanding to my sons and grandchildren, to continue to enjoy friends and loved ones, and live as best I can the final years of my life. Since turning 65, health issues have plagued my path. In March 2005 I had something that showed up on a CAT-Scan in my bladder that demanded immediate attention. I did what was required; had the surgery and moved on. It was just a blip on the screen of life; nothing to fret about and nothing to belabor. None of this has changed me or who I am. I have lived a greater life than I ever dreamed I could have lived. From me was expected a lot—from my mother, my siblings, my teachers, and my friends. I only hope I haven’t disappointed them.

JH

Old Friends, Red Dirt & Cherry Pepsi

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Philosophy

The Ethical Problem

Sunday, January 18, 2009

Running Agains the Wind

University of Georgia

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