In the summer of 1956, Wake Forest College moved from its namesake town of Wake Forest 110 miles west to the hills of Forsyth County and more specifically the outer reaches of Winston-Salem where land and money had been given to build a new campus. In June of that year, my parents and two brothers moved there as well as many of my friends, as all of our parents were on the faculty of the school. Mine was the local pastor of the Baptist Church and the Chaplain of the college. And since Wake Forest had decided to start a new church, also to be called Wake Forest Baptist Church, we moved.

 

Growing up in a small town of 3,000, and a college town at that, is about as good as it gets. You get to go to all the football, basketball and baseball games, ride bikes, go to the only town swimming pool in the summer, walk to school and on the last day of class, go barefooted. Amazing.

So moving to a large and unknown city that was really a Carolina town wasn’t too appealing. But the school had built ten large faculty apartments (we were in 9A), and almost everyone who had moved, lived there for a time while homes were built on what came to be known as Faculty Drive.

We didn’t know anyone, and no one knew us. Oh sure, Winston-Salem hosted a large and somewhat formal Welcome to us at the Memorial Coliseum, not far away, and our pictures and articles about our families were in the local afternoon paper. But when you are in the sixth grade, that doesn’t mean too much.

I remember the summer was spent riding bikes on the campus, taking the new elevators that you could operate yourself up and down in Reynolda Hall so much that the President of the college finally had to call my father to ask that I and some of my friends simply stop. No one else had been able to use them. And an indoor swimming pool and four basketball courts and six ping pong tables in one gym!

And then the dreaded month of September came, and we all had to go to a new school. Because of where we lived, we went even further away from the city to an elementary school called Old Town. It was an imposing place with large white columns in the front and a cool gym of its own in the back. I had never ridden a school bus until then. I had always walked.

I was in Mr. Lloyd’s class. I don’t remember much from that year except Mr. Lloyd had played football at Miami and allowed me and another friend to leave class a lot to referee basketball games for younger kids in the gym. I even tried out for the basketball team, though I was too short and not very good. My only good moment was in the father –son game when I was to dribble the ball between the legs of Bones McKinney and then go in for a layup. It all worked great, except of course I missed the uncontested shot.

But that year stands out in another real way for me. Old Town really welcomed me and my friends and made us feel at home. I have never forgotten that, and although I only went there one year, I readily accepted and was very excited a few weeks ago when a lady from Winston called and asked if I could come to an elementary school reunion on May 4. How quickly can you say yes? Going back in time to when we were young, small and full of promise, even for a night, is magical.

The best diet I ever went on in my life was the time I worked at the 42^nd Street Oyster Bar. It was completely involuntary. I had to be at work before 5:00 p.m., which meant I missed dinner. I was around food most of the night and soon saw so much of it, I didn’t want it. But then before things got so strict, another waiter and myself would often have a salad about 8:00 p.m. or so, whenever there was a break.

I guarantee if you walk around, and sometimes run, every night for about six hours, from 5:00 p.m. until 11:00 p.m., you will lose weight. And you will even be able to have a glass of wine at the end of the evening.

The problem though is that most people my age don’t work in a restaurant, or if they do, they don’t wait tables. But lots of folks have, though most often when they were young, working their way through school. What waiting tables is…is walking and exercise, and because of the time schedule, eating less.

I have recently lost some weight, though not unfortunately by exercise, but by eating less. I have read no books or followed any strict regimen, unless you call giving up fast food, bread and pasta a regimen…and ice cream. All the basic and necessary foods.

How many times have you told someone at a clothing store, or told yourself, when you were going to buy something, that it was okay to get the smaller size because you were going to lose five pounds or an inch off your waist? And it never happened.

But now it has! The tough times though are only beginning. How to keep the pounds off? I will tell you how. Three years ago, my kids, Jeff and Stacy, gave me a green sweater for Christmas. It was my size, but I never wore it because it was a little tight…actually very tight. A month ago, before this last Christmas, I put it on and what do you know, but it fit…very nicely. They thought I had bought it myself.

Now, the only problem is that several years ago, Jeff had given me this great sweater, and I couldn’t wear it so I gave it back to him, and now he wears it. I need to figure out how to get it back.

The best diet I ever went on in my life was the time I worked at the 42^nd Street Oyster Bar. It was completely involuntary. I had to be at work before 5:00 p.m., which meant I missed dinner. I was around food most of the night and soon saw so much of it, I didn’t want it. But then before things got so strict, another waiter and myself would often have a salad about 8:00 p.m. or so, whenever there was a break. I guarantee if you walk around, and sometimes run, every night for about six hours, from 5:00 p.m. until 11:00 p.m., you will lose weight. And you will even be able to have a glass of wine at the end of the evening.

The problem though is that most people my age don’t work in a restaurant, or if they do, they don’t wait tables. But lots of folks have, though most often when they were young, working their way through school. What waiting tables is…is walking and exercise, and because of the time schedule, eating less.

I have recently lost some weight, though not unfortunately by exercise, but by eating less. I have read no books or followed any strict regimen, unless you call giving up fast food, bread and pasta a regimen…and ice cream. All the basic and necessary foods.

How many times have you told someone at a clothing store, or told yourself, when you were going to buy something, that it was okay to get the smaller size because you were going to lose five pounds or an inch off your waist? And it never happened.

But now it has! The tough times though are only beginning. How to keep the pounds off? I will tell you how. Three years ago, my kids, Jeff and Stacy, gave me a green sweater for Christmas. It was my size, but I never wore it because it was a little tight…actually very tight. A month ago, before this last Christmas, I put it on and what do you know, but it fit…very nicely. They thought I had bought it myself.

Now, the only problem is that several years ago, Jeff had given me this great sweater, and I couldn’t wear it so I gave it back to him, and now he wears it. I need to figure out how to get it back.

The Cycle of Life

In the mid 1960’s, Hugh Sidey, a longtime reporter and columnist for Time magazine, wrote a book about the life and times of President Kennedy. I have always remembered a line he wrote about the President’s assassination… “The man who controlled so much and so many was, in the end, not the master of the length of his own line”. In essence, that is true of all of us.

Just this past weekend, I learned of the death of two people, one a former neighbor and English professor at Wake Forest University who lived till the age of 101. Indeed, in June, she would have turned 102. She lived a full and rich life, interacting with scores of young people for literally decades of time. And then, on Sunday, with other friends, I went to Dunn, North Carolina to see the family of the father of one of my great friends. He had died suddenly last week at the age of 82.

It was all rather depressing, making one open more quickly the back pages of the newspaper to see who was no longer with us.

And then, the newspaper was full this weekend with the all too common story of a young teenager in Raleigh, who lost her life at the age of 18, when she was the passenger in a car, that was being driven much too fast, late at night. Someone was alive, full of life and promise, and then in a moment, it was no more.

Life can be unfair. But life is all we have and so why not make the most of it while it is ours. I thought about that a couple of days ago, when a good friend of mine, came over to my place, with another, to sit and wait while her grandson was about to be born at Rex Hospital. The young mother, her daughter-in-law, had started her contractions and had been admitted to the hospital earlier in the evening. Surely, it would not be long before young Mason would open his eyes and take his first look at the world and say hello. And it wasn’t.

It is the cycle of life. It is a wonderful thing to see and experience. And it can be fleeting for any and all of us. So enjoy each day you have and live it completely. Don’t cut yourself any slack. Just go for it.

Still, isn’t it pretty nice and comforting that whenever we have to say goodbye, we also often get the chance to say hello.

                “My friend Wade Smith used to tell me that “if no one has died, everything can be fixed”.   I am not sure of the context in which he spoke…he might have been talking about me. He went on to say that things might not be fixed perfectly or put back the way it was, but a life could be improved.

 

                Just this Thursday morning, WRAL.com has a posting telling the tragic story of a ten year old girl from Columbus County who hanged herself Monday night after being bullied and bullied at school in part for the clothes and shoes she wore. On the week before Thanksgiving, or really anytime, it is incredible that this has happened. But it has, and it is likely to happen again.

 

                I have read a couple of stories similar to this in recent months with very different results. A Winston-Salem student also killed herself for similar reasons while a young boy, according to CBS News, while being bullied, did not. The difference in the outcome was due in part to the fact that one told about the personal situation while the other did not.

 

                Openness can save someone, and not telling can kill. Life is stressful enough for many adults. Imagine what it can be like for young people. So, if you have young children, or children of any age, or friends or family, talk with them. See how they are doing. Reach out to them. And…if it is you…do the same with others. If they or you are still here, it is never too late.

                If you haven’t read the column by Charles Blow of the New York Times recently posted on October 14, please do so on an online edition of the Times. It is under the title “The Bleakness of the Bullied”.   Mr. Blow is a well respected columnist, regularly appearing on national television shows with comments on the daily life of this country’s politics and well being. It wasn’t always so.

 

                Mr. Blow recounts a time when he was very young, depressed, bullied by other young people around him and thinking of suicide. He was at a skating ring where the music was loud and people were moving fast around him, and he was just trying to hold on. He thought how unhappy he was, that he didn’t want to live and considered taking too many pills. Then, he remembered a song his mother had taught him, and he began to sing it to himself and pulled away from darkness.

 

                And now Mr. Blow writes about this time in his life. What a wonderful thing to do! In recent months, I have seen two news stories, one in the Winston-Salem Journal, and the other on the CBS Evening News. Both stories told of young people who were unhappy at school and bullied by their peers. One, a young girl from Forsyth County told no one, not even her closest friends how she felt. They didn’t know until her parents found her body in an upstairs bedroom one morning before school. The other national story was of a young boy who told his parents what was going on in his life, and he got help, and now is a happier well adjusted person.

 

                The difference in these two stories, at least to me, is that the openness, or lack thereof in each case. I think openness usually wins. What you can do, if you have children, is ask how they are doing and be mindful of their behavior. What you can do, if you have older friends, is the same.

 

                I believe that one of the best ways to find out about how someone is doing is to open up to that person your-self. That makes it easier for everyone to be honest. But this can be hard. Admitting our weaknesses isn’t for sissies. But the rewards can be priceless.

 

              

                Sometimes, I get the opportunity to do really special things. The first week in October was such a time when I was invited to speak in Annapolis, Maryland at the Governor Calvert House, a part of the Historic Inns of Annapolis, to the Local Insurance Government Trust which comprised representatives of local government from all over Maryland.

 

                I had never been to Annapolis, though I had heard much about it. The Governor Calvert House, where I both stayed and spoke, is right across the street from the Maryland State House, still a working state capitol where the Legislature regularly meets.

 

                The sidewalks and streets are all paved with brick, and if you go on a walking tour, in about three short blocks, you are on the edge of the Chesapeake Bay with the Naval Academy to your left.

 

                Dinner was held at another part of the Hotel complex in an old house that has in the basement a well known and rich in history restaurant called “The Treaty of Paris”. It is so named after the treaty that ended the Revolutionary War. Legend has it that in the afternoon at the close of the war, General George Washington resigned his commission, leading the war, in the state capitol, which was then the national capitol and walked the short distance to the restaurant now named after the famous treaty and proceeded to have dinner and have way to much to drink.

 

                For breakfast the next day there was a well known local eatery, called “Chick and Ruth’s, named after the original owners. It was fantastic. There is nothing like it in North Carolina that I have seen. It is not large, but in the middle of the restaurant, there is a huge American flag, and every morning at 8:30 a.m., everyone who is there stands and recites the Pledge of Allegiance.

 

                If you have the chance to go to the historic part of Annapolis…go. Tour the shops, the capitol, have the best crab cakes anywhere and walk the grounds of the Naval Academy. You will be glad you did.

                About the only times people, who come to my programs and speeches, write anything down is when I repeat some comment or statement someone else has said. I am a collector of such thoughts. There is no end to such a list, as it is always growing, and you may have your own, and if you do and wish to share it with me, I think that would be great. But until then, here is my list of thoughts that I believe are worthy of writing down and saving.

 

·         The best way out is always through. Robert Frost

·         To get to a place you have never been, you first must do things you have never done – many people

·         Let your ayes be ayes and your nayes be nayes – Sermon on the Mount

·         Magnificent Defeat – it is sometimes in our most crushing defeats, that we learn the miracle of grace and have a second chance. Frederick Buechner, in a book by that same name

·         The prisons are full of people who should have taken the train to Montana – just walk away from a desperate situation…slow down and take a deep breath – Wade Smith

·         It is better to live your life in Technicolor than in black and white – Jean Spaulding

·         Don’t cry past Tuesday – how to get on with your life – Charles E. Poole, in a book by that same name

·         Truth is the most powerful weapon any person has – Wade Smith

·         There are three things that are real…God, human folly and laughter…since the first two are beyond our comprehension, we should do what we can with the third – John F. Kennedy

·         In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer – Albert Camus

                Just last week I was sitting in Café Carolina at Cameron Village in Raleigh and in walked Jackie Murdock. He is a little older than he was when he was an All ACC first team basketball guard in 1957 for Wake Forest, but he still looks the same. The face has not changed. He played only one year in Winston-Salem…the first year the school was there and graduated with the first class on what was then the new campus.

 

                I was a kid when he played and was connected at the hip to Wake Forest, even on the old campus in the town of Wake Forest where we played in Gore Gymnasium in front of a sell-out crowd of about 2,000. But that was a golden time. I remember Jackie hurling down the court for a fast break layup, and I remember in his senior year when he set the NCAA record for consecutive free throws at 39.

 

                Then there was 1966 when for one year he was the head basketball coach at Wake Forest, taking over from Bones McKinney. The basketball situation was a mess, and one day, after the season was over, he was invited to meet with Dr. Tribble, the school president and was told the school wanted to go in a different direction and would not be hiring Jackie as a permanent coach. Jackie looked at Dr. Tribble, accepted his decision and told him he had hoped he could help the school turn things around, much as Dr. Tribble had had to do. And then he got up and walked out.

 

                Jackie never looked back and had a successful career in Raleigh with the North Carolina Department of Transportation as the Secondary Roads Officer. But even though he is now a little older, and he probably can’t run down the court quite as fast, he still remembers playing and wanting to beat Carolina. He once said as a student that every Wake Forest freshman learns when he or she first comes to school that that is the great goal.

 

                And sometimes he did. But then on this day, Jackie left the restaurant with his friend Grey Poole to play golf. Grey played basketball at Carolina. But just for an instant, time stopped and memories went back to when Murdock, Dickie Hemric, Lefty Davis and Ernie Wiggins were just about the best thing around. Jackie Murdock still is.