I have written before about “why I love to read.” Among the many reasons, one is the light that learning about another person's life has shed on my own life.
There are no two books which had this impact more clearly than Katherine Meyer Graham’s personal memoir and James Reston’s memoir, Deadline.
In her memoir, Katherine Meyer Graham writes of the time when she had just assumed leadership of the Washington Post, following the suicide of her husband, Phillip. It turns out the path that Ms. Graham trod to leadership was a lot like my own. She writes:
I was encumbered by a deep feeling of uncertainty and inferiority: the need to please and be liked. What people really want is logical, rational leadership—not a ‘love-in.’ I asked for opinions from too many.
One of the great challenges in life is to be willing to risk one’s self for what one believes is right even when it is unpopular, and may even be wrong and when it goes against the grain. Key here is to have a very strong conviction on what one believes is very important.
I found it very difficult to tell people things they might not want to hear. That’s where integrity comes in.
What I eventually did was to put one foot of the other, shut my eyes and step off the edge. The surprise was that I landed on my feet. My initial Girl Scout type of resolve was turning into a passionate interest. In short, I fell in love with my job. I loved the paper. I loved the people. Despite all my insecurities, I was finally starting to enjoy myself.
It’s uncanny to read someone else’s experience and find that it mirrors my own as closely as was the case for Katherine Meyer Graham—loving the job, loving the business, loving the people and from that, enjoying the journey.
So it was for me, all of it coming together.
It was also this feeling of enhanced self-discovery that let me to so enjoy James Reston’s memoir, Deadline. James Reston was probably the most renowned columnist during the middle decades of the 20th century. He wrote for the New York Times.
Again and again, I read of Reston’s experience and see my own revealed. Entering the University of Illinois, having been born and growing up in Scotland, he “discovered then, as I had on that first day in grade school, that the old fear of being laughed at hadn’t left me. I couldn’t explain it and I never got over it.” How akin that was to my feeling, my recognition of not being popular, and thus, I believe, seeking too much to be liked.
His success at golf gave Reston the same sense of self-worth that I gained from my achievements in studying. “It was the success in these tournaments that got me into my first (job).” He was comfortable with golf because it offered a “continuation of the lessons I had learned at home. It taught me perseverance, it taught me not to cheat—no easy thing for a boy to not cheat.” In other words, it taught him values.
Back in college, he took away little sayings that never left him, just as I did. One of his was from Stuart Sherman, an editor of the New York Herald Tribune, who offered as a rule of conduct, “Say each day: this day is my opportunity to do something which will count for improvement in the lives I touch. This day, throw your day heartily against the wheel in the mud. This day speak with increased precision and force. This day give a lift or an encouraging word to somebody. Act so that tomorrow will approve today and not look back with disgust and humiliation.” How similar is this to my fundamental belief: "Everyone Counts". How clearly it echoes one of my favorite blessings: "Make haste to be kind and be quick to love.
What will remain longest in my memory, however, about Reston’s experiences was his relationship and long marriage to Sally Fulton. He was on a date at the age of 22 with a fraternity brother. He was with one woman and his fraternity brother with another, “a dream called Sally Fulton.” Reston writes: “By the end of the first Coke, I could tell we had the wrong partners. I had reached the firm conclusion that Sally Fulton was the prettiest and brightest girl on campus. I had read it, of course, about people falling in love but, obviously, nobody had ever experienced anything like this. It was not a crush but a crash and it was also a problem.”
The outcome was predictable. At the time of writing this memoir in 1990, five years before his death, the Restons had been married for 55 years. Come next November, my wife Francie and I will be married 56 years.
Reston’s continued reflections about Sally mirror my own to an uncanny degree.
The only person who matches my experience that parallels this is Larry Morgan in Wallace Stegner’s novel, Crossing to Safety. He writes, as I wrote in my personal memoir, “I wrote it not to escape but to relive the happy days with Sally and reflect on those past experiences that might have relevance to the future.”
“Sally and I have kept our promises that found that love at last sight is even better than love at first sight. I have come to believe in personal things that endure in a dizzy world.” This says it all.
Karl Brown, who works to help Francie and me stay in shape once or twice a week recently asked me “John, what do you believe has accounted for your success?” It was an easy question. I responded immediately: “Francie. She changed my life. I wouldn’t be here today if I hadn’t met her and hadn’t achieved my dream of marrying her.”
Reston continues in his memoir: “We have walked the long plank together for 55 years, hand in hand to keep them from trembling and I still can’t think of a better formula for the pursuit of happiness. I look on these years as a joyful adventure and as an intellectual privilege, for I’ve constantly been in touch with a faithful, generous heart and a quick and independent mind. Sally not only married me but also educated me. She kept up with the news and also kept reminding me there were other things in life".
That among much else is what Francie has brought to my life: warmth, an affinity for other people, common sense, and fierce independence and integrity.
No comments:
Post a Comment