My mother-in-law lost her sight to macular degeneration over a  decade ago and we often struggle to find appropriate gifts for holidays or birthdays. She has a collection of talking watches which I get to reset when daylight savings time rolls around as well as other tools to help her cope with the loss of her sight.

This year a friend, Ruthie, wanted to find her an appropriate gift but like so many people in this economy she had limited funds. Ruthie had lived with Patti for several years after my father-in-law passed away and helped her through the transition period. She’s become like family even though she had to move back east for work and family.

Fortunately, Hallmark sells recordable books that allow you to provide your own narration. Last year at a post-holiday sale Ruthie picked up a copy of The Very First Christmas, and set it aside. When the Christmas season came around she enlisted seven year old Rachel, the youngest reader among her nieces and nephews, to help.

Rachel has never met Patti but fully dove into the spirit of the project. She practiced for her debut as an audio book narrator, and then recorded the eighteen page children’s book the sweet and innocent voice of a seven year old.

When Ruthie asked Rachel to write a quick note to go with the book she filled up a page, signed it “Love, Rachel,” and then created a drawing to go with it. When Ruthie reminded her that Patti wouldn’t be able to see the drawing, Rachel used cotton and a felt penguin to turned it into a three dimensional card to go with the audio book.

When Patti opened the package on Christmas morning and listened to it, she was touched by the unexpected and totally unique gift from a child that she’d never met. Although we had to read the letter from Rachel that came with it to her, she was able to feel the three dimensional picture that came with it. Trust me, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

The gift from Ruthie and Rachel reminded me that flashy and expensive isn’t the most important element in gift giving—it’s personal and unexpected that touches the heart.

Some of our favorite resources for the blind and visually impaired:

We use Independent Living Aids for many gift giving occasions—since we’re rarely as creative as Ruthie and her trusted associate, Rachel.

Washington State where we live also has great, free talking books lending library for the blind. Your state might too.

Tape Ministries Northwest provides faith based and inspirational materials.

To this list of bad predictors, I’d like to add an overprotective father of a New York teenage girl.

A boy grew up in Brooklyn, fifteen minutes from Coney Island in a working poor neighborhood. His father, who had contracted diseases during his Army service, never rose above a series of blue collar jobs. The high school where the boy played quarterback was so poor that they didn’t even have their own field. Every game was an away game. Imagine your high school homecoming game being played on enemy turf.

One day this young man asked out a girl from a different part of New York. As any father of a teenage girl will tell you, NO boy is good enough for his daughter. But as the father questioned this teenage boy it became apparent to him that this rule of thumb was exceptionally true.

As related by the boy the conversation went like this:

“Where do you live?”

The boy answered, “We live in Brooklyn.”

Not satisfied, the father pressed the interrogation. “Where?”

“Canarsie.”

From the expression of the father of his prospective date the boy could see the opportunity slip away. Again the question, “Where?”

The boy confessed. “Bayview Projects.”

“Oh.”

Of course, no self-respecting father was going to let his little angel date some kid from public housing. “Move along son,” may not have been the words but it was the reaction.

If that dad had been a better predictor and judge of potential he may have reacted differently. Despite his humble background, that kid from Bayview Projects in working poor Canarsie managed to graduate from college through a combination of an athletic scholarship, loans, and part time jobs.

He had the vision to see the potential in a small chain of stores that sold quality coffee beans and associated equipment. He imagined how the chain could add Italian style coffee drinks and grow into a respected company that is an icon of not just American, but world culture.

Starbucks in the port city for Ephesus, Turkey

But back in the late ‘60’s in working poor Canarsie, Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks coffee, just didn’t make the grade for the father of one high school girl.

Source: Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time, by Howard Schulz and Dori Jones Yang.

For many years Dennis and Laurie have had a family pet pen their annual Christmas letter. But Rascal passed away at the ripe old age of 107 last February and they’ve asked me, Cuddles, the cat next door, to step in.

Dennis calls me Felix the Fearless because I roam the neighborhood with impunity as if it’s mine (it is) and he’s had to chase me out of the garage more than once. Hey, with all the clutter in there I’m sure there’s at least one mouse in residence. He’s just lucky I don’t have opposable thumbs and a bottle opener for those brews on the shelf.

I have had to keep a closer eye on these two because Rascal is no longer on duty. Punching out a letter (with the promised fee of treats) is part of the duty of the neighborhood sentry.

Laurie is closing in on her 17th anniversary at Starbucks headquarters. She finished up some big project to put new computer systems in stores all over the world this year. No major goofing off this this year, unlike last when she took a six month sabbatical. Shortly after coming back from her six months off someone asked her, “Don’t you feel guilty about being gone when we were working so hard on the project?” She said, “It was the best six months of my life.” I like that attitude.

She started off the year with a “milestone” birthday. In an effort to score sorely needed husband points Dennis arranged to take her and some of the family up to Canlis, one of the nicest restaurants in Seattle, in a limo. Beats the ride in the Saturn she was expecting. Plus her aunt and uncle met them up there. I’m sure he scored a few points but expect he still runs a deficit.

Laurie’s dad worked at Canlis as a salad boy back in the late 5o’s because he wanted to open his own restaurant and needed good recipes. He did open his own place and I’m sure that what he did would nowadays would be classified as corporate espionage. She says that it’s hard to believe that her dad has been gone ten years. She’s blessed that Patti, her stepmother, is still going strong and even walks two hours on the treadmill each day. Time better spent napping, if you ask my opinion.

Dennis has been doing some writing and speaking this year. He was the emcee for a local arts program where got to tell stories about the city of Auburn. He also taught at a few writers conferences and had an article, Give Just a Little Respect, Please, published in the local newspaper. He spent most of the year rewriting his novel based on suggestions from his agent and a publisher. While he’s waiting, hoping, and praying to get it published I think he should be planting a catnip garden. He also has some kind of day job to support his writing habit.

They skipped big vacations this year and did local trips visiting friends, taking out their new tandem kayak (water—yuck!), hiking, biking, etc. They did go down to Santa Barbara in May where they met up with Lee and Michelle, friends from Air Force days. They also spent time in eastern Washington with Laurie’s college roommate and current and former neighbors. I understand that fish were caught at a lake cabin but not one came my way.

They spent time this year helping to raise money for a young man in their church who will need a double-lung heart transplant. The goal was $75,000 in one year. With four months to go the group was far short. Thanks to some persistent and creative people they topped the goal by about $4,000. They said it was a great experience to help out and see the local community come behind the kid and his family. That’s him in the middle of the picture to the right at a fundraising concert.

It’s back to the couch for me and then maybe a quick neighborhood patrol. Hope you have a great Christmas and remember what really matters this season: Christ, cats, and catnip (in that order). In Laurie and Dennis’ opinion you need to say faith, family, and friends. You be the judge.

Cuddles

As a young Air Force ROTC cadet I read Mig-Pilot, the autobiography of Victor Belenko, a Soviet Air Force Officer who defected to Japan in 1976 with his Mig-25. One of the fascinating aspects of Belenko’s book was how messed up the Soviet Union, and their centrally planned Socialist based system, really was. Without the Capitalist incentive a work ethic was lacking and the big, bad Soviet Union was rotting from the inside.

I remember thinking at the time that the country described in Mig- Pilot couldn’t last and would eventually implode. Less than a decade later my unspoken prophecy came true. I was blessed to stand on the Berlin Wall while the Soviet Union and its Eastern Bloc minions collapsed.

The early struggles of the Pilgrims and how local Indians helped them survive are a part of American folklore. What is not so well known is one of the key elements of how they turned the corner: they stumbled upon—capitalism.

In his outstanding book, Mayflower, Nathaniel Philbrick writes:

The fall of 1623 marked the end of Plymouth’s debilitating food shortages. For the last two planting seasons, the Pilgrims had grown crops communally—the approach first used at Jamestown and other English settlements. Bus as the disastrous harvest of the previous fall had shown, something needed to be done to increase the annual yield.

In April, Bradford had decided that each household should be assigned its own plot to cultivate, with the understanding that each family kept whatever it grew. The change in attitude was stunning. Families were now willing to work much harder than they had ever worked before. In previous years, the men had tended the fields while the women tended the children at home. “The women now went willingly into the field,” Bradford wrote, “and took their little ones with them to set corn.” The Pilgrims had stumbled on the power of capitalism. Although the fortunes of the colony still teetered precariously in the years ahead, the inhabitants never again starved.

Capitalism certainly has its shortcomings but at least it has a work ethic and the promise of personal success as an incentive. Thank God the Pilgrims stumbled upon the “Protestant Work Ethic” and didn’t expire. Otherwise this great nation, and the annual tradition of the turkey coma, might never have come to be.

The best history of the Pilgrims and their struggles that I’ve ever read is Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War, by Nathaniel Philbrick. The book covers the good , the bad, and the ugly side of our founding fathers in New England.

Mig-Pilot: The Final Escape of Lieutenant Belenko is an inside look about how messed up Soviet Life was from the viewpoint of a member of the Soviet Elite

Related Posts

Keeping the People In

Earlier this month I had the pleasure of speaking at a local conference on cost benefit analysis for businesses trying to decide on which projects to start—and which to dump. It happened to be a notable anniversary in the history of an institution that defied common business sense from the beginning.

Over a century ago a group of men in a frontier town on the edge of America had the audacity to start a university in a town that lacked even a high school. On a hill above the settlement, an elegant building with four Ionic columns carved out of cedar and capped by a bell tower, looked down upon herds of cattle driven along dirt streets. Pictures of the home of this pretentious foray into higher education look like someone placed a swan on a small mound overlooking a pen of turkeys.

The first class of about 30 students lacked a high school education so the first president, who also served as a teacher and part of the construction crew, spent most of the time teaching basics such as multiplication tables.

The pioneers in that town of about 250 white settlers ignored common sense and instead relied on a spirit of “go-aheaditiveness” to plant a flag of higher education in a town more noted for distilleries, gambling, saloons, and at least one house of ill-repute. It took fifteen years before the institution issued its first university level diploma.

Consultants of the day would no doubt have counseled against starting an university under those conditions. Fortunately for the region, they weren’t around to provide sound business advice.

The original territorial university building is long gone. The bell resides in another building across town and the four, white, Ionic columns stand tall in a grassy theater. 150 years after its founding the institution is ranked in some surveys as being among the top 25 in the world. It is a highly rated research university with a population of over 42,000 undergraduate and graduate students. Each year the school turns out doctors, engineers, artists, and architects. The ROTC programs turn out freshly minted Lieutenants and Ensigns including, once upon a time, yours truly.

Fortunately, some people ignore the odds and rely instead on go-aheaditiveness. Without those pioneers we wouldn’t be celebrating a notable milestone.

Happy Birthday, University of Washington. You don’t look a day over 100.

Related Posts:

A Bit of Attitude

A Little Faith

Thanks to this excellent article in the Seattle Times for much of the information for this post.

In first grade a nun motivated me to play baseball at a level that put me in the major leagues. Some of my classmates barely made it to first base while I was heading toward home for the third time.

Well, although my first grade teacher really was a nun it wasn’t really baseball–it was a game of “Reading Baseball.”

Sister John Daniel thought she’d inspire her little first graders at Holy Family School in Auburn, Washington, to excel in a true skill in the game of life: reading. She created a little paper baseball for each of us and put up a diamond on a bulletin board in the classroom. For each ten books we read to an adult we advanced one base. Now I have to admit, on the real playground I was a klutz–often the last kid picked for teams. I can’t recall for sure but wouldn’t be surprised if girls were selected before me. But reading–this was a game where I could excel!

My mother started to read to me and my two brothers from a very early age. She encouraged this game of reading baseball and pretty soon I was advancing around the bases. Our home bookshelves were soon devoured and regular visits to the library were required to keep up my blistering pace. I read to my mother, grandmother, and expected that if the mailman had lingered too long on the front porch he would have been forced to listen to me read Harry the Dirty Dog or if he was lucky, Aesop’s Fables

In no time at all I was across home plate and was making a second circuit of the bases. By the time I crossed home plate I was so far ahead that Sister John Daniel let me pick the color of the baseballs for the third circuit; pretty heady responsibility for a first grader. This game of baseball had certainly fueled my passion for reading at an impressionable age. It even changed my early career aspirations from garbage man to writer.

I know that much of my personal success is based on my interest in reading and life long learning. If you’re interested in helping kids succeed in school check out Treehouse, a group dedicated to helping “…give foster children a real childhood as well as hope for the future.” Not everyone has a nun to inspire them to read through a game of “baseball.” But everyone deserves a shot at a good education.

How about you? What teachers have inspired you to be the person you are today?

In 2009 after an 0 and 12 and excruciatingly-painful-to-watch-from-our-seats-in-the-stands-season, Washington hired Steve Sarkisian, the 34 year old Offensive Coordinator from USC to be our new head coach. “The Sark” boldly proclaimed that the Dawgs, who in more recent years had the ferocity of battling miniature poodles, would be in a bowl relatively quickly. The first year The Sark missed that goal by one game but in year two he took them to the 2010 Holiday Bowl where we scored an upset victory against Nebraska, a team that had trounced us earlier in the season.

A related story involves the 1996 BYU football team who went to the Cotton Bowl with a record of twelve wins and one loss. They faced a Kansas State team with a stingy defense. One particular KSU player spent the week up to the game trash talking about how they would handle the BYU offense.

BYU was behind most of the game but a pair of fourth quarter touchdown passes put them ahead. A time out was called with only a few minutes left in the Cotton Bowl–a game that BYU had now wrapped up. The BYU quarterback walked over toward the KSU sideline and called out the big talking KSU defender — who hadn’t backed up his attitude with results. No one on the KSU sidelines had the courage to come out and confront him.

So what does a BYU quarterback with attitude have to do with the Washington Huskies? It’s not the fact that BYU’s only loss that year was to the Huskies. It’s that the BYU Quarterback who backed up his attitude with results was–Steve Sarkisian–now the coach of the Washington Huskies.

And that’s why we are lucky Dawgs.

Related Story: Lorenzo Romar: Man of Faith

Question: Do you have a story about how a bit of attitude helped you succeed?

Thanks to a December 2008 letter to the Seattle Times from Provo resident, Glen Lassen, for bringing this story to my attention. 

My ship was on the reef, snapped in two like a dry stick; I was face down in the boxing ring and the referee was about to count “Ten.” In short, my speech was bombing – big time.

How could I, an experienced Toastmaster, flop so miserably? I had researched my topic – building business relationships – made sure it was relevant to the audience and practiced my delivery. But halfway through my speech to the local high school group, it was clear that I was not capturing their interest. It didn’t help that a junior heckler was competing with me for the audience’s attention.

To gather material for my presentation, I talked with executives at the aviation-technology company where I worked as a program manager. They offered suggestions from their experiences in the business world. Their ideas were terrific, and I wove them into relevant, humorous and interesting points – or so I thought. When the time came to deliver the 40-minute speech at the regional conference for the Future Business Leaders of America, it didn’t take long to see that the only thing between my teenage audience and lunch was me, and they’d just as soon go straight to lunch. My question-and-answer sessions are usually lively, and I had reserved 10 minutes at the end of this particular speech for Q&A. I could have reserved 10 seconds and still had time to spare.

Getting a Second Chance Usually when a performance bombs, the speaker doesn’t have a chance to try again anytime soon. They get to stew for weeks or even months about what they could have done better. However, I had a unique opportunity: I was scheduled to deliver the same speech to another group at the conference after lunch. This gave me an hour to revamp it so that the encore performance wasn’t a repeat disaster. Fortunately, I remembered something important: When it comes to capturing the attention of an audience, there is strength in a story .

Mention “The Tortoise and the Hare,” “The Trojan Horse” or “The Good Samaritan,” and people from cultures all around the world can repeat these millennia-old stories and the lessons they teach us. Any associated statistics, facts or papyrus flip charts associated with these tales have long been forgotten.

To recover from my pre-lunch speech flop, I decided to draw on two stories related to business relationships. I recalled a situation when I was in high school and had attended a national leadership course. One of the speakers was Paul Garber, who founded the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. The next year I was in that city to visit the museum with a classmate from the leadership course. On a whim we called Mr. Garber to tell him how much we enjoyed his talk. He invited us to lunch in the Smithsonian staff dining room, where he told us stories of the early days of flight, including not-so-well-known anecdotes about the Wright Brothers.

I also drew on a story from a book I had recently read, You Call the Shots by Cameron Johnson. As an 8-year-old, Johnson had been a big fan of the movie Home Alone 2, much of which was filmed at New York’s Plaza Hotel, owned by Donald Trump. Johnson and his parents planned a stay at the Plaza, and he wrote a letter to Trump asking if he could see the hotel suite used in the movie. When he arrived at the hotel, he found that Trump had received his letter and arranged for him and his parents to stay in that very suite. Trump set him up with VIP treatment during his stay in New York City simply because he wrote a letter making a simple request.

When I delivered my post-lunch version of what was basically the same speech, I used both the Garber and Trump stories to emphasize how taking risks in business relationships can pay off. Unlike my earlier rendition, this talk inspired a lively Q&A session, captured the attention of the audience and even generated a few follow-up fan notes.

When you’re developing your speech, remember the strength of stories and follow these tips:

1 Collect stories.  Keep notes about experiences of yourself or others that contain important lessons. Sometimes I’ll use these anecdotes either as the center of a speech or an article, or to supplement the subject. A small pocket-size notebook, or the notes function on a smartphone, make it easy to save ideas.

2 Be relevant.  When you use a story, be certain that it applies to the subject at hand. Don’t be tempted to talk about something that doesn’t relate to the lesson. You may amuse your audience for the moment, but you’ll leave them scratching their heads as they struggle to make the connection.

3 Borrow from others.  Don’t be afraid to use the experiences of others. I often use a story told by Carl Pritchard about how the late Fred Rogers, host of the children’s show Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, graciously taught him how to learn about client needs. When I published a blog article on the subject, “Mister Rogers and Project Management,” it was picked up by an international blog and widely repeated. I was sure to give credit for the story to Carl Pritchard, who sent me a nice note on the posting.

Facts, statistics and other supporting material have their place in the written and spoken word. But wrapping them around a relevant story can help engage your audience and give your message staying power. Next time you’re called on to deliver a speech, remember the lesson I learned the hard way: There is strength in a story.

Dennis Brooke, ATMG, is a member of Auburn Morning Toastmasters Club in Auburn, Washington. Read more of his work and contact him at www.dennisbrooke.com

Auburn Morning Toastmasters club meets at the Rainbow Cafe, 112 E Main St; Auburn, WA, Thursday mornings from 6:35am to 7:30am

The Baths at Virgin Gorda

Pirates remind me of a story, of course. On a vacation in the beautiful Virgin Islands years ago we were hanging out in a bar in St. John with some fellow travelers. The place was crowded and a man with a peg leg, hook for his hand, and an eye patch came in. At first I thought it was some kind of costume but he sat down at a small table right next to us and it looked like it was all for real.

I struck up a conversation with him and found out he ran a charter fishing boat. Finally I asked, “Looks like you’ve had a rough time.”

“Yes,” he said and pointed at his leg. “I lost this when drug runners tried to steal my boat. They blasted me with a shotgun. Took me hours to get to a port and the doctors couldn’t save it.”

“How about the hand?”

“I was trailing my hand in the water and a shark came up and took it clean off. Would have bled to death if my first mate hadn’t applied a tourniquet. The hook is pretty handy for working on a boat and snagging fish. But sometimes I use a fake hand instead of the hook.”

The SV Legacy

“Tough break,” I said. “And how about the eye patch?”

“A seagull pooped in my eye.”

“What? A seagull pooped in your eye?”

“Yes, you see it was my first day with the hook.”

Almost true stories of life, remember.

Years ago a rocket was being prepared for an important launch. But one of the engineers at the company that made this rocket was concerned that critical parts might fail in cold weather. He brought up the issue to managers but his warning was dismissed because he had no hard data to back up his concern.

The government had delayed launch of this particular rocket several times and was being embarrassed in the press. It was under pressure to have a successful launch. Unfortunately on the next scheduled launch date the temperature was below freezing. In a pre-launch conference call, when it came time to object, the engineer who had voiced the concern remained silent. The launch went ahead as scheduled. Unfortunately the engineer was correct and a critical seal failed 73 seconds into flight.

That rocket was one of the boosters attached to the Space Shuttle Challenger. That failure on a cold January day in 1986, killed the crew of seven, including Christa McAuliffe who had been scheduled to be the first teacher in space, and the Shuttle Commander, Francis R. “Dick” Scobee. Dick Scobee was a native of my hometown, Auburn Washington. He graduated from Auburn High School with my mother in 1957. A local guy who made good and died a hero.

Four years after that disaster I was the Airfield Manager at Sembach Air Base, a small American Air Force Base in the heart of Germany. An F-16 fighter squadron at nearby Ramstein Air Base was scheduled for night flying. However, the approach lighting system, or ALS, at Ramstein was not working correctly. The ALS consists of a series of light bars that flash in succession, leading pilots into the runway. Normally the last light bar is just short of the runway. In this case the last half of the ALS wasn’t working. That  meant that when the pilots reached the last working light bar they still had to clear a number of unlit light bars in the dark before reaching the end of the runway. Over the warnings of the Ramstein Airfield Manager, night flights were ordered despite the hazard.

The first pilot cleared the last light bar—barely—and landed safely. But his wing man, a young Lieutenant, just clipped the last bar—and crashed on the end of the runway. Another victim of warnings ignored.

But unlike the crew of the Challenger, this pilot walked away from his crash landing. Walked away to fly another day.

An interesting thing about the pilot of that F-16; the young Air Force Lieutenant who survived the crash at Ramstein Air Base. His name was Scobee—Richard W. Scobee—the son of the Challenger commander.

Related Post: 2010: The Vision and Reality

Lieutenant Scobee is now Brigadier General Scobee, Deputy Director of Operations at NORAD.