Nobody does it alone...

"Who can say if I've been changed for the better

But because I knew you
 I have been changed for good"

- Elphaba: Wicked the Musical

“I gotta go.”

“Where do you want to go?” She said.

In his own private world, anxiously moving around the porch, he replied, “I gotta go.”

Different words this time around…different feelings this time around…There was so much to say, yet no place for it to be said.

The beginning, as all stories should start…
Jim was head football coach for the biggest rival school in our town. Fairmont was, at that time, about ten thousand hearty souls in the middle of the soft, bituminous coal fields of West Virginia. While Jim coached ‘…the other guys for the competing team…’ his daughter went to my high school. Coach always seemed friendly, and while his daughter and I were not an item, I was kind of sweet on her.

My father was a Baptist minister. We had come to this place in the late 1950s, to a new church…a new town…a different culture for Canadian expatriates. From the fifth grade through high school and to college, this was my home. It was here friendships were formed; the life and voice changing discomfort of puberty, and the social revolution of the late 1960s. It all happened in this small town nestled in the West Virginia hills.

After high school, I went on to university, but was not successful. The Vietnam War was on, and I was drafted to serve. Like other young foreigners with immigrant status – a ‘green card’ – military service became a reality.

The years passed…
After separating from the military, I returned to Canada, and was living with my mother’s sister. Because I was not an American Citizen, I could not ply my military air traffic control training and experience in the United States. I stayed with my aunt while making application to the Canadian Department of Transport as an air traffic controller (ATC). Passing the tests and physical was not a problem; I was young, healthy and had already controlled air traffic in one of the least known, and busiest airports in the world – Vung Tau Army Airfield…Republic of Vietnam.

After notice of acceptance, there was a month or so before the training program began and I headed to West Virginia to see a few folk. Life had moved on and the ‘Coach’ was now ‘Dr.’…teaching at the local college. On a whim, I stopped by to visit with him for a couple of reasons: 1 – to see how he liked teaching at the college level, and 2 – to see the status of his daughter.

We chatted for only a few minutes, but in that short time – in those few words – the course of my life was about to change in a completely inconceivable way. He asked if I had finished school...the answer a “no.” I wouldn’t need a degree to control air traffic. It was a good profession, and work I really enjoyed.

He suggested, taking a year to finish school. A degree would be a good idea…after all; one might never know when having a diploma might come in handy. He argued that time would pass no matter what I was doing, and that finishing school would be a small thing, with no real downside – his words…“I’m not saying you should return to school, I’m just saying you should take it under consideration.”

Money in the bank of life…
This was a man who understood people. In particular, he understood young men. He understood one guides, one doesn’t mandate. He understood, motivation must come from within. The key? Find the ‘sweet spot’ in the young person’s mind, and let them think it was ‘their idea.’ He understood, that ‘life example’ in addition to edifying ‘words,’ builds currency in the bank of human relationships…he had invested wisely and was a man with plenty of capital in the lives of others.

I’m not sure about the events that occurred over the next three or four days, but by the end of that week, I had contacted the Department of Transport in Canada – requested and received a year’s delay for the start date in ATC school – and was enrolled in Fairmont State College! I never did return to Canada and become an air traffic controller. That brief encounter caused a ‘sea change’ in my life.

During that final year or so in Fairmont, Jim became for me what he had been for hundreds of young men in his career – a quiet but solid place of solace and comfort when the storms of life seemed a little too much. He was a man who appeared to take comfort in watching ‘his boys’ grow into men.

After leaving Fairmont, the journey led to LaCrosse, Wisconsin for graduate work, finally the University of Missouri for completion of formal post-graduate education. The smell of jet fuel and crowded airspace seemed a distant and increasingly faded memory.

The unbroken thread…
Once or twice over the years, I headed back to Fairmont with only one driving goal in mind…to see Jim. I wanted to remind him again, the investment of his time and attention had been meaningful and worthwhile; I wanted to remind him he had changed my life, and was part of every success I had; I wanted to remind him, while people I met over the years never knew him…everyone of them felt a piece of him in my words and spirit; I wanted to remind him I loved him and appreciated the immeasurable influence he had had on my life.

He would always seem a bit surprised at the intensity and enthusiasm with which I would tell him of my adventures, always finishing with gratitude for his influence…he almost seemed embarrassed by my words. You see, he was simply doing the job for which God had called him. He was following the leading that had been put in his heart. He wasn’t thinking about what any of it might mean…he was just doing his job. His quiet, but steady enthusiasm for life was so palpable; you wanted to be a part of it.

With an irregular regularity, I would write, catching him up on the events of my life – a note coming back with a ‘congratulations’ and brief thanks. A couple of years ago I wrote and nothing came. A month or so later I received a letter from his wife. It sat on my desk for a week – I was afraid to open it. I didn’t want to face the news that his journey was over.

Finally, when I could avoid it no longer, I steeled myself and opened the letter. Jim was not dead, it was worse…he had Alzheimer’s disease. I was overwhelmed.

A journey home…
I knew I was going to be in Fairmont for a reunion the next year and asked his wife whether I might come by and see him. She said, “sure,” and on a warm summer’s day, in those West Virginia hills, I spent some time with this gentle man who had changed everything about my life.

I wanted to, yet once again, tell him how much he had and still meant; I wanted to say, yet once again, how grateful I was that he had given me the option to ‘think’ and ‘do’ something better with my life. I wanted him to tell me that he loved me too, and that he had always known my life had purpose.

I did say some of those things…but there is hollowness when there are no receptors on the other end..an emptiness when words are spoken out of season, when “…the salt has lost its savor.”

I longed to hear him say, “I’m not saying you should , I’m just saying you should take it under consideration.” Instead, he puttered anxiously around the porch of his home repeating: “I gotta go….I gotta go”

I am reminded how important it is to let people you care about know that you do. I have learned to do it at the moment the thought occurs...not waiting until some time in the future. I have learned how important it is...Not just for their sake, but for ours…

I’m not saying you should tell people who have touched your life, that you care about and love them; I’m just saying you should “…take it under consideration…”

- ted