100 Years of Solitude : Man Walking on the Moon
My good friend Richard Brundage who happens to be one of the world’s premier media relations training experts was telling me at dinner about his great grandmother, Elizabeth “Lucy” Holiday Brundage. Lucy travelled to the Montana territory in a wagon train and lived a hundred years to see man walk on the moon.
Dick said one could only imagine her looking up at the moon as a small child and saying, “I wonder if one day someone will be walking on the moon?” And of course, the adults around her would remind her of how crazy a thought like that was after they bounced around all day in a wagon on a western wilderness trail.
When I was born in the late 1940s, the automobile was only 40 years old and there was no Interstate Highway system in the United States. Some people living in the country were still using horses and wagons to move themselves, goods and produces to market on FMs [farm to market] roads in the rural areas around the country.
As I right these words, I am using a battery-powered laptop computer. I am sitting up in a bed at 9:30 on a Sunday morning, 850 miles from my home. We are on summer vacation somewhere in America. There are two fully-charged, battery-powered cell phones nearby: one a regular phone and the other a portable hand-held miniature computing device with all the bells and whistles of the day.
There are cars outside that are climate control systems in them. These automobiles can easily travel at speeds in access of 100 miles per hour and go 400 miles or more on an 18 gallon tank of gas. They have AM\FM and satellite radios with CD players and can hold six passengers with ease, with individual zoned climate controlled areas for the front and rear of the vehicle. In my early 60s, I can only imagine what changes will occur in the next 40 years as more advancements in technology are made in this fast-pace, ever changing world.
Oh, did I mention there are a few people living on a space station circling hundreds of miles above planet Earth. They are conducting research and experiments to find out the greater limits of the world above us, around us, below us and within us. From their work will come even greater discoveries and our collective world will hopefully be a better place for all to live. Many of you may never read these words as they are written. You will hear them or see them on an electronic device of some type. All of these things are ways in which we attempt to improve the communications processes.

Living Our Best Life.
Are you living your best life? Thirty years ago my best life looked a lot different than it does today. There was a lot of financial wealth in my future. Does that ring a bell? There are many who seek after wealth; some in the wrong places. There’s an expression I’ve used for years: “Poverty is a state of mind. Broke is a state of pocket book.”

Nurturing Relationships… Time Required.
Nurturing relationships is nurturing life itself. Those who study human interactions have told us over the years about how different and difficult life will be for children who are not nourished when they are very young. Those studying the brains in small children are telling us that most of the connections in a child’s brains will be well-wired by age 3. They will be based on the simulations the child is exposed to and receiving – for learning, living and even how relationships are formed. I have witnesses in our own family the lives of the very young and how what they are exposed to affects their cognitive reasoning abilities. Play is the work of a child. It forms reasoning ability connections far beyond what we see daily when we tell our children to stop playing. No, encourage them to play – play for as long as they can, as young as they are.
When George was a toddler, he was doing something that really was irritating me as a parent. I yelled at him about is that all he could do was play. Without hesitation, he informed me that was his job, “to play.” He was right. And that was long before I had seen any of the research studies referred to here.
We know the science is not perfect, but it is an excellent predictor of behaviors and I have seen it with our grandchildren. There is interesting research in the area about adverse early childhood experiences and how they can affect the health of the person as an older adult.
Something as simple and being exposed to cigarette smoke can make children more susceptible to smoking when they are older. We know when children are born with alcohol or drugs in their systems, they are predisposed to those conditions and depending on the exposure, they start life and will live it needing additional care, counseling and medications for undetermined periods throughout their lives. That to, has been experienced in our extended family.
The right relationships can turn it all around when those relationships are nourished over long periods. Take the time now to nourish your relationships, make them stronger and work on moving them in the right directions. Nurturing relationships… time is required.

Gibbons Brings Vision to a Sighted World...
By: George Earl Johnson, Jr. | May 3, 2011
Are you putting your Best Foot Forward?
Jim Gibbons is bringing vision to the world today through his role as president and chief executive officer of Goodwill Industries International, Inc. That’s not bad for a man whose visual sight completely faded while he was a sophomore engineering student at Purdue University.
Gibbons was in Oklahoma City recently to help Goodwill of Central Oklahoma, Inc. celebrate its 75th Anniversary as a member of the Goodwill International family. This local Goodwill is one of 165 independent, community-based Goodwill organizations located across 16 countries, including the United States. The collective organizations employed and trained nearly 2.4 million people in 2010 and helped 170,000 persons find meaningful employment. The Goodwill’s collective revenues last year were $4 billion.
Operating on a fairly tight schedule from meeting to meeting, Gibbons impressed upon each audience, including the Oklahoma City Downtown Rotary Club that excuses were not an option in today’s world. Now, leaders need to be active and positive, action-oriented.
His life and story are just that. Jim is one of seven children and has a sister 10 years older who is also blind. He said his parents are to be credited with creating an environment of growth and success. While his visual sight began to fade when he was a young child, his parent’s encouragement for success began to mature.
Gibbons said his parents had years to get it right with his sister before he came along. So there was a no excuse environment for him to grow up in.
Graduating from college with an industrial engineering degree, he had 50 applications out and 50 rejections in. He said it was not the best way to start an engineering career, but it was what he had. Finally, IBM and ATT offered him job opportunities and he went with ATT. He said it was a good choice and a good ride for him for 10 years, but he still knew he could do more. His colleagues knew he could do better too.
Gibbons went on to complete an MBA at the Harvard School of Business and landed the top position at the National Industries for the Blind. While at NIB several years ago, friends alerted him to the opening at Goodwill International. It was not just any opening, it was the top chair.
On a leap of faith, Gibbons applied, was interviewed, interviewed and interviewed and finally was tapped by the Goodwill board to become the organizations president and CEO in April 2008.

Myron the Chauffeur – Dr. Pope the Executive
By: George Earl Johnson, Jr. | July 13, 2011
Reading is fundamental. Thanks to all the moms and grand moms who prayed for us and made us study.
I have a new friend in Myron Pope. Myron is a higher education administrator by profession. He has an educational administration doctorate degree and is a vice president at one of Oklahoma’s premier universities. He stands a whooping 6’5” and tips the scales in the neighborhood of 270 pounds. We met in June at an educational summit that I was facilitating along with my life-long friend and co-worker, Norma Goff.
We spent some quality time in the presence of an Oklahoma educational trail-blazer, Dr. Melvin R. Todd. When Dr. Todd was talking, we listened with keen ears.
Myron and I said the things that people most often say when they meet, “Let’s get together.” During my life and time, I have been the one who has followed-up on the statements. He said he would initiate the contact, so I waited, but not for long. Well, I received a nice hand-written card with a business card enclosed from Myron and it once again said, “Let’s get together.” A few days later, there was an e-mail contact.
We met at our family-owned coffee café, Bean Juice, in southwest Edmond, Oklahoma, and invested two wonderful hours together getting to know one another better. The conversations going both ways were heartwarming and energizing.
During the course of the conversation, I shared with him a story from the text of my book, “Only In America” that I had penned and sent off to my editor friend, Stephanie Bond. She has the job of cleaning up the things that I seem to miss. He sat and read the three-page story, laughing and chuckling as he went along.
Only in America is my story about me being in Washington, DC on a government business trip where within a few hours, I was identified by different people under changing circumstances as a working bellboy in a 4-Star Grand Hyatt Regency Hotel. My job, according to the elderly white couple was to retrieve their bags and bring them out front. A few hours later on Capitol Hill, I was identified wearing the same suit of clothing as a United States Congressman and I was accorded all the honors of holding such an office. That could happen to an American of African descent; Only In America.
Well Myron shared two stories of his own with me that happened most recently. They were equally as funny as mine. For both of us as grown men with responsible executive positions, they were real life experiences that most would not laugh at. I share one of his stories here.
Pope is a striking figure of a man. As an educational executive at a major university, he is most often well-dressed when in public during the business. This day would be no exception. He drives a black Denali SUV with all the bells and whistles that is spotless inside and out on most occasions.
He was leaving the university one afternoon and drove several blocks south of campus into one of the nicer neighborhoods that surround the university. There was a garage sale at one of the homes and an item caught his eyes. He stopped in front of the home, got out of the Denali and walked up into the yard.
Myron also wears bowties from time-to-time and has developed the art of tying the perfect bowtie. There in his dark suit, white starched shirt and bowtie, he walked up to an old Singer sewing machine with a mechanical foot peddle, which reminded him of the one his grandmother, Miss Sylvia, used when he was a child. It caught his interest and as he continued to look at the machine with some interest, he noticed a set of eyes following him around. We have all had that feeling at one time or another when we felt eyes on us.
A lady in the yard approached and engaged Myron in conversation. She looked him over real good. She then looked past him at the shiny black Denali at the curve.
Moments later, the woman asked Dr. Pope, “Who are you chauffeuring for?” It was all he could do to keep from laughing. He kept his composure and continued a casual conversation with the lady. Minutes earlier, a few blocks away, Dr. Pope was a member of an executive team administering programs at a major university. Now, minutes later just blocks south of the campus Myron is a chauffeur. Now that’s funny.
It’s only funny because Myron and I both have been blessed with broad, positive exposures to know who we really are as men and who we are as contributors to this great society we call America. It’s not the first case of mistaken identity, nor will it be the last.
John H. Johnson, founder of Ebony Magazine and Fashion Fair Cosmetics and world renowned historian Dr. John Hope Franklin both told similar stories in books they wrote.
Johnson’s 1992 book titled, “Succeeding Against All Odds,” tells many of the stories of his climb to fame and fortune. One such story was when a 30-year-old blonde-haired, blue-eyed young man told him in very forceful terms that he “hey you - boy” should move that Rolls Royce over with the other cars. Johnson had let his wife, Eunice, off at the front door of his neighbor’s home in Palm Springs, CA. The neighbor happened to be Bob Hope. It was old-school manners to let ladies off at the door.
Johnson did as the young man requested without any fanfare. You see, it was the young man’s job as valet to move the car, but since Johnson was black, he made him move it himself. At the time Johnson was listed in the middle of the Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest persons in this country. However, to a 30-year-old white man working as a valet, Johnson was just a boy, not the wealthy next door neighbor.
John Hope Franklin had similar situations happen to him during his life of 94 years. One, however, is more poignant than others to repeat here. He highlighted it in his 2005 autobiography, “Mirror to America.” In the summer of 1995, then President William Jefferson “Bill” Clinton had invited Dr. Franklin to be his guest and honoree at the Whitehouse. President Clinton would bestow upon Dr. Franklin the Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest honor that can be given to one of its citizens for meritorious service above and beyond the call of citizenry and duty.
The evening before this event, Dr. Franklin was enjoying the company of a number of friends at the private Cosmos Club in Washington, DC for this special occasion. These notable friends had assembled themselves to help Dr. Franklin celebrate this high honor.
While standing near the coatroom, a white woman came up to Dr. Franklin, then age 80, and presented him with her claim check and demanded him to get her coat. Dr. Franklin let the woman know that he was in the club attending a gathering being held in his honor and that she would need to have someone working at the club provide such a service for her. She looked at him with distain and walked away.
It is the 21st Century and men and women of color are continually finding themselves in the position of explaining to white America that they are no longer just the housekeepers and servants of this society. While that remains honorable work, people of color are not the only ones that do it. We, too, as people of color have achieved a great deal through hard work, dedication and perseverance. We, too, have educated ourselves to hold positions of high office and responsibility that drives the engines in our collective societies.
On this day, Myron and I laughed at the shared experiences we have had. We were reassured by the lessons from our mothers and grandmothers long before we entered the worlds of education and work that we were to smile, hold our heads high and cause those around us to respect us based on the content of our character.
This is how we put our Best Foot Forward each and every day. It is the one thing that causes those who have gone before us to be proud of every drop of blood, sweat and tears to know it was worth the effort they put forth and the price they paid because we have garnered the prize with a smile, dignity and honor.