What is our contribution?

Caldwell County Courthouse, Princeton, Ky

I suppose every man and woman at some point in their lives goes through the process of trying to understand, or determine, if they have actually contributed anything to their fellow man through living their lives and working their work.

Mitch Albom, who is one of my favorite authors said that “The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.”

Albom wrote such books as Tuesdays with Morrie, The Five People You Meet in Heaven,Have a Little Faith , and For One More Day.He has sold more than 35 million books!

I confess I have read only two of his books, the first two listed. His book on Tuesdays with his friend Morrie inspired me to spend my Thursdays with Bert, my dear friend who succumbed to cancer several years ago.

I learned a great deal about friendship, death and dying with dignity through that experience. One day when my grief finally subsides I may blog about that experience. Sadly, it is still very close to the surface for me.

However, this brings me back to my own self-assessment lately of what have I contributed, if anything to my fellow man’s experience that might make a difference?

All my life I have stopped periodically and asked myself that question, and each time I leave the thought wondering what if I had done something different would it have been a contribution instead of a liability?

Early in my life, when I was just 13 years old I began my working experience. My very first paying job at the rate of 50-cents an hour was sweeping floors and shoveling coal into a furnace at the old Ben Franklin dime store on Main Street in Princeton. I still have in my memorabilia my work authorization that was supposed to be signed by a parent. I forged my Father’s signature. He had left home and it left me and my Mother to handle things.

I didn’t want my Mother having to “give me an allowance” although I did earn it at home by doing chores such as sweeping the carport and pulling weeds in the garden and later by mowing the four lots that surrounded our homestead with a push mower. However, I wanted a “real job” and so Mr. Joe Wilcox gave me my first job. I swept floors, carried stock, washed windows and shoveled coal each afternoon after school for 2 hours. I was always embarrassed by that when my classmates would come by and see me doing such work as they headed home, walked with their friends and laughed or were headed to a ballgame. However, I believe Mr. Joe would have said I did my job quite well despite my feelings.

When I went to work a year later, at age 14 for Mr. Gid Pool at the old Caldwell County Times building next door to J.C. Penny also on Main Street, I swept floors, drew out ads, ran errands and eventually wrote sports copy all about the Little League games at Ratliff Park just down the highway from our homestead. I sought to learn everything I could about the newspaper business and convinced Mr. Bartlett to teach my how to use a linotype machine, Mr. Jargo how to setup a page, Mr. Soap even one time when no one was around let me stand on the platform where he fed the huge sheets of paper into the press, although I never got to try that and he was probably thankful he didn’t let me.

Mr. Pool taught me how to use an old Speed Graflex camera and how to develop film and print pictures using an old enlarger in his basement. I became a photo addict and always sought to shoot all the sports at the high school, car wrecks and fires, weddings and engagement photos and even did some morgue and funeral photography.

Mr. Wilcox and Mr. Pool took a chance on me. I hope I made them proud; however, even now I wonder what contribution did I really make?

Mr. Pool was instrumental in getting me a job as an assistant to the Sports Information Director at Murray State University where I did the play-by-play and some photography and ran errands and setup the press box each home game. I attended every football, basketball game and many, many other sporting events in the three years it took me to complete my BS. Joe Tom Erwin was my boss and mentor and one hell of a racquetball partner. He taught me more about writing and editing than any other instructor short of Dr. L. J. Hortin and Mr. Lou Edmonson and yet still I wonder what contributions, if any, did I make in those days?

Mr. Harl Barnett took a chance on me when I asked for a job at the Benton Tribune-Courier, at that time a weekly newspaper in Benton, Ky. He and Jeanna Houser taught me practical applications of my writing and editing skills, and again I engaged in lots of photography and would go on to edit the Leisure Scene, which was the first Lakeland tourism publication. For a short while, we even published Kentucky Outdoors a monthly outdoor magazine. Mr. Barnett was instrumental in helping me form my political orientation and inspired me to always question government and “officials” to determine the real story behind the words.

Mr. Robert Howes and Dawn Ford took a chance on me in the 1970s when they employed me at Land Between The Lakes as a Reports Editor, a government term for an assistant public information officer. Of all the jobs I ever held, I would have to rank the first 5-years of that experience at the top of my list when I pulled down a whopping salary in 1973 of $11,040 a year. I got to write, photograph, work with the media and with a cadre of dedicated team members for that period of time and each of them contributed much to my understanding of government and the challenges of working inside a bureaucracy.

When Dawn left in the mid-70s and I was promoted to her position, I took on the task of trying to heal the hard feelings of the many residents that had been forcibly removed from their homes to establish this national recreation area that the government touted would have 5 million people within the first 10-years of being open.

I spent many long days and nights attending meetings that many inside government felt and thought was a “waste of my time” trying to demonstrate that government “is for the people” and, that if we all worked together in the tourism industry we could make a bigger difference than fighting one another. Such an atmosphere was hard to build and even harder to maintain. When management changed and Mr. Howes left, the “heart” of the project changed and I found myself with few supporters of the idea of unity. I finally resigned when faced with ethical situations that I could not and would not tolerate – after all LBL was never intended to be one man’s kingdom for hunting turkeys.

I had tried to bring community relations and public participation into the management of LBL only to see it wither and die a painful death when LBL was relinquished to the US Forest Service, who carried on the same exclusion policies of most government agencies. Transparency and openness is not a principle of any government agency at any level.

Again, I had to stop and ask what contributions, if any had I made.

I continued on with my career and eventually left government service and the corporate world for my own business. These past 21 years have flown by and each day I stop and ask myself but what am I contributing?

Perhaps, it is the nature of Man to ask himself that question periodically for truly if we don’t have a purpose and make a contribution of what value are we?