• Media,  Spirituality

    Another Leap of Faith

    January 1, 1997

    If you’ve bought an electronic appliance lately, you know you can’t leave the store without the salesperson pitching you on an opportunity to buy replacement insurance, a service contract, or an extended warranty.

    Wouldn’t it be nice if you could buy these types of guarantees for other parts of your life, say when you start a new job, change a career, or take the risk of telling someone you care about that you love them first? There are no guarantees on any of these endeavors and many of these things can’t be undone, yet people take these risks every day.

    In the past few years, I’ve learned a lot about taking risks. Two and a half years ago, I walked into my boss’ office and said I was going to quit my good-paying job to start a neighborhood newspaper called Atlanta 30306. I had no staff, no money and no advertisers. I just had a good feeling. And yet, it was only after I quit that local business people took their own individual leaps of faith and wrote checks to someone they didn’t know to buy advertising in a newspaper they had never seen.

    A year ago, a friend asked me to lunch. He was looking around for a job opportunity. Near the end of the meal, we talked about starting a newspaper in his neighborhood, 30305. I told him I wasn’t sure I was ready to take another leap, but maybe my timetable was not the governing one. I told him I’d put the question to God and if I started getting green lights, we’d do it. If we got red lights, we’d stop. We got nothing but green lights.

    There are two emotions involved in these leaps of faith: fear and courage. Anyone who makes any kind of leap is going to be afraid ? of failure, rejection, the unknown. A lot of people remain in current situations because they’re waiting for the fear to go away. It doesn’t. Courage is necessary to make the jump anyway.

    A paradox about making a leap of faith is that at the same time we’re trying to take control of some aspect of our lives, we’re also admitting that we aren’t totally in control. That’s when we have to rely on faith.

    People call me sometimes with their own ideas for starting a business. They’re looking for encouragement. They want to know the secret formula for ensuring their idea will work. I’m no expert, but I do know there is no secret formula. It’s scary out there. It helps to ask yourself, what’s the worse case scenario if I fail? Sometimes the worst is that you’ll have to start over. But even then, you’ll learn lessons. Meet people. Gain experience.

    A few weeks ago, the Atlanta Downtown Partnership approached us about starting a newspaper for folks that work downtown and for the pioneers that are making their own leaps of faith by moving into the warehouses being converted into loft residences. I’m scared beyond belief. We need to hire new people, buy new computers, and ask for advertising from people I don’t yet know. It’s possible we may fail, but something in my gut says, “I don’t think so.”

    Wait, I think there’s a green light up ahead. Excuse me, I need to go take a flying leap. And say a prayer.

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  • Atlanta,  Media

    A Speech to Remember

    September 1, 1996

    Ten years ago, when I arrived as the new promotion manager at The Charlotte Observer, one of my first assignments was to prepare a proper celebration of the newspaper’s 100th anniversary. I cultivated an idea for a series of speakers and performers who would discuss how their upbringing in the Carolinas had influenced them in life.

    The newspaper served both North and South Carolina and had a strong reputation as a thoughtful, reflective paper. So I jumped on the telephone and invited an ambitious list of natives, including newsman Charles Kuralt, musician Doc Watson, then-cabinet member Elizabeth Dole, Rev. Billy Graham and – the invitee who proved most elusive – Rev. Jesse Jackson.

    The series proved highly successful, but as the year proceeded, I had received no confirmation from Jesse Jackson. He had agreed to speak, but his office would not settle on a specific date. This became a daily challenge for me. I wrote letters. I sent copies of our promotion ads. I called his office and got on a first-name basis with one of his secretaries. But after months of calling and I still had nothing set.

    Lou_and_billie

    Then I remembered an old episode of the great newspaper TV show, Lou Grant, about Lou Grant, the city editor of a Minneapolis newspaper. In this episode, Billie, one of Lou’s reporters, couldn’t find the address of someone they were writing about. Lou picked up the phone and called the circulation department of his paper and charmed a manager into looking up the subscriber’s address. So I pikced up the phone and called Jesse Jackson’s hometown Greenville, S.C., newspaper and asked an old co-worker for the unlisted home phone number of one of their subscribers, Jesse’s mother.

    I then called Mrs. Jackson and told her of the series and how excited we were to have her son Jesse as a part of it and, since he would be speaking of his childhood, how we would love to have her as our guest for dinner and the speech. She was excited and said she would come.

    “What night is it?” she asked.

    “Well,” I said. “I’ve got this problem …”

    Two days later, Jesse’s secretary called and confirmed a date: September 16, 1986. I met Jesse at the airport that night. He was taller than I’d expected. He stopped for a moment in the concourse and took a deep breath.

    “This assignment you have given has caused me to do a lot of soul-searching. It has caused me a lot of painful moments as I reflected upon things I had buried long ago.”

    I thanked him for his effort, but I was totally unprepared for what was to come. At dinner at our editor Rich Oppel’s house, he referred to it again and I noticed tears in his eyes. He was visibly shaken by the task.

    Jesse_jackson_2

    Five minutes into his speech, I had a horrible realization: I was witnessing the greatest speech I would ever hear and I had made no arrangements to record it. Jesse spoke for nearly two hours. The memories were unbelievably passionate and moving. I was transfixed. I had always been an admirer of his oratory, but he had tapped into a totally different energy source that night.

    Soon, I realized his plane was scheduled to leave the airport in 15 minutes and he was nowhere near a conclusion. We called the airport and they held the plane. His assistant dragged him off the stage as the crowd stood and chanted wildly for more.

    The next day I sent a postcard to everyone who had ordered tickets by direct mail asking if they had recorded the event. I received five tapes in the mail. With great effort, we transcribed it and sent copies to those who attended. Two years later, I watched with wonder as he gave what most people said was his greatest speech ever at the Democratic Convention in Atlanta. Few there realized that most of the most passionate elements of that speech were forged from that hot September night in Charlotte – from a speech those of us who were there shall never forget.

    Photos: Above, a scene from Lou Grant, with the editor, counseling his reporter, Billie. Below, Jesse Jackson giving his speech at the 1988 Democratic Convention in Atlanta. It made the list of American Rhetoric’s Top 100 Speeches.

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  • Life Stories,  Media

    Jack Daniels the Mailman

    June 1, 1996

    Scatter 43,000 newspapers around a city and you’re bound to meet new – and old – friends.

    A few weeks ago, my old postman from 30305 from when I was a high school senior called. He was there when I was awaiting word from four colleges. Two said no. One, Emory, said yes. The University of Virginia said maybe, and placed me on the waiting list with final word to come in two weeks.

    Every day at lunch, I would leave work to wait by the mailbox to see which path my life would take. On the third day, the postman asked if I was waiting for word from Virginia.

    “How did you know?” I asked.

    “I’ve got to read envelopes, don’t I.” he said. “By the way, I’m sorry you didn’t get into those other two.”

    “Do you open them, too?”

    “No. Skinny envelopes mean no,” he said. “Fat ones mean yes.”

    “Virginia’s was skinny,” I said.

    “Not skinny enough. You must be on the waiting list. You go by “Chris, don’t you?”

    “Yeah, what about you?”

    “Jack. Jack Daniels.”

    “You’re kidding me, right?”

    “No,” he said. “And my brother-in-law’s name is Johnnie Walker.”

    I continued to meet Jack every day ? rain or shine. He would know before anyone else in Atlanta what my future would be. I told him if I got in, I’d split a bottle of Jack Black with him. (The drinking age was 18 then.) The wait stretched into June, then July. Jack would hand me the mail and shake his head. I didn’t even have to look.

    Then one late July morning at 7:30, I was in the shower. My mother called down to say Jack was on the phone.

    “Congratulations,” he said. “The envelope just came through and it’s real thick.”

    I saw Jack a few more times that week. He had one last request. “Write your mother from school. I don’t want her to get after me for your being lazy.”

    “How about that bottle of Jack?” I asked.

    “Let’s wait until you graduate.”

    Later that year, I saw a new postman at my parents’ mailbox. He said after five years, Jack was transferred to another route. He fought the change, but moved on without telling the neighbors.

    Four years later, I did graduate and – in my farewell column as editor of the weekly college paper ? wrote the story of Jack and the mailbox. I mailed him a copy, care of the post office. In the years since, I moved around the South with five or six daily papers. He moved around Atlanta with different routes.

    Now, nearly 20 years later, Jack was on the phone. “I’m out in Kennesaw now,” he said. “Ever since you left I’ve looked at newspapers I deliver, thinking I’d see your byline somewhere. You’ve got some advertisers out here who get your new paper. When I saw your name, I had to call. In fact, I went and pulled out that old column you wrote about me in college and read it again.”

    We talked about the paper, about his new marriage and his new twins. We talked about how life brings people back in touch with each other in unusual ways. We wished each other well. I told him I’d add him to the mailing list so we’d stay in touch better this time.

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  • Family,  Fatherhood,  Life Stories,  Media

    Heading Toward the 19th Hole

    October 1, 1995

    When my brothers called to propose a round of golf last month, I didn’t hesitate to say yes. I don’t get to play all that often; maybe five times a year, if I’m lucky. This day would be special. For the first time, I’d play with part of my inheritance: my Dad’s clubs. On his favorite course.

    A few years ago, I turned down two invitations to play golf with Dad and my two brothers. I suppose I was too busy with work concerns. Now, a year after Dad’s death, I reflect on those lost opportunities with some regret.

    There are other times—some bad, mostly good—that I associate with golf. I remember my last game with Dad. We finished the day looking out over the course with our feet resting on the dashboard of the cart. I told him I hoped to retire early, maybe about age 55. He said he and his friends had the same goal once.

    “When did you change your mind?” I asked.

    “When we all turned 54,” he said, smiling.

    At a family funeral when I was in college, I met a distant relative, novelist Walker Percy. He invited me out to see the “western South,” and we played golf near his Covington, La., home. He then helped me land an interview and my first job at a Mississippi paper. Years later, when I read Walker was dying, I kept reminding myself to write him a note of thanks. Regrettably, I never did.

    I’ll never forget the early Saturday morning in South Carolina when my friend Mike Egan and I were looking for my lost ball on a par three. We then traced a dark trail in the dewy surface of the green. It led straight to my ball—in the hole. In one.

    Once, when I was in marketing The Charlotte Observer, I helped arrange an evening with Lewis Grizzard to benefit a local charity. While he was in town, I assumed the role of the paper’s goodwill ambassador and Lewis’ chauffeur. He asked if I could arrange a tee time at a local course.

    When we were on the fourth hole, it began to sleet rather heavily. Lewis and I were having fun and were anxious to press on, but his manager, Tony, was tiring of angling puts around piles of ice. We retired to the clubhouse for some Irish coffees.

    Lewis had another request. He asked if I knew anyone who could get him on the course at Peachtree. I told him I’d call next time I was in Atlanta—if it wasn’t sleeting. I never called.

    I suppose golf is like life in some ways. If you choose to play, you’re bound to land in the rough or the sand trap or the water once in a while. Sometimes, everything goes straight down the fairway. One thing is guaranteed: you will finish the round one way or another.

    On this occasion with my brothers, I had some good shots and some bad ones. I was proud to play with the clubs that Dad passed on to me. And, at least I didn’t let another opportunity to spend time with my friends or family slip away.

    As my brothers and I walked away from the 18th green, a youngster was on the practice tee, preparing for his trip to the first tee and his walk around the hills and valleys and traps of the course beyond.

    – October 1995 column

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