Thankful

A personal note--not really bobwhite related so I understand if you delete.

“Being lazy is disrespectful to those who believe in you.” — Unknown

It was an honor to receive the Lamar Dodd Creative Research Award. It really is a group award because I couldn’t have done it without the numerous supporters, collaborators, sponsors, students, staff, administrators, friends, and family. Thank you all.

We clean up pretty good. My wife puts up with a lot from me. She has to share my brain and heart space with a little brown bird. Thankful she does.

The quote above recently spoke to me because an intrinsic motivation for me has always been not to let any talent I have go to waste. I will never be in the National Academy of Sciences or win a Nobel—I am not that smart. Some people are, and I am in awe of their capabilities. But for me, getting the most out of my ability and taking advantage of opportunities is paramount because many people in my family never had those opportunities. Not because they lacked talent or intelligence, but because they emerged from circumstances where those opportunities were unheard of or unreachable.

For example, both of my grandmothers were and are highly intelligent, ethical, hardworking, and determined women. I know that because they helped raise me—lots of nights, weekends, and holidays spent with the grandparents. Neither grandmother came from a wealthy background. One came from sharecroppers and pulpwood haulers, and the other from textile workers and, let’s just say, alcohol sales (if you catch my drift). They came from single-room houses, wood-burning cookstoves, and Model A Fords. Higher education wasn’t in the cards for them, but they would have excelled in many disciplines.

One grandmother spent her entire life devoted to her special-needs daughter (my beloved Aunt Phylis)—providing 24-hour care, including carrying her to and from the bathroom, the bed, and the porch because a handicap-accessible home was unobtainable. She did this for almost 60 years. She sewed and sold quilts to help support the family while my grandfather farmed and hauled pulpwood.

The other grandmother emerged from that single room above a store where six of them lived, married my grandfather, and ultimately went to work in a textile mill where she spent decades. I watched her devote the first decade of her retirement to taking care of her mother in a nursing home, visiting every day.

I never once detected regret or bitterness from them—only a lifetime of devotion to doing things right. Their foundation, along with that developed with my grandfathers, raised my parents. My parents continued to build on the progress of their parents. Those wonderful things, along with a huge toolbox of life lessons from my family, are what I needed to start my adult life.

How disrespectful to all their legacies would it be if I didn’t take advantage of a college education (which my parents paid for), seven years of paid graduate school, or the thousands of opportunities afforded to me because others worked hard or took a chance on me? My grandmothers didn’t have those doors to walk through because of their circumstances, but I did.

Of course, I have lazy moments, drop the ball at times, make dumb decisions, have moments of ignorance, and experience all the other pitfalls of the human condition. I am no better than anyone else but I will be damned if I will disrespect Mary Sue Martin and Dorothy Jones Thomas by not trying to make the most of my talent—albeit limited—and the opportunities afforded to me.